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Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

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Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#71

Post by DubiousPusher »

jdw64 wrote: post #4

I feel that the Zen used in the West and the Zen in East Asia are quite different. I think the Western Zen is probably the one from the 1970s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It usually carries a sense of equanimity and beginner's mind. But in East Asia, Zen actually emphasizes aimlessness or non‑purposefulness. The point where I really feel the difference is that Western Zen seems to be about how to t…

I don't think the intent of Robert Pirsig's work was to outline a git gud strategy cloaked in chillness. The book is heavily inspired by Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery which is explicitly not about trying to get good at something.

Both books highlight the value of dissolving conscious aim in favor of experience something. Pirsig's point isn't, you gotta act like a noob and then you can be good at maintaining motorcycles. His point was that there is a joy in losing yourself in these things that have to be done. If you are rushing to get it done or focusing too much on the end state, you will lose the joy and this thing will become a chore.

He does make the connection that years of doing things this way will lend you a kind of skill. And he connects the ideas to the Western concept of gumption which is a kind of motivation or persistence but again the book's core is not, lose yourself and you will get good. It's more like that a Western obsession with accomplishment can rob you of the joy that can come from engaging with activities for their own sake and not pushing through them just to get them done.

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#72

Post by DubiousPusher »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #47
jdw64 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to know quite a lot about the East. Buddhism and Taoism are a bit different, of course, but your understanding is largely in line with how Eastern popular thought actually sees things. It seems like you've done a fair amount of business with Easterners.

After watching how much the east misunderstands western religion (i.e. Neon Genesis Evangelion), there's no benefit to "actually understanding" the religions of the east. They make little effort to understand western religion in their popular media, so why should we do it for them? As far as I'm concerned, Lisa Simpson is the quintessential Buddhist and will remain that way until Japan proves they understand what the…

Because there is more value in understanding someone else's ideas than as some kind of cultural favor? East Asians built empires, invented and discovered incredible things. They have developed elaborate artistic, musical and familial traditions. All of that is of course related to their cosmological ideas. If you could, why wouldn't you understand ideas that were integral to so much human activity? And if they fail to understand your culture in the same regard, that just puts you at an advantage.

In the words of my old man, "I'm not telling you what I know, cause then you'll know what I know plus what you know and then you'll know more than me!"

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#73

Post by colechristensen »

jdw64 wrote: post #68
colechristensen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do non-westerners do this? Go through lengthy "it's not this it's that" explanations trying to display superior knowledge of what the real genuine thing from somebody else's culture is? Any time some topic of some asian culture that has been shared into america comes up this sort of thing dominates the discussion.

I think everyone, to some extent, does that when they encounter something they already know. The truth is, we don't all share a unified way of thinking, and HN, being one of the most prominent Western platforms where information spreads quickly, is viewed by people from many countries. In fact, Japan, China, and Korea all have sites that curate content from here. And when you spend time here, you see a lot of differi…

In the Author's Note at the beginning of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Persig writes

>[the book] should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.

This article's title is another in a long series of meme titles of the form "Zen and the Art of...", Persig was doing it as a riff on Zen and the Art of Archery

>I feel that the Zen used in the West and the Zen in East Asia are quite different.

All of the schools of Zen/Chan/Seon or whatever you'd like to call it are quite different and in the east there are some pretty dramatic differences between schools.

My point being that the discussion being dominated by the authenticity of various kinds of zen on an article about machine learning aggressively misses the point. The frequent digression into mostly irrelevant distinctions is a problem around here. I don't know anything more about Zen or machine learning from all of this discussion and we should all be more careful for our comments to add to the discussion instead of taking away from it.

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#74

Post by colechristensen »

handedness wrote: post #66
colechristensen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do non-westerners do this? Go through lengthy "it's not this it's that" explanations trying to display superior knowledge of what the real genuine thing from somebody else's culture is? Any time some topic of some asian culture that has been shared into america comes up this sort of thing dominates the discussion.

There is plenty of it in ancient literature, both Western and Eastern. Humans' fundamental attachments remain more or less remain recognizable over time and place. There is, though, something especially cheap about how it is mostly done today. At least we got treasures like the Cantongqi/Sandōkai out of it in the past. (Or maybe I just committed exactly the same error by invoking the Sandōkai.) I'm sure it was done s…

There exists a long history of shallow practice of religious / philosophical schools for as long as we have recorded history of anything? This isn't surprising or particularly profound news.

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#75

Post by sph »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #47
jdw64 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to know quite a lot about the East. Buddhism and Taoism are a bit different, of course, but your understanding is largely in line with how Eastern popular thought actually sees things. It seems like you've done a fair amount of business with Easterners.

After watching how much the east misunderstands western religion (i.e. Neon Genesis Evangelion), there's no benefit to "actually understanding" the religions of the east. They make little effort to understand western religion in their popular media, so why should we do it for them? As far as I'm concerned, Lisa Simpson is the quintessential Buddhist and will remain that way until Japan proves they understand what the…

“Here is my opinion on philosophies and religions spanning thousand of years based on a Japanese anime: the anime got some things wrong so I might as well ignore all of it”

Fascinating insight. Thank you for your input, I guess.

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#76

Post by sharadov »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #71
jdw64 wrote: post #4

I feel that the Zen used in the West and the Zen in East Asia are quite different. I think the Western Zen is probably the one from the 1970s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It usually carries a sense of equanimity and beginner's mind. But in East Asia, Zen actually emphasizes aimlessness or non‑purposefulness. The point where I really feel the difference is that Western Zen seems to be about how to t…

I don't think the intent of Robert Pirsig's work was to outline a git gud strategy cloaked in chillness. The book is heavily inspired by Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery which is explicitly not about trying to get good at something. Both books highlight the value of dissolving conscious aim in favor of experience something. Pirsig's point isn't, you gotta act like a noob and then you can be good at maintain…

It's all about enjoying the journey.

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#77

Post by handedness »

colechristensen wrote: post #74
handedness wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of it in ancient literature, both Western and Eastern. Humans' fundamental attachments remain more or less remain recognizable over time and place. There is, though, something especially cheap about how it is mostly done today. At least we got treasures like the Cantongqi/Sandōkai out of it in the past. (Or maybe I just committed exactly the same error by invoking the Sandōkai.) I'm sure it was done s…

There exists a long history of shallow practice of religious / philosophical schools for as long as we have recorded history of anything? This isn't surprising or particularly profound news.

There's probably that, too, but there exists a long history of "lengthy 'it's not this it's that' explanations trying to display superior knowledge of what the real genuine thing from somebody else's culture is."

It's just human nature and it happens at every level. I've seen, firsthand, primitive villagers in Asia do it about the culture of another village five miles away, I've seen people all over do it about something on the other side of the planet. I don't think it's particularly exclusive to a particular hemisphere.

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#78

Post by AlexCoventry »

turzmo wrote: post #25
jdw64 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to know quite a lot about the East. Buddhism and Taoism are a bit different, of course, but your understanding is largely in line with how Eastern popular thought actually sees things. It seems like you've done a fair amount of business with Easterners.

Would either of you have a recommendation on where to start learning about either?

I just finished Everyday Zen by Charlotte "Joko" Beck, and it's very pragmatic and good, IMO, though you won't learn a lot of doctrine from it.

Zen is not a good Buddhist tradition to start with unless you have a skilled personal teacher, IMO. I would recommend starting with something like dhammatalks.org instead. (Click on the "For Beginners" header near the bottom of the page.)

Re: Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

#80

Post by jxmorris12 »

sdfsefsdf wrote: post #7

Perhaps I've been deep in my own issues for too long, but it seems to me that the author is trying to say "don't trust the current evaluation suites too much"; scores only reflect a small part of the problem. What's interesting is discovering a new, stable evaluation metric, doing something new based on it, and having that new thing yield some unexpected intelligent results

This is certainly part of it! My point was that focusing on problems proposed by others is one very specific and pretty short-term mode of thinking. Good researchers improve benchmark scores. Great researchers think about what problem they're solving.
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