Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

Thank you for letting me know correctly.

Who doesn't call stoicism Roman?

Stoicism in Ancient Rome was COMPLETELY about controlling your emotions, though. And in Greece it was never that big of a deal. The stoics we remember today are all Roman. Marcus Aurelius, Epicurious, Seneca.

Meditations is largely Marcus Aurelius soothing himself with logical arguments.

Im not doing it full justice but the passages read like “A whole is not less than its parts, Humans are intelligent, therefore the universe is intelligent, there for my situation is a logical plan from the universe, so I should be content.” Marcus was explaining why he needed to be the perfect elite Roman citizen, using nature to logically show why he needed to embody societally cherished traits like being logical, just, fair, but also being stern, powerful and strong. Over and over again.

Now at the time, they did consider it a hard science. They were trying to figure out secrets of the universe, the absolute correct ethics, and therapy (controlling your emotions) at the same time. Each tenet relied on eachother, you couldn’t have one with the other. Today we know the science was wrong and ethics are more complicated than they could’ve imagined, but the controlling emotions side remains. So I completely disagree that modern stoic bros are bastardizing it, it just is an flawed ideology that matches well with some of our modern western traits of a “masculine” man.

The 'Le Guin' series actually had similar kinds of stories in Asia before. There's a strong Taoist influence, you see—more specifically, Chinese-style Taoism rather than a Buddhist perspective.

From the viewpoint of '不立文字 (Bù lì wén zì): truth is not confined to language; language is merely the finger pointing at the truth' — this is closer to Taoism than to Zen. In fact, the Chinese worldview runs deep throughout her worldbuilding. Le Guin's take on 'magic' reflects a profound understanding of Eastern philosophy. The reason Ged doesn't use magic lightly is precisely a matter of balance, and (without giving away spoilers) the final confrontation between Ged and the Shadow is essentially about embracing one's own dark side — which shows a deep grasp of Taoist thought.

Personally, I also love the Earthsea series. The philosophy underlying that world is exactly the kind that resonates especially well with East Asian readers

To be done with doing, would appear to require passive income?

Man it sucks that she gets the unique distinction of being the only IP that Miyazaki's son totally RUINED.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Earthsea_(film)

Easily the worst film ever made to have Miyazaki's name on it. Even Ursula LeGuin couldn't hide her disappointment with it.

It's all about enjoying the journey.

Marketing ruins every word. Quantum, antigravity, Zen, etc.

It's hard to explain, but I think it's similar. At its core, it's usually expressed like this:

Bù lì wén zì[Bulipmunja] (不立文字): The truth of enlightenment cannot be fully expressed through language or written words.

Jiào wài bié chuán[Gyoebyeoljeon] (敎外別傳): A separate transmission of truth outside the scriptures, not something acquired through formal teaching.

Zhí zhǐ rén xīn[Jikjiinsim] (直指人心): Without relying on anything else, directly look into your own mind.

Jiàn xìng chéng fó[Gyeonseongseongbul] (見性成佛): By realizing the Buddha nature already inherent within yourself, you become a Buddha yourself.

In this worldview, Buddhism sees existence as being trapped within the cycle of Samsara. Becoming a Buddha, attaining Nirvana, means escaping from that cycle. So our Zen ultimately points to something beyond life and death, a final liberation that we call Nirvana. But I'm always careful when talking about this, because putting it into words can easily lead us away from the essence itself.

To summarize your argument a bit, you are essentially saying, 'Christianity was originally a Jewish sect, so the current Trinity doctrine is wrong.' Generally speaking, Zen (Seon) moved from India to China, and after Bodhidharma, it began to emphasize self‑nature while incorporating Taoist concepts. Perhaps your argument might come from a perspective that is not East Asian but rather based on the original texts, possibly from the Indian tradition. In Mahayana Buddhism, Sunyata (emptiness) is the core of non‑duality, and it is actually somewhat different from your Theravada interpretation.

The problem is that the way Zen is used resembles the Seon traditions of East Asia, specifically Korea, China, and Japan, and those traditions are built on Mahayana emptiness with Taoist elements mixed in. Therefore, from the perspective of primitive Buddhism, what you say is correct, and from the Pali perspective, it can be called Jhana, but strictly speaking, that is difficult to call Zen[1][2]

[1]https://kabc.dongguk.edu/content/view?dataId=ABC_BJ_H0184_T_...

[2] https://www.ibulgyo.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=28814&ut...

Actually, this is a matter of Buddhist sects. It's not that you're wrong—the etymology is correct—but I think you're taking the historical changes too lightly. Because generally speaking, there is Mahayana Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism, and they usually follow the Pali tradition. In fact, the concept of 'emptiness' (Sunyata) in Mahayana Buddhism is itself based on non-duality. So what you're asserting is not wrong as a source or an original form of Buddhism, but regarding the description of Zen in the article, the actual Seon tradition is generally closer to what I'm claiming. In fact, you can't really talk about Seon Buddhism without bringing up Taoism, because during the process of its transmission through China, it merged with Chinese folk beliefs and then spread throughout East Asia. (For reference, I'm Korean, and the Buddhist traditions in Korea were also heavily influenced by China.)

There's no such thing as "wrong" in this sense. Eastern religious traditions are manifold across space and time, they influence each other, change, and split quite significantly.

> comes from a combination of the West's allure to Eastern martial arts and the reality of plateauing during training. Once you've been doing something for 2 years, you are no longer seeing the massive learning gains you saw as a true novice.

Which is ironic given the context - Wing Chun is basically useless the first two years and’s you plateau until it finally clicks - only then do you start to see massive gains each lesson!

(why? For a long time you just go through the motions with drills, but until you >really< understand how your structure is connected to your stance (which can be over a year), your punches and movement are way off from optimal from a Wing Chun perspective).

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.

what?

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a series of lectures about philosophy told through the lens of a real motorcycle trip across the country interleaved with recollections of his personal history developing the philosophy, going through a breakdown as a result of schizophrenia, and recovering the personality lost through electroshock therapy. He was a bit of a megalomaniac and failed out of traditional academia as a result of his mental illness which his son likely shared to some degree.

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 similarly back then, but likely mostly in actual conversation.

Maybe enough of today's commented noise will filter down to a small number of some particularly astute internet comments which will be studied in the year 3226, but I doubt it. Today's best thinking is still found in books and articles. Which has always probably been true, but it used to require some additional amount of work to hear foolishness.

Sounds a bit like a holdover from a long history of monotheism, so I think westerners might be predisposed to this, yes.

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 differing perspectives. It's like the difference between an outsider's view and an insider's view.

Western Zen has also adapted to fit certain needs, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's just that, as an East Asian, when I clicked on a post about Zen, what I expected and what I actually saw were different.

In fact, from what I've seen on Korean YouTube and elsewhere, when something tied to one's cultural identity gets modified, it's a fairly universal human reaction for someone who knows the original to say, 'This seems different, doesn't it?' What you're talking about often tends to become a kind of power struggle over 'who gets to define this culture.' When the insider's definition differs from the outsider's, that dynamic frequently plays out. It's a common trait of online communities.

However, this is usually influenced by the dominant demographic of the community, so generally speaking, the community's majority tends to shape the norms. In that sense, it's usually the outsiders who need to adapt. I'm trying my best to do that too. HN is fundamentally Western-oriented, and I try to adjust to native speakers like you, even if it means slightly altering my approach. The problem is that our ways of thinking differ in so many ways that for me, what feels like a low-cost critique can read to this community as a high-cost one. That gap is something I find quite difficult.

In any case, it's just a fresh perspective for me. I don't think Western Zen is bad (and that's an important point).

It's like this: if an actual Chinese person goes to the US and eats Panda Express orange chicken, they'll say, 'This isn't Chinese food.' But is that really the Chinese person's fault? Localization is only natural. When you think about it, it's simple. Most people don't stay on this site for long (I stay about two hours a day, so I guess I'm a longer-term user). Many people don't even leave comments. But when they click on a title that interests them and find it different from what they expected, they might leave a comment.

And isn't that part of what makes life interesting? The fact that you and I think differently, that our predictions don't always match. Rather than framing it as a 'non-Western way of thinking,' I'd ask you to understand it as a gap that arises because you're a native of a site watched by people all over the world.

In any case, I don't think the Western adaptation of Zen is wrong. Cultures naturally get localized. Just like how I feel a sense of unfamiliarity when I see K-pop Demon Hunters, but that's a natural reaction. I just hope you'll see it as a third-party observation that certain things feel different. Isn't it better to have a diversity of perspectives?

Sometimes it's a "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" thing or a FOMO thing. But sometimes different roles fit different people better.

I started my career doing mostly full stack work. I couldn't get away from the front end part quickly enough. I had intuition for simplifying UI flows, but none at all for aesthetics. As requests for aesthetic changes came in from our excellent designers, they felt completely arbitrary to me, even though they probably weren't. Most of my career was as a data engineer, data engineering manager, or leading an ML-heavy org. That space fit me so much better.

I loved having a few self-starting front-end devs in my orgs - they could take various tools we were creating for ourselves and make them quite a bit more useful. But it was also always a stepping stone as they typically wanted to work on the public facing part of the product.

this is part of why I think most researchers get less productive over time... Someone gets some big result during grad school or early career, get some big job from it, and then struggle to get new results of similar quality :shrug:

With ML in particular, there's also the sheer volume of people basically all looking at (essentially) the same problems... so it's kind of like monkeys with type writers spamming ideas until some work.