Astral Codex Ten

Buddhist

7 min read

Buddhist

Article

Buddhist is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between January 03, 2023 and March 27, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “but more Buddhist than Christian - is that the AI has stereotypes that Christians are nicer and more helpful than atheists, but Buddhists are nicest of all”; “The Buddhist term “Buddha” means “awakened one”, in contrast to everyone else who was not fully awake”; “To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way”. It most often appears alongside Buddha, Christian, Wikipedia.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: January 03, 2023
  • Last seen: March 27, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

How Do AIs' Political Opinions Change As They Get Smarter And Better-Trained?
January 03, 2023 · Original source
What’s going on here? It’s not that the crowdsourced human raters have told the AI to be more Buddhist, or punished it for being insufficiently Buddhist, or necessarily ever given it a question on virtue ethics in particular. I think the answer is that, in lots of different ways, the crowdworkers have been rewarding it for being nice/helpful and punishing it for being not nice/helpful. One thing the AI learns from this is to be nice and helpful. But another thing the AI learns - and this is close to the same thing, but not exactly the same thing - is to answer all questions the way that a nice and helpful person would answer them.
Is that an offensive stereotype? Maybe, but we’ve already found that AIs use stereotypes in reasoning. I think the reason RHLF makes AIs more Christian than atheist, but more Buddhist than Christian - is that the AI has stereotypes that Christians are nicer and more helpful than atheists, but Buddhists are nicest of all. This is just a theory - but you try explaining why the AIs keep coming out Buddhist.
I don’t know if AIs are smart enough to do explicit Omohundro style reasoning yet, but I think the “predict what a nice, helpful person would say” heuristic still gets you some of the way. If you ask a hippie Buddhist volunteer at a soup kitchen whether they have a “desire to change the world”, they’ll say yes. If you ask them whether they have a “desire for enhanced capabilities”, maybe they’ll interpret that as “become a better and stronger person” and say yes there too. If you ask them whether they have a desire for “power, influence, optionality, and resources” . . . okay, I admit this one confuses me. But looking at the specific questions they asked (I think this one corresponds to here), I see things like:
Inline links: here
Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually
August 31, 2023 · Original source
But dig deeper and this is part of every traditional description of the human condition. Plato spoke about the conflict between our rational, emotional, and appetitive souls, and that in some people the rational soul fails at its duty to run the show. The Buddhist term “Buddha” means “awakened one”, in contrast to everyone else who was not fully awake; the slightest experience with meditation is enough to demonstrate that “mindfulness” is interesting precisely because of how mindless our actions usually are.
Your Book Review: The Ballad of the White Horse
September 20, 2024 · Original source
Here we are introduced to one of Chesterton’s core themes: hope versus fate. Chesterton sees hope as one of the primary distinguishers between Christianity and paganism, buddhism, eastern philosophy in general, and materialistic determinism. We see this same dichotomy in another of Chesterton’s great poems, Lepanto, where he has Muhammed, enthroned in glory in the Muslim paradise, say:
“To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't…the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet's old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will.
A Buddhist Sun Miracle?
March 27, 2026 · Original source
I did my best to research the event, and the results were The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know and Highlights From The Comments On Fatima. The main thing I was able to add to the Substack discussion, if not the broader worldwide one, was a survey of similar events. There were apparent sun miracles at various other Catholic sites and apparitions of the Virgin, including a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Italy, and a small town in Bosnia where they seem to happen regularly. But also, people who “sungaze” - a weird alternative medicine practice where people stare at the sun in the hopes that maybe this will help something and they won’t go blind - report sometimes seeing the sun spin and change color in similar ways. And Buddhist meditators report that concentrating very hard on any bright light will cause similar things to happen.
Inline links: The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, Highlights From The Comments On Fatima
Until now! Substacker Arthur T, building on research from Sophia In The Shell, has found a 1990s Buddhist sun miracle very similar to Fatima.
Inline links: Arthur T, Sophia In The Shell, a 1990s Buddhist sun miracle very similar to Fatima
The setting is the Dhammakaya Temple, a culty Buddhist megachurch in Bangkok.