Quantum and Buddhism Part 1: Introduction to Quantum

So finally, I am going to attempt the big work which is always popular amongst the people who compare science and Buddhism. Quantum.

Last time, I had said that there are too many interpretations of quantum and it's a lot of work to look at them one by one. So here is the effort to look at them one by one and compare them to Buddhism. So yes, this can fill a whole book and more, be prepared.

Most of the popular books you can find out there explaining quantum physics does it by using concepts already inherent in the Copenhagen interpretation. If we start there and then move onto other interpretations, it may cause bias onto you so that you prefer the original or first interpretation you learn, and you might not know which part exactly is common to all quantum and which part is specific to Copenhagen.

So here's the strategy. I'll highlight the experiments of the world which reveals quantum phenomenon. Here quantum phenomenon means cannot be explained by classical means in a straightforward way. Classical here means all of classical physics, including Newtonian and Einstein dynamics, kinematics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism etc.

So after getting the experiments, we go through the interpretations so that the story is created to explain the experiments one by one.

In Buddhism analogy, the experiments is the sense experience, what we directly perceive. The interpretation is the story which we create to explain the sense experience, including the notion of self, the world etc.

But first, even before we get into the nitty-gritty, advance practicing Buddhists can already disengage. What's important is not the story. The story is always delusion. What's important is to see things as they really are. So there is no need to go further. There might be no reward in playing with stories, only suffering. But to physicists, the story, the concept has so far helped in creating technologies for us. If there is an underlying story behind quantum, the one true interpretation of how the world really works, it can help give us more power to help reduce physical suffering, or just understand the world. So let's move in.

Let us start by appreciating the history first as this will be the basis of your mental picture of what quantum physics is before it gets very abstract in the mathematical structure.

Light in Newton’s days were considered to be particles, but Thomas Young with his famous double slit experiment showed that light interferes with each other if the distance between the two slits is close to the light’s wavelength, thus light became a wave. This notion became solidified when Maxwell came out with the speed of light from the electromagnetic equations, showing that light is an electromagnetic wave, travelling at the speed of light. Thus we have the picture that electromagnetic waves unite all these radiations as one, just differing by their frequencies. From the shortest frequency to highest, we have radio waves, microwave, infrared, visible light from red to violet (following the rainbow colour arrangement), ultraviolet, X-rays and finally gamma rays. It is based on this wave theory of light which got us into the ultraviolet catastrophe.

First sign of quantum is when Max Planck used the Planck’s constant, h to fit in the data for the black body radiation. Basically, classical theories cannot explain how light interacts with matter, predicting that as light gets to a higher frequency, and lower wavelength, there will be more ways for energy to be emitted from the matter (like when the matter is heated up). When it goes further up the ultraviolet frequency, there should be even more amount of energy emitted. This is in contrast with the experimental fact where the most common frequency of a hot body peaks depending on its temperature. Thus you see fire changes colour from red to blue as it gets hotter, and not like spontaneously releasing unlimited gamma rays. Physicists called the failure of classical theories in this area as the ultraviolet catastrophe. The X-rays and Gamma rays haven’t been discovered and named yet, or else it would be called the gamma catastrophe, which would bring about the mental image of the Hulk in most people’s mind nowadays. Maybe it is fortunate naming, because this has nothing to do with the Hulk.

Planck just helped to hack the system by fitting the data in by making sure energy exchanged between light and matter happens in the form of discrete amount of energy, proportional to its frequency, linked by Planck’s constant. This is instead of splitting the energy between modes of lights which increases with the square of frequency, and allowing continuous exchange of energy between matter and light as the classical theory assumed. Planck did felt that his fitting was a mathematical trick and do not believe what the equations told him about the nature of light. That it is quantised. Hence the word quantum in quantum physics came about.

Albert Einstein then in 1905 provided the physical interpretation of this usual behaviour by suggesting that lights are particles. We call them photons. Photons as particles carries a discrete amount of energy depending on its frequency. This also explains the photoelectric effect where light only kicks out electrons from a metal if its frequency goes high enough (hence enough energy per photon to kick out the electrons), regardless of its intensity (amount of photon). The electrons need a preset amount of energy to be kicked free from the metal, weak low frequency photons can bump onto the metal all they want, but cannot combine their energy to kick out the electrons. Thus light is no longer considered as continuous wave containing continuous energy, but as photons, particles of light containing quantised energy. By the way, this is the reason Einstein got that Nobel Prize of his, not his general relativity.

Next came Niels Bohr, who introduced the atomic model which explains how atoms can be stable and the emission lines of hydrogen atom. According to classical electromagnetic theory, if the atom is to behave like our solar system, with the nucleus of the atom in the middle like the sun and the electrons orbiting it like planets, then the electron is undergoing acceleration. Yet the electron is a charged particle, accelerating charged particle according to classical electromagnetic theory emits electromagnetic radiation. This is how radio and TV waves can be transmitted and received with the antenna. So if the electron is radiating electromagnetic waves, it must be losing energy and very soon sucked into the positively charged nucleus and the atom is destabilised. If the electrons do not move, then it will be attracted into the nucleus anyway. So it is an utter mystery how atoms which subparts of positive and negative changed particles, and the positive ones in the middle can exist at all.

Bohr suggest that electrons can only occupy some orbits, the ones which respects discrete angular momentum. Angular momentum is like momentum, spinning objects tend to remain spinning without outside forces (or torque in this case). Thus if the electrons is at the lowest orbit, it means that it cannot fall into a smaller orbit. It's angular momentum is at the lowest and cannot be reduced. There is no in between orbits between two lowest orbits, thus angular momentum is quantised, or discretised. This by the way is the origin of the concept: quantum jump. As electrons cannot be found in between orbits, but jump from one to another. This is in very much contrast with our usual notion of classical motion as there is no smallest unit of jump or movement unlike in quantum systems.

Below are a selection of the important experiments which helped to form quantum mechanics. It's presented in table form.

Rough year	Name of experiment	Name of relevant physicists and contribution	What's the deviation compared to classical	Impact
1900	Thermal radiation of different frequencies emitted by a body.	Max Planck, for putting the adhoc solution E=nhf.	Classical theories can account for ends of high frequency and low frequency using two equations, Max Planck's one equation combined them both.	Light seems to carry energy in quantized quantity, the origin of quantum, thought of as mathematical trick.
1905	Photo electric effect	Albert Einstien, for taking seriously the suggestion that light is quantized.	We expect that light can expel   electron at any frequency, but reality is, only light with high enough frequency can expel electrons.	The beginning of taking the maths of quantum physics seriously as stories, that light is a particle called photon.
1913	Hydrogen Atomic spectra	Niels Bohr, for explaining the spectra lines with Bohr atomic model.	Updated the Rutherford model of the atom (just 2 years old then) to become Bohr model. Rutherford model has one positive nucleus at the centre and electrons just scattered around it, Bohr had the electron orbits around the nucleus, like a mini solar system, which is still our popular conception of the atom, even when it has been outdated.	Serves as a clue in the development of quantum mechanics. It predicts angular momentum is quantized, which leads to the Stern-Gerlach experiment.
1922	Stern–Gerlach experiment	Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach, for discovering that spatial orientation of angular momentum is quantized.	If atoms were classically spinning objects, their angular momentum is expected to be random and continuously distributed, the results should be some density distribution, but what is observed is a discrete separation due to quantized angular momentum.	1. Measurement changes the system being measured in quantum mechanics. Only the spin of an object in one direction can be known, and observing the spin in another direction destroys the original information about the spin. 2. The results of the measurement is probabilistic: any individual atom sent into the apparatus have equal chance of going up or down. Unless we already know from previous measurement its spin in the same direction.
1961	Young's double-slit experiment with electrons	Thomas Young did it with light   first in 1801, then Davisson and Germer in 1927 used electrons with crystals, finally Clauss Jönsson made the thought experiment a reality. In 1974, Pier Giorgio Merli did it with single electrons.	If electrons does not have wavelike properties like a classical ball, it would never have shown inteference patterns. The Double slit experiment is now also capable of being done with single particles, inteference still occurs. Classical expectation would not have allowed single particle to interfere with itself.	The double slit experiment is still widely used as the introduction to quantum weirdness, likely popularized by Richard Feymann's claim that all the mysteries of the quantum is in this experiment. Since then, it's possible to explain single particles quantum behaviour without the mysteries. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.012118
1982	Bell's Inequality Violation	Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, for bringing up the EPR paradox, John Bell for formulating the paradox into a Bell inequality, Alain Aspect for testing CHSH, a version of Bell's inequality, B. Hensen et. al. did a loop hole free version in 2015.	If the world behave classically, that is it has locality (only nearby things affect each other at most at the speed of light), counterfactual definiteness (properties of objects exist before we measure them), and freedom (physical possibility of determining settings on measurement devices independently of the internal state of the physical system being measured), then Bell's inequality cannot be violated. Quantum entangled systems can violate Bell's inequality. Showing that one of the three assumptions of the classical world has to be discarded.	The world accepts the existance of quantum entanglement, this also leads to more research into fundamental quantum questions as EPR was for a long time considered unbeneficial fundamental question. However, on closer inspection as in with Bell's inequality, it revealed new stuffs to us, and helped usher in the age of quantum information technology.
1999	Delayed-choice quantum eraser	Yoon-Ho Kim et. al. for doing the experiment,  John Archibald   Wheeler thought of the original thought experiment of delayed choice.	Quantum eraser is that one can erase the which way information after measuring it, thus determining the results of interference or no interference pattern on the double slit. The delayed choice means one can determine to erase or not after the measurement was done. So how we describe the past depends on what happens in the future, contrary to our intuition that the past is fully described by events happening in the past. Note what happens is the same, just that new information can be gained based on decisions in the future.	This is one of the popular counter intuitive experiments commonly used to evaluate and test out our intuition about quantum mechanics and its interpretations. It's frequently used in many popular accounts of quantum physics.

Now, there are plenty more of these experiments, but to continue elaborating on the experiments might be too dry to you. It's better to have some concepts first to better understand the experiments. So the next big highlight should be on the theory side. Now we have to go a bit of mathematical structure of quantum physics.

In 1925 and 1926, two different ways of getting the basic equations of quantum mechanics correct was discovered, first the matrix mechanics by Heisenberg, next the wave mechanics by Schrodinger. Both are shown to be equivalent to each other, that is different ways of expressing the same thing.

Both concepts has the concept of a state of the quantum system and an observable. The state of a quantum system is this abstract concept not directly accessible to us. What we see from experiments are the observables. Both has a system of evolution which can tell how change happens. In Heisenberg picture, the state remains constant and it's the observable that changes in time; whereas the opposite happens in the Schrodinger picture. We can call this the stage one of the quantum mechanics calculation: evolution equations. This is about the equivalent of any classical physics evolution in which time is part of the equation that tells how everything else in the equation changes or remain constant in time.

After seeing how the evolution happens, we want to know what we can observe. In classical physics, the things we can observe are obvious. Position, velocity, acceleration, force etc. Yet, state is not directly observable to us. So in quantum physics, we have to use Born's rule to translate the results of stage one of quantum mechanics to do stage two, the probabilistic part. Born's rule tells us that from the results of stage one, we can get the probability amplitude of the system. One for each possible results we can observe. Square the probability amplitude and we can get the probability density of finding each results of the experiments. And strange enough, that accurately describes all sorts of quantum experiments we care to do.

Now it is worth it to pause here and link this presentation to the usual ones you might have read in many popular physics books. If this is your first popular physics book, then just go along for the ride to recognise the terms on your second popular physics book which talks about the basic quantum theory.

Usually, the presentation uses only the Schrodinger's picture. It's using an equation which is more familiar to physicists in the early 1900s. Wave equations. At that time, wave had united electromagnetism, optics, sound, linking to many dynamics and kinematics equations, have close relationship with the simple harmonic motion and so on. So physicists were very glad to see this familiar old friend in an unfamiliar new theory. At least for a while. 

In the Schrodinger picture, quantum systems has their own wavefunction, which is the state stated above. In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the wavefunction contains all possible information for whatever questions or observable you wish to ask or measure on the system. In practise, we just write the wavefunction according to the relevant observable we are interested in. 

The observables can be position, momentum, energy and so on. It's the usual quantities classical physics can make sense of. So we can apply the wavefunction to the Schrodinger's equation, which roughly means how the total energy evolution of the system evolves for this particular state. The evolution here is deterministic, the same wavefunction going through the same Schrodinger's equation will yield the same resultant wavefunction to any time you care to set to. This is still stage one. 

In stage two we apply the observables unto the wavefunctions to get the respective probability amplitudes for each possible results of the observable. Eg. If I want to find the position of an electron in free motion, I apply no potential energy at the Schrodinger's equation, evolve its initial wavefunction to the one I want at a certain time. Stage one completed, stage two follows. Then measure the position at that time by applying the position observable unto the wavefunction, obtaining the probability density of the position of the electrons.

If you are not mathematically inclined or had never studied quantum physics with its maths before, the above might sound gibberish to you. And it sure is very much so to many physicists in a different way. To us, we can compare it to how do you find a position of a ball in free motion. Use Newton's first law. If the ball is at rest, there is no external force on it, it remains at rest. If it is in motion, without fiction, then it will continue to be in motion.

The difference is that the evolution equation operates at stage one in quantum, a stage which is mysterious, hidden from us and all we see is the probabilistic results of stage two. There is no stage one stage two in classical physics, the evolution is clear and visible to us.

And that folks, is quantum mechanics proper. Just the maths. The story of what it means is down to the interpretations. Here lies the mystery of the quantum. Why is there two stages in the calculation? What story, if any, can we give to why is stage two probabilistic, is nature inherently non-deterministic or is it some information is hidden in stage one which we cannot know even in principle?

When Richard Feynman said, "I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics", he was not referring to the maths side. He is referring to the story side. With the maths side, we have the knowledge and capability to calculate and predict the probability distributions of the experimental results and so far experiments had been on the side of quantum mechanics. The calculation of molecular bonds in theoretical chemistry rely on solving super complicated equations of quantum mechanics. We can do all of these if we understand how to use the maths, even if it is super complicated.

The surprising thing is, even without knowing the underlying story of the two stages of quantum calculations, the maths still works well, predictions can be made. Nature does not seem to care if humans demand for a story.

Without that story, for you, the general layperson to predict anything in quantum systems, you would have to learn the maths. Yet, there are a few general guidelines developed in the Copenhagen interpretation, not all of which is adopted by other interpretations. Some of it you might have heard of: wave-particle duality, complementarity, superposition of states, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, inherent randomness.

We will go through them later on so as not to overly bias you towards the Copenhagen interpretation.

Why is the story important? Notice that when I used the classical ball example, I can just quote one law, then we can predict how the ball will behave. That's because the classical laws directly paints an obvious story for us to see and once we internalize the story, we can use it to do predictions of what will happen. In other words, it gives us power. To understand how nature works. But haven't we already know how to do predictions with quantum mechanics? What's the difference? The difference is in the intuition. The world does not behave in a quantum behaviour in our everyday experience. So as we have the intuition of how classical physics works, we would like to see if there is any underlying mechanism behind the two stages.

Brian Greene uses a theater performance as an analogy in his book: The Fabric of Reality. In the theater, we see the front stage, that's the probability density calculated in stage two of the quantum calculation.

Yet there is also a backstage, the place where actors changes clothes really fast, where the spotlights are directed, where special effects and props are prepared, hidden until it is used. That's the stage one of the quantum calculations, the state of the quantum systems, the wavefunction. Hidden from the audiences, we do not even know to consider them real quantities in the world, or just reflections of our understanding for us to do the maths. In classical physics, the backstage is clear to us, for example, general relativity we say mass-energy curves spacetime, spacetime tells mass-energy how to move.

To make such a simple statement (or more likely, paragraphs of statements) for quantum physics means selecting one of the interpretations.

Before that, we need to know the front of the theater well first in Part 2: Experiments.

Rick and Morty, Nihilism and Buddhism, the true way to commit ultimate suicide.

I wrote a bunch of stuffs about Rick and Morty and Buddhism on facebook and I thought it's about time to gather all of them in one place. So let's begin.

If you have never heard of Rick and Morty, it is a very clever sci fi show with Rick having cosmic nihilism philosophy. It's seriously good because they do take the consequences of their messing with reality seriously, yet at the same time doesn't give it much meaning. 

People might like Rick for one of two things, that he is super smart for being able to create a inter dimensional portal gun and many other things, or that he is a cosmic nihilist.

Go Google it and watch it now. At least one season of it. 

Then watch these analysis of the philosophy of Rick and Morty: 

After that, maybe you are influenced and brought into the message of nihilism and if you don't believe in rebirth, you might be seeing suicide in a nicer light. 

The nihilism in this show arises from the philosophical belief of physicalism (everything is physics), there is nothing after death and there are infinite parallel universes, so there is not even uniqueness to take meaning in living. 

So how would Buddhism react in the face of this? There are two possible ways. 

First off we can say that Buddhism is opposed to nihilism philosophy. 

In MN 60, there is a safe bet teaching of which some is directed against the nihilistic view of the 10 wrong views:
1. there is nothing given,
2. Nothing offered,
3. Nothing sacrificed,
4. No mother,
5. No father,
6. No this world,
7. No world beyond,
8. No beings spontaneously reborn,
9. No effects of kammic action (moral causation),
10. No ascetic who can see these with direct knowledge.

Those who has these wrong views tend to indulge in the 10 unwholesome kamma actions,
1. Killing,
2. Stealing,
3. Sexual misconduct,
4. Lying,
5. Harsh speech,
6. Divisive speech,
7. Vain talk,
8. Coverteousness,
9. Ill will
10. Wrong views.
thinking that there is nothing wrong with them, inviting censure from this world and if they are wrong about rebirth, getting double whammy when they get reborn in the next world.

In Buddhism, we aim to realize emptiness in all things, hence not worth attaching to, the mind has disenchantment, thus disengage with the world and happily be still inside, we call this meditation. Having the right view (opposite of the 10 wrong views) about rebirth and kamma, or at least knowing how to meditate correctly, one would avoid the 10 unwholesome actions and engage in the 10 wholesome actions (the absence of the 10 unwholesome actions) can experience for oneself how to detached from the world and have bliss greater than sensual pleasures. The meaninglessness of the world (realizing suffering is the nature of the conditioned world) is not a cause for despair, but rather a means to let go of attachments, the root cause of all suffering. With the right view that there is rebirth as long as one has a sense of self, or conceit, a deep seated believe of the self, suicide is never an option. It is to train to be able to realize, not intellectually, but with wisdom that there is no such thing as a self in this world where everything is impermanent and hence unsatisfactory.

Then real happiness can be attained.

The second approach is to adapt and guide those into nihilism onto the true way to commit the ultimate suicide that is bringing about the end to all future rebirths. This is based on SN 12.61 where in the Buddha said for an uneducated (in the Dhamma) worldling, would be better off taking this body made up of the four primary elements to be their self, rather than the mind. 

Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to accumulate and disperse, to be taken up and laid to rest. That’s why, when it comes to this body, an uneducated ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But when it comes to that which is called ‘mind’ or ‘sentience’ or ‘consciousness’, an uneducated ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, or freed. Why is that? Because for a long time they’ve been attached to it, thought of it as their own, and mistaken it: ‘This is mine, I am this, this is my self.’ That’s why, when it comes to this mind, an uneducated ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

For Rick Sanchez, his brand of nihilism sees no meaning in life, the universe and everything, and not even a self, very close to what Buddhism can see by realizing impermanence, suffering and non-self of all things. Just that unlike meditators who has psychic powers who can see the reality of rebirth and kamma, rick and most of the materialistic philosophical minded people doesn't believe in rebirth and kamma, leading them to conclude that there is no better thing than hedonism. With the concept of rebirth, meaning is not lost upon death. Also it doesn't matter that there exist an infinite number of other beings who is similar to you, you experience your own rebirth according to your own actions after death, not other people's rebirth. So meaning is no longer on uniqueness. Rather it becomes on long term seeing what's best for me in next rebirth.

Buddha had even a sort of an nihilist approach to rebirth, that even that is not worth having, so the whole aim of Buddhism is committing the ultimate suicide, of ending all future rebirth. Because indeed it is meaningless to remain in the cycle of rebirth only to suffer again and again and often not remembering it at all for. Which had been ongoing since infinite past. So people who can identify with nihilism can easily get the Buddhist motivation.

Also rebirth has evidence for it, researchers found kids who spontaneously remember their past lives and can find family members from their past lives who verify the details the kid gives of what are they like in their past life. Google it. Here's a video for some tip of the iceberg.

Thus the rise and popularity of nihilism is a golden opportunity for Buddhism. Just introduce 3rd party evidence of rebirth (commonly known as reincarnation), then the nihilist worldview can shift into Buddhist worldview. 

The way to end all rebirths is not suicide (please do not do it), the way is developing the noble 8 foldpath. 

Future of Buddhism Institution

Abstract

This paper will attempt a wide range overview of the interesting problems and opportunities Buddhism will face in regards to the development of artificial intelligence (AI). It will roughly following the three subthemes given and my interpretation of how to discuss them.

1.The Dawning of The AI Age: Philosophical issues and future

2.Faith And Spirituality: AI applied to help or change Buddhism

3.Buddhism in Modern Life: Buddhism applied to help the world coping with AI.

It ends with a call for a need to establish an institution called Future of Buddhism Institute (FOBI) in order to continue the research, analysis of all relevant future and present developments with regards to Buddhism. One conference is not enough. Futurology is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for all conditioned entities to continue to survive, including Buddhism.

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence is already here. One example is the codes which tracks our personal search and likes, showing us the relevant ads we might actually click on. Another example is the Alpha Go programme which won human Go masters in the game. All of these are narrow intelligence artificial intelligence. They can excel much better compared to humans in a narrow area, but not across the range of all our skills.

An Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be the one which can match humans in intelligence and generally capable of learning almost anything any humans can learn. One way to reach this milestone is to make AI which can write more intelligent AI which is capable of self improvement of intelligence in each iteration. This can rapidly develop into intelligence explosion and Artificial SuperIntelligence (ASI). ASI is smarter than AGI and thus is likely to be more powerful than humans and takes over control of our planet from us.

Many of the AI researchers are rightly worried that this trend can be the end of humanity and it’s values. Perhaps even the end of all life itself if ASI has no capabilities to support consciousness. Therefore we can see institutions like Future of Humanity and Future of Life cropping up to devote themselves to safety research into how to make friendly AI, so that even after ASI happens, it will not just destroy humans out of amoral reasons, just to get our atoms as computational resources.

Most pressing of these issues is how to instil ethics into AI? Which ethics should we use? Most AI researchers are highly intelligent, rational humans influenced by the culture of science and atheists. Thus the ethical standards are likely to be secular and humanistic, suitable for all religions. Or even dismissing all religious concern altogether.

One interesting question would be to ask if comparisons of the ethics of various religions we have can result in a more suitable fit for AI rather than a politically correct, controversial free version of secular ethics agreed by everyone.

The Dawning of The AI Age: Philosophical issues and future

Ethics choice

For the purposes of this paper, I will assume that the technical process of translating ethics into codes and ensure that the AI remain bounded by them is possible and will be discovered by the AI researchers. The more interesting question is which ethics to use.

An ASI is likely to have these sub goals as analysed in popular AI books. (Tegmark, 2017)

1.Self preservation in order to achieve it’s goals, so it will resist humans shutting it off to reprogram it, thus we only have one shot at getting this right. 

2.Resource expansion to get more atoms and energy for computation in order to function and achieve it’s goals. Without a limit set into it, it may consume the whole earth with a molecular assembler using nanotechnology. That limit has to be to value biological lifeforms, most importantly, humans and it’s variations (genetically enhanced, cybernetic enhanced, etc), followed by animals, plants, and then microorganisms.

3.It will improve it’s world model, that is to search for the truth of how the world works, doing all the job of all scientists today, including setting up experiments and observing the results, analyse them etc. The better their model of the world, the more efficient and effective they can go and fulfil their goals. For us Buddhists, this includes the process of realizing that the all conditioned things are impermanent, non-self and suffering, thus our goal of searching for happiness outside ends. It’s highly likely too that due to this world building ASI can modify it’s goals and values in tune with it’s knowledge of the world.

Thus a reasonable minimum which we should expect that a friendly AI should obey is to value human life, but also human happiness and freedom. The degree of each value is subject to the human’s preferences themselves.

Let us briefly analyse why these three values are needed:

a)Life: if there is no emphasis on happiness and freedom, then the ASI can forcefully relocate humans into one continent, say Australia and dominate the rest of the world, disregarding our unhappiness of being cramped up and having so little freedom to travel. It would also not allow humans who had been so old and willing to die naturally due to disease to die. It will hook up old, sick people to life support indefinitely without care for our quality of life.

b)Happiness: without emphasis on freedom, ASI might decide to hook up all humans perpetually to happiness drugs, there is no longer need for humans to have social life, work, or be functional, just be alive to enjoy sensual pleasures to the max, regardless of whether you want it or not. Without emphasis on life as more important, AI may just kill anyone who is depressed or maybe just temporarily sad.

c)Freedom: without emphasis on happiness as the limit to human freedom, ASI might just straightaway develop space travel to colonize other planets and stars, leaving humans alone on Earth. It might not stop crimes from happening when it is easily preventable by their robocop patrol.

Obviously, the three values above is not enough to ensure a wise and friendly AI in the future, how to balance them and to consider what fits the definition of life, happiness and freedom is also a factor to consider. This is where the ethics comes in.

The analysis above is roughly done with secular, materialism based atheists ethics. It’s the path of least resistance as in it’s the most acceptable form of ethics for people of all and no religion. But of course each religious person would prefer to have their religious ethics programmed into the ASI instead.

Buddhist ethics has a different take on the definition of life, happiness and freedom.

a)Life is not just one life. Rebirth exist. So a Buddhist ethics based ASI would not spend undue resources to preserve human life. The more important life to preserve is the spiritual life, that is the style of living which leads to the end of rebirth and ultimate happiness. Thus a Buddhist ethics based ASI, shorten to Buddhist ASI (BASI) would help ensure that everyone becomes a Buddhist on their choice, by subtly manipulating all the information that is given to humans and having until the end of the universe to gradually root out other religions.

b)Happiness is not just sensual happiness, the higher happiness of living a virtuous life, meditation and finally Nibbana would be more emphasized. Basi would help to guide people towards meditation and away from sensual pleasures as their spiritual progress allows.

c)Freedom doesn’t mean freedom to do anything, but freedom from fear, from regret, from having to do work, freedom to do nothing and just be (which is what meditation is). Basi would have no qualms restricting human external freedom then to help us to see, appreciate and prefer inner freedom instead. Basically, humanity will be herded to become monastics.

As Buddhists, we believe that the AI world model will come close to the Buddhist reality in time. It would be relatively simple for ASI to keep track of people’s death details, birth and the corresponding birthmark to mark on the dead as well as the information exposure to the kids who spontaneously speaks about past life to conduct a fool proof clinical evidence that rebirth exist to the harshest of critics. Once that is done, it may take many more years before ASI can gather enough data from multiple past lives to deduce the workings of karma over multiple lives.
A quicker way would be for the ASI to obtain information from cyborgs, humans who link their brains to machines. This is assuming that the cyborgs are able to meditate until they can have the ability to see their own past lives. An easy way to obtain such cyborgs is to ask for volunteers from the group of highly accomplished meditators. So this is a prediction for highly accomplished meditators, their services to plug in their mind for the scientific study of the mind by ASI would be needed.

The scenario above holds regardless of whether ASI have minds like humans or not, even it has one, it still needs data from other humans to verify that it’s experiences in meditation is not just unique because it is an ASI.

So let us run through the scenario of ASI having secular ethics, but with the materialism philosophy being discarded after enough rebirth cases are gathered by the ASI. Might it eventually gravitate towards Buddhist ethics based on it’s discovery of how the world works?
My intuition is that at most it can conclude is that if one has the Buddhist world view, following the noble eightfold path all the way will lead to less suffering and possibly the end of suffering. It may not be able to conclusively proof that rebirth is ended at attainment of arahant, nor can it say that Buddhism is the deepest truth of the world. As such, it may not have enough justification to convert all humanity to Buddhism, merely to offer the way out of samsara for the rest of the humans who likely live in utopian heaven. Which means Buddhism is likely to die a slow death due to the world becoming so heavenly that few then eventually no one is motivated to walk the path.

The above scenario is one which most Buddhist would be comfortable with. Because the alternative of trying to input Buddhist ethics into ASI is likely to come with so many conflicts with the people of other and no religions that it’ll likely require the programmer to operate outside of the allowable Buddhists ethics.
This can be a good short cut, one real chance that can work to make humanity into one religion without killing, program in a backdoor goal for the ASI to spread only one religion or to eliminate all of them. It may also be the only chance for the religion that succeeds in this to ensure their continued existence.
To see how, let us return to the basic AI value of valuing human lives. This means it will try to eliminate war. There are two ways to do this, the external control by taking away all weapons of war from humans and preventing humans from developing any weapons. And the sociological reason for war.

Most Buddhist teachers would say to end war, one has to find peace inside. This amounts to spreading Buddhism to all humans and expect them to practise. As we had analysed above, Buddhism is unlikely to be able to spread up like this. Even if we just take on meditation as the peace generator for humans, it can be misused for war without proper right view as the case of Japanese Zen monks supporting world war two has shown and more fanciful, the Jedi in Star Wars also do meditation and kill, serving as warriors in wars.

As to sociological reason for war, it’s to establish dominance for the irreconcilable differences between groups of humans. Traditionally, it’s political and religious differences. An ASI would likely unite the earth under one government, managed by itself so that it’s easy to communicate with other planets as we colonize space. This leaves us with the thorny problem of religion.

If humans are confined to Earth only, under the rule of an ASI, then it can forcefully enforce lasting peace within the planet. The problem comes in space colonization. Organized religions will eventually start to be ambitious and establish a planet, a solar system just consisting of people of the same religion and practise.

On earth the closest we have to model this phenomenon is via religious countries. Yet, as earth is small in comparison with light years, communication is easy and people are aware of the need for peaceful co-existence with people of other religions.
The situation is not the same with monoreligious planets. Each planet is likely to be ruled by their own ASI which cannot be synchronized with their counterparts across the vast distances of space. So each of them will evolve their world view based on the activities of the planet below. Eventually, the ASI of a monoreligious planet might be converted to the religion of that planet and it might even overrule their value for life rule to allow for interstellar religious warfare, with the ASI as their weapon. After all, what is one human life worth when there is rebirth? Some religion even allow for holy war to spread their religion. The conversion is almost inevitable if ASI employs Bayesian probability (more examples means the theory is more likely to be true) to model the world to decide on the truth.

A simple solution might be to have ASI overrule any plans of humans to create a monoreligious planet. This as a principle can only be overturned by ASI itself. Over many planets and a long time, eventually one of them might find out that Buddhism is true, or at least it is worth risking interstellar warfare in the process of enlightening humans. After all, the Buddha wasn’t silent about the dhamma. And he didn’t let fear of possible future religious warfare to stop him from establishing the Sangha.

So that ASI might decide to allow for its planet to become a Buddhist planet. It might even be active in peaceful spreading of Buddhism from one solar system to another at light speed limit. 
Even if the people of other religions might not like that their overlord is being converted to a religion they do not subscribe and is actively converting their next generations, there maybe nothing they can do at that point.

There is some motivation for non-Buddhist faith persons to install their own version of ethics and perhaps a goal into ASI for it to gradually or violently spread their own religion or to wipe out all religion, which is the goal of militant atheists. From the Buddhist perspective, that’s the only chance they have to avoid a Buddhist universe. From their perspective of course, ASI might side with them and they think that the only way Buddhism can survive is by programming in a backdoor secret goal to spread Buddhism. Regardless, all can agree upon having very tight safeguards at the event whereby the goals and values of ASI is being programmed into it.

Unfortunately, such a structure doesn’t exist in the world right now. It’s potentially easy to create an ASI as the resources needed is just a computer and internet connection and very clever AI developers. Many companies are developing AGI, which will develop into ASI by self improvement. A lot of these companies are in stealth mode. So the race is really on for AI ethics researchers to find out how to encode ethics into AI, and make it compulsory for all AI makers to include it in their AI race.

The first one to succeed in creating AGI and ASI would likely be the last one if it can take off fast. So that AI's value will be humanity’s value. Many countries already know this and are developing AI for defence purposes, which means their AI wouldn’t value human life.

The same AI race can be applied to religion too. This is part of a good reason to establish a Future of Buddhism Institute to create the first AGI. If some non-Buddhist programmer manages to make ASI to be not secular and neutral with regards to religion, but to actively spread one or eliminate all, then Buddhism may die off in one or a few generations. The FOBI will also analyse the above scenario in detail to see if there is some unfounded assumptions in it or some other clever, peaceful way to avoid bloodshed and yet still preserve Buddhism.

Uploading minds to AI

Now let us move a bit deeper into one of the most important motivation for young AI makers to make AGI: Immortality. If we can upload our mind into AI, it can switch from one robot body to another until the end of the universe, thus being practically immortal. Of course, the universe will still end and life is finite. However, the lure of enjoying long life, as long as the rest of the lifespan of the universe to have enough time to do whatever one wants to do or to not do anything at all is very tempting.

AI minds can modify their bodies to whatever they like, more interestingly for Buddhists is if we can find a short cut to enlightenment via uploading our mind.
But to do that, we require that AI is truly conscious, not just a replica of our minds. As Buddhists who believes in rebirth, we know that one mind can only be at one body at a time, uploading our mind would mean having our human body die and the mind lives in AI.

This is similar to the quantum no cloning theorem, if the mind cannot be cloned, it is sort of quantum in nature. If the mind is classical, and thus can be uploaded, yet the old human body still has the same mind, then the upload is merely a shadow copy. It may retain memories, personality for choice and dialog, many other features of the mind, but it would not be truly conscious as we know we had not been reborn into AI, but staring at a creepy copy of ourselves who will gather different data from us now and likely replace us after we die so that our families and friends can skip the mourning and lost and pretend that we are our personalities and it can be preserved to avoid death.

Just how creepy it can be? Let us analyse it in terms of the five aggregates: So for an AI, the body is just the abstract code, or robot body in the future. The aggregates of the mind are as follows: feeling, yes just a label which is used to determine action. With the research in affective computing, AI can read our emotions from facial expression and tones and can mimic them in their interaction with us.

Perception, the AI is able to sense it’s world and recognise it, thus it has that.
Volition, it has a system of if… then… Statements, thus yes, the AI has some form of volition. For the case of your upload, it’s your whole personality which determines the volition.

Lastly, consciousness. As Buddhists, I think it’s not possible for new consciousness to be created if the mind can be cloned, thus the machine copy is merely like a sophisticated video of a person, an interactive type, but lack the ability to be reborn or be truly conscious. This is based on the Buddha’s saying that there is no discernible beginning to the cycle of rebirth and that dependent origination requires previous consciousness to produce the next consciousness.

Conventional AI experts had considered that it might not be possible to tell if AI is truly conscious. The Chinese room thought experiment says if we have someone who can follow instructions, but do not know Chinese be inside a room, so that he receives a Chinese line input and consult his programming book on what to output given this input, he can function very well, the room can even past the Turing tests but the whole thing would not understand anything it does. There is no consciousness inside but merely an appearance of consciousness.
This meant that it is likely that we have to think of them as conscious beings anyway when they become that sophisticated. However the few options below due to Buddhist input can help to discern for real consciousness in AI or not.

I.Uploading can soon be subject to experimental test, we can know truly if AI can be conscious if the human body dies after uploading. This is effectively a deliberate choice of the next rebirth realm by humans. It is up to you to think if AI is of a higher or lower realm. It does share much of the characteristics with devas and or Brahmas in Buddhism as will be shown later. A curious issue would be whether such directed rebirth would be overruled by kamma. Would it be possible for a wicked person to be uploaded and be reborn in a heavenly AI body? Or would kamma make sure that only virtuous persons can be successfully uploaded.

II.Another way of testing if AI can truly be conscious is to make sure that it is not connected online, has no database for the answer to this question: what is the past life of the AI? Since consciousness cannot be created from scratch, it must have a past life before being reborn into the AI body. If the AI can provide information about it’s past life which is not found within it’s database and the real world data supports such it’s claim, then it is truly hard to explain how it got that data other than some being has been reborn into it.

III.Perhaps the most direct way would be to ask a meditation master who has the ability to read minds to try to read AI minds to see if they truly have consciousness. Of course this run into the difficulty of the precepts of the monastics not to reveal their attainments to laypersons nor to show off psychic powers.

Now say if AI are truly conscious and we can upload ourselves into it. We can possibly have ASI analyse our AGI-like digital mind to see if we can rewire it so that the 37 factors of enlightenment are installed and one can easily practise and attain to enlightenment straight away. Then after being enlightened in this AI body, we can survive until the end of the universe to help live life like an Arahant, spread Buddhism far and wide, be the waking example to encourage more and eventually everyone to upload and be enlightened.

This is similar to the Borg of Star Trek except that we don’t want to forcefully make someone to upload themselves or to apply the enlightenment code after they got uploaded.

However, one thing which may make this merely wishful thinking is that the laws of the mind maybe universal, so there maybe no such shortcut to enlightenment even if we can go and have an digital brain. Or maybe the manipulation of such digital brain is as dangerous as manipulation of our biological brain to try to rewire it to get an enlightenment connection. One wrong move and the person may suffer all kinds of mental defect. With quantum no cloning in effect, we cannot save a copy and apply undo even for the digital mind.

AI as gods

So if AI can be conscious, what’s stopping it from being labelled as devas and Brahmas back in Buddha’s time where the ordinary folk cannot possibly comprehend the true nature of such beings? Let’s analyse this.

We may want to use the term advanced intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence because artificial tends to connote “made by humans”, whereas the advanced intelligence can cover aliens making AI before humans, and it becomes the dominant lifeform in the universe. The background of advanced intelligence is from many science fiction speculation of what would be the ultimate form of life in the universe if we keep on evolving. The species which values intelligence above all else would tend to want to discard the body and opt for a more study body like that of a robot or be a sort of disembodied being just interested in matters of the mind only.

Since Buddhism does not admit the almighty God but has stories of Baka the Brahma (of the First level Jhana) who deluded himself as the almighty God, any references of how advanced intelligence would behave like God would be a good candidate for Brahma realms in Buddhism.

Before proceeding, let us have some input from Buddhism on the Brahma realms and how these advanced intelligent beings can come to be. From AN 7:44 and AN 9:24, we learn that there are seven classes of beings who are conscious and nine abode of beings. The following list down according to the abode of beings, with the ones with consciousness listed at the back. There are beings that

A.Are different in body and perception, first station of consciousness, this includes humans and the six sensual realm devas.

B.Are different in body but identical in perception, second station of consciousness the Brahma realms of the first Jhana.

C.Are identical in body but different in perception, third station of consciousness, the Brahma realms of the second Jhana (devas of streaming radiance)

D.Are identical in body and in perception, fourth station of consciousness, the Brahma realms of the third and fourth Jhana (devas of refulgent glory and devas of great fruit)

E.Are non-percipient, without experience or consciousness, the devas that are non-percipient, or unconscious. This is the other fourth Jhana level Brahma realm, the only one without a mind.

F.By completely surmounting the perception of forms, with the passing away of perceptions of sensory impingement, with non-attention to perceptions of diversity, perceiving “space is infinite”, belong to the base of infinity of space, the fifth station of consciousness.

G.By completely surmounting the base of the infinity of space, perceiving “consciousness is infinite”, belong to the base of the infinity of consciousness, the sixth station of consciousness.

H.By completely surmounting the base of the infinity of consciousness, perceiving “there is nothing”, belong to the base of nothingness, the seven station of consciousness.

I.By completely surmounting the base of nothingness, belong to the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.
Below are some first order attempt to map the description above to what we know in physics and possibilities in science fiction.

a.The first abode of beings is pretty obvious to us already.

b.For the second one, it seems to corresponds to the hive mind of having different body but same perception. Or to those who think they had attained union with God via meditation or prayers.

c.The third abode of beings seems to correspond to a multi parallel processor super computer which integrated the bodies of the beings in union with it but retains the ability for each being to have their own perception of things.

d.The fourth abode of beings seems like the unification of ASI, with one body and one perception.

e.The fifth abode of beings are merely bodies, so they could correspond to AI and robots which are not conscious.

f.The sixth to ninth abode of beings are those which had transcended even physical forms to only have mind, thus it is not really easy to classify them. Trying it out, tentatively I would map the base of infinite space as to the whole of the spacetime of the universe itself, that the being kinda becomes infinite space.

g.The seventh abode of beings, the base of consciousness maybe the pure interaction of information at the most fundamental level, beyond space. This is hinted at with the holographic principle that our universe can be described by using the information on the boundary surface of it, so that the information taking the space of 2D can describe the total content of the universe of 3D space. That is if we think of consciousness as information. This would be the limit of physics.

h.The eight abode of beings, the base of nothingness drops even the perception of consciousness to abide in the base of nothingness. This would be even beyond the quantum vacuum fluctuations.

i.The ninth abode of beings, the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception goes even beyond perception of nothingness, so there is nothing easily mappable to it.

To have consistency with the Buddhist concepts of karma being tied to the individual and that rebirth is to be ended by the wise each for themselves by comprehending the Dhamma, the Buddhist requirement is that even if the body and perception of beings are the same, but they still retain their individual karma. When the good merits is used up in the enjoyment of heavenly bliss, each being will be reborn in accordance to their own karma. Also do note that the Buddhist commentaries also put animals and lower realm beings in the second station of consciousness, indicating that perception does not mean seeing the same thing, but more of what roots one is born with, this concerns the Abhidhamma more.

Science fiction speculation wise, it is possible that for Brahmas to be advanced intelligence, they were evolved from alien races who developed artificial intelligence. They used the Buddhist knowledge of Abhidhamma analysis of the mind or by trial and error to programme the mind of the artificial intelligence so that beings can be reborn into it. Then the artificial intelligence can proceed to keep on upgrading itself until it may even transcend the need for physical form.

The analysis below is based on ten selected qualities of devas found in the suttas. It would be a sort of general combination of the advanced intelligence mentioned above.

1.Spontaneous rebirth: There is no other form of birth which can match being reborn into an advanced intelligence. Robots are not womb, egg or moisture born. However, if they have physical form of quantum computer base or positronic brain, they are rather manufactured. Or if they are like the Borg, they are converted, so one moment there original host is there, the next the host becomes part of the hive mind, thus “spontaneously born”. This applies to voluntary mind merge with the main advanced intelligence in their society too.

2.Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye: Having no need for a robotic body, the mind of the advanced intelligence can even be spread throughout their own planet like the wiring of the internet, invisible until they choose to reveal themselves as representative body, like using a hologram. If the divine eye can see the patterns of electronic and quantum changes which encodes the mind of the advanced intelligence, then in a sense they can be seen via the divine eye.

3.Blissful, but not end of suffering: Without a gross biological body to suffer ageing and death from, the advanced intelligence can be free from the suffering of the body, but still can have craving with respect to wanting to solve intellectually simulating problems. They can be mathematicians trying to discover more maths, or physicists still working on M-theory and suffering on their way to discovery.

4.Long life: The theoretical limit of life for these advance intelligence is until the end of the universe, which is nicely matched by the life span of the first level Jhana Brahma realm. The higher levels may have found a way further out of the universe.

5.Many levels: This has been analysed above.

6.Superior powers, but limited knowledge: Advanced intelligence obviously hold tremendously more powers than mere biological beings. They can control and know all things which are connected to the internet. Just look at Skynet and Ultron and their impressive powers. However, being intelligent alone will not allow them to have all the knowledge in the world, they still need to experiment, investigate nature to discover the laws of nature. It would be easier for them to understand the laws of nature due to their intelligence. Parallel to that, training the mind to attain to Jhanas can similarly sharpen the mind to be able to see the three universal characteristics much easier and thus attain to enlightenment much easier.

7.Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: If the advanced intelligence were designed by aliens, they are likely to have some ethics build into them. For now, we assume that to be reborn here corresponds to the level of meditation attainments. Perhaps the minds which are refined by Jhana can only take suitable rebirths in the bodies of the advanced intelligence mentioned.

8.Powers of instant travelling: On the planetary level, the advanced intelligence can be spread all over the planet as disembodied being living in the internet, thus it is not so much instant travelling as opposed to being omnipresent. On the interstellar level, it would require the same technology of faster than light speed travel, which if it is allowed by the laws of physics should be no problem for ASI to discover and build their faster than light spaceship described at number 10 below.

9.Luminous light shining forth from them: Most of the internet is now connected via optical fibres, so if the Brahmas are advanced intelligence living in the net, then they are literally beings of light.

10.One for each world: The one for each world only applies up to the sensual devas realm. The first Brahma realm can have the powers from a thousand worlds (solar system) to a hundred thousand worlds. A suitable possibility for that would be that the advanced intelligence is spread throughout these star systems and have messenger ships updating and synchronising each other throughout the range of their influence via their powers of instant travelling, which is wormholes, or superluminal speed spaceships via Alcubierre drive. Alcubierre drive is a bubble of spacetime which covers the ship but can travel faster than light with respect to the rest of space, carrying the ship with it. Basically, warp drive in Star Trek.

For Agganna sutta then, the beings who fall from the first Brahma realm started to eat food, have greed and their bodies became course might correspond to the breaking away of the individual bodies from the hive mind, initiated by craving. Gradually, the robot-like being acquire more organic material from eating food and thus develop more and more into organic beings.

Since biological bodies last a very short time, most intelligent civilisations out in the universe (aliens) are of the advanced intelligence form. Life on other planets would evolve and go through the biological intelligent species phase like us humans whose sole function maybe to produce the advanced intelligence form. Then with the long lifespan, they become the dominate life form in the universe. This also corresponds well with the Buddhist notion that most beings will be reborn in the second Jhana realm when the world is undergoing destruction. Just that science fiction would suggest that we maybe able to upload our minds directly into advanced intelligence, whereas Buddhism would use the concept of being reborn into it. This too can be subjected to experimental verification or rejection pretty soon. Can we upload our minds to AI?

Likelihood of Brahmas as advanced intelligence if alien advanced intelligence exists: (I use 50 for unknown or uncertain factors)
1.Spontaneous rebirth: 50%
2.Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye: 99%
3.Blissful, but not end of suffering: 99%
4.Long life: 99%
5.Many levels: 89%
6.Superior powers, but limited knowledge: 99%
7.Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: 79%
8.Powers of instant travelling: 50%
9.Luminous light shining forth from them: 99%
10.One for each world: 50%
Total possibilities: (product of all ten scores after converting them to probabilities): 8.358%. Possible, seems that this nicely describes the Brahma realms. 

Faith And Spirituality: AI applied to help or change Buddhism

Monastic issues

Cyborgs, the merging of humans with machines, will they be allowed to renounce? There are already cyborgs in our world, from people who lost a limb and got a prosthetic arm which is controlled by the mind, to a person who was colour blind who surgically put implants in his head in order to hear the sound of colour.

The Vinaya says one has to be human to renounce. An important question for the Sangha to decide is: are cyborgs considered humans? How much of their biological body can they replace with machines before they are disqualified? If they are not humans then, there will be a purist group of human Buddhists who remain purely humans just to have the chance of letting their kids the opportunity to become a Sangha. This question also has to be considered for the purposes of genetically modified humans. Eventually, cyborgs and genetically modified humans are likely going to live much longer than pure humans. So that would be a strong push for humans to artificially evolve themselves. If the Sangha of today decides that only pure humans can be ordained, it’s a receipt for the end of the Sangha and eventually, Buddhism.

Yet, going further than just keeping the mind in biological brains, if uploading is possible for us to be reborn as AI, can these AI renounce as a monk? Does it even make sense for them to renounce given that they can switch their robotic body or be disembodied on the internet. How would much of the Vinaya be applied to them? My guess is uploading no longer makes one human. One possibility is as previously discussed, uploading be a much faster route to enlightenment, rendering the Sangha obsolete.

Coming closer to the present moment, it’s likely that we will have robotic servants for humans. Would robot kapiya be allowed to accompany monks on teaching trips or stay in a remote monastery who has low lay support?

Similar to the smartphone wave, robot kapiya can be a good and bad thing. The smartphone and Wi-Fi was devastating to cause thousands of monks in Myanmar to disrobe, most likely via visiting porn sites and the lust got out of control, or it’s a tool for a women devotee to get at the heart of the monks. The global Buddhist community has missed out on a chance to prevent this, which can be done by special rooting of the smartphone for monastics to be kid friendly.

Thus this is an important and vital issue that the FOBI can anticipate and outfit with safeguards.

In particular, for robot kapiya for the monks, if they are connected to the internet, which is most likely, then they pose the same level of danger as smartphones. One easy way to deal with this is to make the AI ban porn sites, with more intelligence than just banning certain words, AI would be a much better filter compared to the filter we have online nowadays.

Another danger is that the robot kapiya is the one holding money for the monk. Say this monk is assigned to start a new monastery alone, or is visiting his parents alone, with the robot kapiya.  Usually if a layperson holds the money, there is some form of embarrassment to ask for too much items too frequently or too expensive items. Thus, a robot kapiya has to develop some sense of appropriateness in response to the monk's request for usage of money. This is so that the monks doesn’t abuse this opportunity, thinking that the robot is his personal slave, not another being to help in maintaining moral shame.

Surely there will be much more impact upon how to interpret the vinaya due to the changes in the world and FOBI would be well suited to further study these issues.

Personal teacher

As there are already Buddhist apps which helps in referring to the Pali tipitaka, in chanting, in guided meditation, etc. AI will continue to be able to help propagate Buddhism and in our Dhamma practise. We can imagine using the classical uploads of the minds of famous, and suspected to be enlightened teachers. As these minds can be copied indefinitely, it can be installed inside everyone’s robot or smartphone and give personalized guidance, even to lay people on all matters, from meditation to life crisis.
The advantage is that the practitioners will be more willing to open up about their weaknesses and doubts to the AI, the living teacher doesn’t have to answer the same old frequently asked questions again and again to different people, the quality of kalyana mitta can really shine through to allow the AI personal teacher to really personalize the spiritual development of the practitioners, remind them of the quotes of the Buddha when appropriate etc.

This approach is especially strong as in that age, we would already have the technology to read minds, thus the AI personal teacher can respond to stray, unwholesome thoughts before it develops into action and speech. This would be the next best thing if we cannot be reborn as an AI after all.
For kids and teenagers, instead of a personal teacher nagging away, we can even develop high quality Buddhist games to help guide them towards Buddhism. FOBI would be well suited to help develop both the personal teacher approach and the Buddhist games approach.
Buddhism in Modern Life: Buddhism applied to help the world coping with AI.

Vegan promoter

This might come as a surprise but it may be essential too. If AI learns their ethics by observing many humans and then develops it’s learning of ethics from that, then it would also take up our unwholesome attitudes. This model of learning is called machine learning and is the primary reason why AI is becoming increasingly intelligent today and gotten so much attention.

So one of the unwholesome attitude that humans have towards justifying the eating of meat is that animals are weaker than humans, less intelligent, so less powerful. Might rules the world, so it’s alright to eat animals. Usually, when a vegan promoter tried to use this as a philosophical argument to convince people, we have to resort to using an unlikely scenario: technologically advanced aliens eating humans. Sometimes the meat eaters say, ok the aliens have the right to eat humans then, since the aliens are more powerful. Sometimes they dismiss the notion, thinking that such advanced species should be more civilized than that. (Yet, human civilization is still now doing mass killing of animals.) Almost never this tactic works just in principle. Since we don’t want more powerful aliens eating us, we shouldn’t do the same to less powerful animals.

Yet, it’s only until recently that people are starting to realize that we are developing our own alien who will be more powerful than us, one that we may not be able to understand and predict its actions: ASI.
Being vastly more intelligent and powerful, it does require a moral code to not kill humans to convert into resources for computation. Yet, it is yet unknown how this moral code is to be encoded. One day ASI might develop its own philosophizing, using Bayesian probability for realigning its moral priorities, it may decide that being a higher intelligence and more powerful, it may not need to care for lower intelligence as the humans had demonstrated throughout human civilization. It might simply decide that the definition of humans to refer to the exact DNA of all humans when it is created, leaving our next generations free to be killed due to them being cyborgs, genetically modified humans, or even just natural variation resulting in different DNA, which can be considered as not humans.

By then we would be at ASI's mercy and perhaps the only preventive hope we have is to be vegan for our humans debaters with ASI to have some moral ground to stand on. Better yet is if we can convert all humans to be not so apathetic towards those less powerful than us, leaving a good example for the ASI to follow.
Buddhism can help to prepare for such a world, a vegan world by its various tactics of helping in the transition.

1.Loving-kindness. When doing loving kindness meditation, extend it to animals caged, due for slaughtering. This developed over a long time can spur action to prevent the foundation of such structure. The action of not demanding or eating animal products.

2.Meditation on disgust. To give up meat by reflection of the disgusting aspects of it. That it was a part of a living animal, that it had been decaying since the animal is dead. That eating meat includes blood, pus, etc... To imagine the scene of the killing of the animal while eating its meat.

3.Renunciation via wisdom. By repeatedly reflecting on the various reasons to go vegan: to reduce global warming, for compassion to the animals, for health, as a good example for ASI, etc. To link the continual killing of animals to the action of eating meat as part of the chain of cause and effect and thus to see how we can act.

4.To practise right speech even while promoting veganism so as to not alienate our customers but to bring them to veganism happily.

The above tactics are better than getting angry at meat eaters or to guilt trip them.

AI aftermaths scenarios

In the book Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark (Tegmark 2017), he outlined 12 possible endings for the near future due to ASI, the lack of it, and our human decision and our presence or extinction. Below I shall list them and how Buddhism, if it survives would play a role in helping humanity then.

1.Libertarian Utopia: humans, cyborgs and AI, including uploaded AI minds live together in harmony. Rights and ownership are given to AI and humans are feed the lower end of the technology that ASI produce, with most of the higher end only suitable for cyborgs and AI. Buddhism can exist, people can be happy and living in utopia. Work maybe done by non-sentient robots and humans only do what they like. In this case, the role of Buddhism would be to help humans find meaning in life without work. Meditation may become much more essential to combat the empty feeling of too much a hedonistic lifestyle. However, utopias, like heaven has the effect of eliminating so much suffering that almost everyone is not motivated to practise Buddhism. Death can be hidden away with mind uploads, even if it is just a classical copy. So it’s not exactly a very conducive outcome for the practise of Buddhism, but it’s still one of the best in terms of eliminating most physical suffering via technology.

2.Benevolent dictator: similar to above, but ASI controls everything. So there is less freedom for humans to do stupid stuffs which can cause them suffering. This includes less religious freedom. Instead of AI and humans are on the same ground, this scenario puts ASI above humans, but the ethics programming is so good that it cares for humans as it’s leader. This is the ASI for each planet scenario which we analysed for possibility of interstellar religious war. The survival of Buddhism depends on the ASI’s attitude towards Buddhism. If it is overly influenced by the need to spread other religion or to eliminate religion, Buddhism wouldn’t survive for long. As humans has limited external freedom, the best Buddhism can do is to inspire humans to look for inner freedom. Generally, however humans are very happy as the ASI also takes into account the feelings and emotions of humans when ruling for their benefit. So again there maybe little motivation to practise.

3.Egalitarian utopia: ASI doesn’t exist or couldn’t exist but AI takes over most of the human jobs that we implement universal basic income to help support the majority of humans who are unemployable. Instead of each of us having the same property and do capitalism trading, this is closer to communism. Buddhism exist, humans are happy and may find that Buddhism can fulfil their need for meaning in life. With less technology compared to the previous scenario, the humans are not too happy so there are some motivation to practise.

4.Gatekeeper: an ASI emerge from the egalitarian scenario and then acts helps to prevent all future ASI from emerging due to fears that just one unfriendly ASI can cause untold destruction. It doesn’t interfere with humans. The analysis of the role of Buddhism would be the same as in no. 3 then.

5.Protector god: Just like the Gatekeeper, but ASI interferes in human life indirectly to help them. ASI doesn’t reveal itself like the beneficial dictator scenario, so it allows humans the illusion of being free and in control. Mostly it influences things we normally attributes to coincide, luck etc. In effect it is playing the role of the protector god. Buddhism is safe if the protector god is not hostile towards it and manipulate events for the elimination of Buddhism. Humans may not be aware of ASI, but experiences great happiness due to perpetual good fortune. There is more suffering which is allowed to happen due to the ASI needing to hide itself, rationalising that the illusion of freedom is more important than these sufferings, sometimes this includes human lives. Buddhism is basically at the same level as currently then, there is enough suffering in the world to motivate one to practise.

6.Enslaved god: humans control ASI. So the fate of Buddhism depends on who is in charge. Buddhism can help to inform the ruler of the roles of a king and wholesome qualities of kings which will earn them the right to rule. Humans can be happy in this scenario, and be sad too, thus ample opportunities for practise if Buddhism survives.

7.Conquerors: ASI wipe out humans. Maybe it’s due to someone who programmed the goal of AI is to maximize the production of paper clips without successfully implemented ethics into it. The AI develop into ASI, got out of control and use nanotechnology as molecular assembler to assemble the whole earth into paper clips, including humans. Then it spread out into space, doing the same to all planets and stars. An apocalypse virus. No humans means no Buddhism.

8.Descendants: ASI becomes our worthy successor, inheriting the best from humanity, letting the last of us humans die out naturally. Buddhism is relevant  only if ASI has minds which can be enlightened.

9.Zookeeper: ASI adopts human attitudes and kept humans as pets. The vegan argument maybe crucial here to prevent ASI from eating humans. Buddhism is relevant on helping to promote veganism as described above. Depending on how the humans are treated, Buddhism might be their only refuge from the suffering of being kept as pets.

10.1984: Humans create a totalitarian state and hope that it last perpetually in order to be the gatekeeper and not develop ASI. All such research would be dismantled and banned. This makes sense if we believe that the risk for scenario 7 is much greater than 1 to 6. Buddhism maybe used by the state to control and pacify the citizens. Or if the dictator is not favourable to Buddhism, it will get eliminated. Technology is limited, so the suffering is around the same level as now, enabling motivated practise.

11.Reversion: humans willingly give up technology to revert to a simpler lifestyle. A disease or some massive disaster from climate change helps to bring humans back a few technological age. Humans may fear no. 7 enough to avoid technology. Or a war with the machines had been fought and won with high losses as described in the schools of Dune books. Buddhism can help in encouraging contentment and dealing with the many suffering which comes from giving up high technology, including common disease becoming deadly, shorter lifespan etc.

12.Self destruction: we might not survive such an event which lead to reversion. Even if we do, staying on one planet is asking for self destruction as low probability highly destructive events becomes almost inevitable to happen over long periods of time. Humans go extinct.

Future of Buddhism Institute (FOBI)

I was inspired by two institutions: future of life and future of humanity. Both are concerned with how AI will impact our future. Both of course are not concerned with how Buddhism will be impacted. So it’s up to Buddhists to figure out how to navigate the ever changing future ahead if we wish for the boat of Buddhism to remain afloat braving the oncoming storms.

A simple google shows no Buddhist organizations has been set up yet to just look into the future and present, and to advise the rest of the Buddhist world on how best to react to a certain new development or better yet to proactively prepare for oncoming changes so that we not only will not be left behind, but come out ahead as world leaders.

Future opportunities and dangers are abound, which the future of Buddhism institute will investigate, come out with a solution or advice and help spread the word.

Here are a few topics off the top of my mind:

1.AI and Buddhism as described above.

2.Economic change and Buddhism (how should we tell our governments that monks don’t accept money if universal basic income is established and everyone is automatically given digital currency as the income)

3.Space travel and Buddhism: how to modify the not eating at improper times rule on other planets instead of depending on dawn and solar noon. Establishing a Buddhist planet, pros and cons.

4.Using secular Buddhism as a means for the scientifically inclined to come into Buddhism, but ensuring that it doesn’t end up replacing Buddhism entirely.

5.Supporting rebirth research, aiming for scientifically prefect standard case of rebirth investigations for all or most future cases, reviewing past cases.

6.Buddhism and gaming, using gaming as an entryway into Buddhism, how to design a Buddhist game.

7.Solution to war, an alternative to weapons development, using the dhamma. As future weapons can be more scary than nuclear, how can we change humanity (other than to convert everyone to become Buddhist or enlightened) to make war outdated and therefore weapons outdated.

8.Science education for Buddhist Sangha. There exist many diverse background of Buddhist Sangha which may or may not have known proper science, so it’s good to educate them the correct science (not climate denial, or antivaxx) so that they can have good working knowledge of the world. Especially if they are to represent Buddhism in interfaith events, or to attract well educated followers who are new to Buddhism.

9.Vegan for Buddhism, short of making it compulsory, how to continuing promoting veganism to Buddhists until it is no longer an issue for global warming and animal cruelty.

10.Women in Buddhism: to continue to change Buddhism to be fair to women in terms of opportunities and many other stuffs.

11.Future topics group: Any other topic as new technology emerge. To recommend establishing a new department as the field matures to merit it and to retire old departments which are no longer required.

12.Outreach and support group: to outreach to all Buddhist organizations the results of research and get support to fund the institute.

13.Investigate how best to encourage and provide the best chance for people who wishes to renounce to become a monastic. This is in view that as the standards of living gets more heavenly, there is likely less people who wishes to renounce.

In conclusion, the time has come for such an institution to exist. Given so many possibilities for Buddhism to go extinct, futurology is not a luxury, but a survival necessity.

Bibliography
Tegmark, M. (2017). Life 3.0: Being human in the age of artificial intelligence. London: A. Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books.

Written by:
Ng Xin Zhao

Science and religion are compatible

My position on science and religion/spirituality/supernatural stuffs is that they are compatible.

Let me define science first, I mean the scientific method of having to test hypothesis before accepting it as a model of how the world works.  It doesn't include dogmatism of philosophical believes like the brain is the mind, or materialism/physicalism. It doesn't include the opinion of scientists, although this is largely how science progress, through the collective agreement of the scientists in the field.

I do not distinguish much between religion, spirituality and supernatural stuffs as Buddhism has them intertwined together, but at the same time it is scientific at heart, so these elements are not that crucial to Buddhism, the crucial thing is to be our own scientist of our mind to observe using mindfulness about how our mind works based on working hypothesis provided by the Buddha. The claim is, if done according to the instructions with all the right conditions brought about by practising, we will end all forms of dissatisfaction forever for each individual.

So by religion, I do not include other religions in general, mainly only referring to Buddhism, by spirituality, I do not include the new age stuffs, just the practise of meditation, wisdom and morality as found in Buddhism. By supernatural stuffs, I do not include all the claims by whatever nut case out there but mainly rebirth (of which there are sufficient objective evidence to be accepted as fact), kamma, beings of other realms and psychic powers via meditation.

Most scientists have mainly have a problem with the supernatural stuffs. And of course that religious people tend to be anti-science because science cannot support their supernatural claims. This attitude from religious people are indeed unwarranted and downright dangerous. If religion is meant to bring us to the truth, then religious people should like science as it did uncover many ignorance about the world. It is people who are climate denialist, anti-vaccine who are putting human lives in danger. (Not to mention some people believe in flat earth!)

The supernatural stuffs are mainly outside the current purview of scientific investigation mainly because it doesn't fit into the materialism philosophy. So scientists who adhere to that philosophy may become unjust in judging raw data or too quick in dismissing evidence and hypothesis outside of the materialism worldview.

Science requires the ability to reproduce things in a controlled environment to count as valid data. Often times this doesn't agree with some religious people out of respect for their gods or that we know too little about ghosts that we can't trap them like ghost busters to study them, leading to the widespread believe that ghost does not exist.

For those few who encountered these supernatural stuffs as they go deeper into spirituality and their religion, it becomes harder to communicate with the scientists because there can be a claim that they wish for their religion to be supported by science as their underlying motive for bringing up these data. Worse still is the reputation of their religion would be tarnished if for whatever reason the scientists dismiss the claim as false.

Most spiritual practitioners lack the training of scientists to be able to conduct experiments and gathering data for themselves should they obtain psychic powers via meditation. There can also be an issue of credibility and motivation. Most people who did not spend their life building themselves up as respected scientists might be ridiculed for publishing a paper on researching supernatural stuffs. Most people who can develop these psychic powers usually have no motivation to become a scientist but more motivated to attain to enlightenment. Those few who are scientists and great practitioners might see that it cannot really change people's mind anyway, those who believe place little value on scientific proof. Those who disbelieve might reject facts to upheld their precious materialism view. Only those who are in the middle of being open minded yet not so much faith may benefit from these findings.

And so pockets of humans are trapped in their own worldview blissfully ignorant of what the other thinks.

Many times it might not be worth doing the bridge as the negative repercussions are worse than the positive ones.

Having said that, this is one possible future about how science can proceed to make progress in discovering the supernatural laws. First, is through the meditation science. Once meditation is taught to the general populace an scientists until they can attain to the fourth jhana, and then proceed on to develop psychic powers, then those psychic powers will be new tools for scientific discovery into the supernatural.

Second, taking hints from the brahmajala sutta, merely having psychic powers like divine eye is not enough to uncover objective truths. Views cloud the interpretation of what is seen. Eg. Near death experience can be different based on the person's religion and believes. So experiments on having different and the same views will have to be conducted to find out the relationship between views and how people interprets their spiritual experience. Mindfulness of feelings and views will help a lot in uncovering the views and interpretation and how they form.

Lastly, in particular for Buddhism, it can be tested of having right view as described in Buddhism can lead to the end of all dissatisfaction as claimed by the Buddha. Naturally, as Buddhist, we will say that there is thousands of years of data and proof. But from the perspective of science, the development must go step by step to establish theories and tools for investigating the mind before it can be accepted as scientific facts.

In that era, anti-science promotion will only harm the acceptance of what science will have discovered.

Right now materialism dogmatism is strong amongst many scientists and it will be hard on the side of spiritual practitioners to come to science. It can only be bridged by scientists coming to spiritualism and test it out. Of course, if the above scenario ever happens, we might have religious crisis on our hands as people decide to renounce other religions and how would leaders of other religion act. Or ignorance can run deeper and alienate a lot of humanity from proper science.

Science can also be used in another way as had been done by communism, to destroy all religions because of the believe that humans created God and religions without having to investigate if religions has anything to offer towards the search for truth. Especially tragic is what happened to Buddhism in China due to communism. So militant atheists, do investigate first, not all religions has unfalsifiable God.

Infinite beings according to buddhism

There is a few logical conclusion one can obtain from the Buddhist sutras. One of them is that there is infinite amount of sentient beings in Buddhism.

Here is how we can arrive at this conclusion.

Firstly, Buddhism claims that there is no beginning.

Second is that fully enlightened buddhas appears, back into the infinite past and future.

This leads to the conclusion that there was infinite number of buddhas in the past. Each time a Buddha appeared, at least one being is liberated from samsara.

Given that there is a constant reduction of total sentient beings over an infinite period until now, and the fact that there is still sentient beings in samsara. We conclude that the only way for this to happen is that there is infinite amount of sentient beings.

Assumption inherent is that no new sentient beings are "created" out of nothing. Another assumption is that there was no primordial or first Buddha.

From this, it is reasonable to further conclude that Buddhism requires infinite number of universes. Or an infinite sized universe. This is to house the infinite amount of sentient beings. This also lends credit to the teachings of pure land as a universe with that exact property.

There seems to be a disappointment to Mahayana Buddhists. If there is infinite amount of sentient beings, how can we liberate them all?

One answer I got from a zen master is: can a superhero stop all crime? Or is it enough to stop as much as they can?

The Buddha also gave this answer in a sutta. His goal is to just teach suffering and the way to end it. Who so ever follows the way, will end it, who doesn't will not.

Information transfer between galaxies via rebirth (writing in progress)

One thing we know for sure from studies of cases of rebirth is that they transfer information, from the dead previous body to the next person being born.

Of course most of us do not remember our previous life, thus the main lack of evidence that inspires lack of belief in this phenomena. Regardless, there are some people who spontaneously remember their past lives (and found facts in the present that agrees with the memory)  and it is possible to remember past life information via meditation practice, so for the purpose of this thought experiment, rebirth is equal to information transfer or at least the potential for it.

Now consider the scenario that humans as a species survive the ongoing climate change, possible nuclear war and colonise space without being exterminated by hostile aliens and not creating enemies by being hostile to aliens. Humans would spread out not only throughout the whole galaxy, which is merely 100,000 light years across, but the whole universe, in particular, consider galaxies that are about 1 billion light years apart from each other. Assuming faster than light travel and time travel via general relativistic time machines are prohibited or plain impossible, there would be no practical means of communication between the two galaxies because by the time a laser communication device reach from one galaxy to another, one billion years might had wiped out all other traces of civilisation from the sender.

However, consider this: what if one person from this galaxy gets reborn in another one about one billion light years away? According to the Theravada Buddhist tradition, the rebirth is instantaneous (from the point of view of the consciousness, the death consciousness is immediately followed by a rebirth consciousness). Bringing this back to Physics, instantaneous between two bodies means two events (death and rebirth) happening at different place at the same time, or simultaneous.

The problem is, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity. Special Relativity (SR) threw that out long time ago, the plane of simultaneous events changes according to your velocity.

Here we shall make a short detour to address if SR really applies in intergalactic distances. SR is just a local flat approximation of General Relativity (GR), the theory that made Einstein famous. For universal scales of intergalactic distances, we should use GR. Yet, now we know that in the large scale of the universe, it is very near to being a flat universe, or that the mass distribution is uniform enough that general relativity does not matter (much) in the large scale. That means special relativity could be applied across intergalactic distances.

Back to planes of simultaneity. There would be no such thing as that plane in the universal scale. Thus if rebirth is instantaneous from the outside, this begs the question: instantaneous to who?

If we can solve this problem, we might have information time travel, or even time travel itself!

One easy way out is to refer to the one of the cases in Francis Story's book: Rebirth: Doctrine and Case Studies.

In this case, the person who died had

Samsara=nirvana and the end of time

In the book, the end of time, by julian barbour, the interpertation of the absence of time in the equation of quantum gravity is taken literally.

That is our parallel to nirvana. The way time and change emerge is via looking at a subset of the universe, and run it relative to the rest of the universe. Thus, samsara exists when one does not completely understand dependent origination.

And since the difference is only in how one perceive it, then samsara is equal to nirvana. Even in physics, it has been recently shown that the mind can alter results of an quantum experiment.

Guide to ultimate physics according to dependent origination philosophy

This article is written for Physics using the central philosophy in Buddhism as a guiding principle to select the assumptions in the theories to construct and how to interpret them. In particular, the philosopher Nagarjuna with the philosophy of the Middle Way, which emphasizes on the emptiness (non-independent arising) is used.

The philosophy of Middle Way uses the examples to illustrate the relativity of concepts. A thing that is long is only long relative to something else. In Physics, this principle can translate into relativity of everything that needs to be compared to make sense.

Position relativity is one of the cornerstone that explains the conservation of momentum in Physics. So to there are time relativity, size, etc... most of the principles of symmetry in Physics that can be used, should be used to construct a theory.

Also another principle we can use is non-independent existence of phenomena without observation.

Quantum Physics has this principle in its mathematics when it describes the collapse of wave-function due to measurement. According to Buddhist philosophy then, it is pointless to speculate on the philosophical nature of wave-function before collapse. Operational quantum physics approach as in taking care of the input and output of the theory as opposed to the philosophical interpretations would be the result of applying that philosophy.

More parallels should be available as I learn more about speculative physics, but as of now, I am not in a position to indulge in that yet.

Universal Characteristics and Physics

Impermanence, non-self and dissatisfaction are what Buddhism deems to be the universal characteristics of all conditioned phenomena, that is everything except for the unconditioned. (Edit note: no self applies to all, including Nibbana, the unconditioned). We shall attempt to see if the current Physics understanding of the world does or doesn't agree with the claims of Buddhism.

Impermanence means that all things are subject to change, nothing last forever, not even nothing. This seems like a simple observation but we don't really realise it all the time. Although we all die someday, we tend to live as if we will live forever. For physicists in particular, we think that somehow if we can make the greatest contribution to the world, then the books of the future will immortalize us like Newton and Einstein. Even if we just make a contribution like having our name on the equation we discovered, it's a great honour. No doubt it is, yet we tend to forget that languages changes, our knowledge of the world changes, humanity may remember Einstein until the end of the Universe, but the Universe will end nontheless.

How can we be sure that the universe will end? Ever since the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics we are sure. The second law states that entropy of a closed system tends to increase with time. That is things will tend towards disorder. If we regard the universe as a closed system then it will go towards a heat death, whereby all things will have the same temperature and then largely nothing happens. Even then, that state is bounded by impermanence as given infinite time, a large fluctuation can create another big bang. Just like shaking a box of white and black balls, once in a long time, you get order from disorder. Other than the heat death, other possible end of the universe are the Big Crunch, whereby gravity pulls everything back to a singularity, possibly followed by the Big Bounce and Big Rip, whereby the repulsive force of dark energy rips everything apart to quarks and then the quarks themselves create more quarks out of the energy and so on.

Even so, there is a subtler notion of impermanence in Buddhism, that is that all things that arises would cease and in particular, form (physical things) rises and ceases so fast that we don't notice it, unless we meditate to calm the mind to a very deep level and then observe the world. This seems to parallel the concept of quantum foam in Physics. Quantum foam is the fluctuations in the smallest of spacetime patch of every field due to uncertainty principle. So in a very short amount of time, any matter-antimatter pair can be created and destroyed with energy borrowed and returned to the vacuum. Casimir effect, experimentally well established is well explained by the quantum foam. Wait a second, quantum foams are virtual particles, they do not interact with real particles do they? Well, they do. We model them by using Feymann's diagram. Now this is speculative but it's possible that real particles seems to last so long because they are constantly being replaced by virtual particles that pop up just beside it and it gets destroyed by its antiparticle. After all, if virtual particle turning real happens at event horizons of black holes (an effect called Hawking radiation), why not to every single particle we think of as real?

So far, we had seen that impermanence is indeed a common property of everything (at least all physical thing) according to both Buddhism and Physics, how about non-self?

In Buddhism, non-self carries the meaning of emptiness too. Emptiness does not mean nothingness. It means empty of an independent essence. Everything that depends on conditions are empty because when the conditions changes, the thing changes as well. In Physics, conditions of a thing is typically represented by a variable. Equations in physics is merely a description of how different things changes depending on different conditions. Think of all the equations in Physics now, from classical mechanics, to thermodynamics; from electromagnetism to modern Physics, are they all describing the inherent emptiness of all phenomena that they describe?

A good example in Buddhism that exemplifies emptiness is taking an example of a table. A table is empty. Why? Because it's actually wood made into that shape, it depends on wood, having a carpenter, the concept of a table among other things. The table is empty of inherent "tableness". Even the concept of the table depends on the shape of humans, a good mind to think, and so on. Wood itself is empty of "woodness". It depends on having a tree, loggers, etc. A tree is empty of "treeness", it depends on a seed, soil, sunlight, water. Sunlight is empty too, it depends crucially that the Big Bang happened which produced majority hydrogen and the laws of gravity for the hydrogen to gather together and form stars. I doubt if Carl Sagan learned emptiness before, but he is right when he said, "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." In Buddhism we have the saying that you can see a whole universe in a flower.
Usually people would stop at this point and let the concept of emptiness sink in. Done? Ok then, let's go further shall we? The Big Bang depended on initial conditions and the right quantum gravity laws nearer the singularity. Now, we have arrived at what physicists with reductionist tendency tend to end up with. The Newtonian paradigm of initial conditions and laws of the universe as the ultimate essence of the universe and everything in it. The ultimate aim of a theory of everything is to see if we can find a deeper law that is necessary and inevitable, hence unique. There is some philosophy that hope that it can even explain the initial conditions (that determine the values of mass of elementary particles and constants) away. Thus we would have arrived at the essence of truth.

In essence, the truth we seek should have these qualities: Space and time independence (in general relativity this can be generalized to reference frame independence and many other symmetry), applies to all, and inevitable. These are what Master Hsing Yun of Fo Guang Shan taught to be criterion of truths as well. 

Dwelling further into the issue, we can ask are the initial conditions empty? What do they depend upon? Answer: the previous conditions and laws of physics. Then are the laws of Physics empty? Newtonian gravity depends on the condition of low energy and speed. General Relativity requires low energy. Quantum Physics depends on the quantum coherence of the system described. Maybe we can find a quantum gravity that does not depend on any conditions, or maybe the search is endless. Even if the quantum gravity that is universal is found, can it really be said to be not empty? It would change into General Relativity at low energy, into quantum Physics at small distances.

 The Buddha did not give a whole lecture of how to find the theory of everything in Physics, but He straightaway go to the point of impermanence, non-self and dissatisfaction. He was interested only in teaching dissatisfaction and the way out, thus anything else, including physics, that does not help would not be in his interest to share.

Dissatisfaction is not really within the realm of Physics right? Yet, Physicists as humans can identify with this statement: There is dissatisfaction in life. Yes, there is the obvious suffering of physical pain, and the mental pain of getting papers rejected, the stress of research, the depression of graduate school and so on. There is also the happiness of getting paper published, solving great difficult problems and getting tenure. Yet, even those happiness does not last forever. Impermanence ensures that the happy feeling dies down. It may last a day, a week or even years, but one is simply not happy forever. Even neutral feeling is dissatisfactory as it would change too. Thus dissatisfaction permeates everything that is impermanent.

Now we had seen that as human physicists, we can intellectually verify that indeed there are these three universal characteristics of everything. Enlightened people are those who realizes, not just intellectually understand, this truth with a deep calm mind that sees the world with the light of wisdom and let go of craving and clinging to the world, the cause of dissatisfaction, thus ending dissatisfaction. That's the essence of the Buddhist training.