r/zen • u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] • 19d ago

AI Zen Master

Since it's so easy to drop a Zen text or even multiple Zen texts into an llm and ask questions that the llm will answer from the standpoint of the text?

* www.reddit.com/r/Zen/wiki/getstarted

Doesn't it make sense that there would be a lot less confusion and a lot more interesting conversations??

Plus, if you have an llm answer questions about the texts then who better to explain why Zazen Shinto-Buddhism and Alan Epstein Watts are not part of the tradition?

Serious question.

Where are all my AI Zen Masters at?

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u/TFnarcon9 18d ago

These are the things I think.about when judging worth with AI:

  1. Does speeaking to it relevantly bypass all the mental and emotional practice you get with the pressures of irl convo.

  2. If it is taking over a skill...even a minor one, is it going to cause skill atrophy.

  3. Is this causing someone to be spread thin. Only giving the feeling they are doing more, when they may be accomplishing less (there must be capital P proof that they are accomplishing more).

  4. Can you argue what you are claiming without referring back to chatgpt? ex. I translated a whole book, but I don't remember why I chose x.

It interesting that it writes at a highscool level. Are you saying forget those that can't, or that they can use it to help themselves?

In this vein, its best thing for us seems ro be the ease of pulling references and stringing things together...which we used CTRL F for before.

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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] 18d ago

Another problem is that we don't all use them the same way.

My standard query is:

Gobal: use the texts from www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/getstarted

Translate XYZ literally from classical chinese several different ways.

Provide an etymolgy for XYZ characters based on chinese texts from 500ce to 1000ce. Link to examples.

Give examples of the usage of the XYZ character from BCR, BoS, and WuCheck.

When I get an answer, I audit it by looking at both the website of the Chinese and a publsihed translation.

The LLM error rate us low.

But my error rate quth llms generally is low. I ask lots of questions.

Chatgpt also rates different translations of the same sentence for "defensibility".

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u/origin_unknown 18d ago

I really don't mean any offense to you.

If I asked you to look at what you said above as critically as you look at someone else trying to describe their "superior meditation technique", does that compare for you at all?