How can we design technology in the way that is of most benefit to humanity in the long-term? Especially in terms of human agency? What to make of Artificial Intelligence? What is the nature of the human mind and can machines think in the same way? What criteria might be appropriate to evaluate AI? Where should we look for wise guidance?

Buddhism and Computing: How to Flourish in the Age of Algorithms, published by Mud Pie Books (2021), marks the culmination of investigations spanning more than a decade, focused on these kinds of questions. It encapsulates many of the ideas explored on this site. The enquiries have been primarily from the perspective of Buddhist ethics, but are substantially interdisciplinary, brought together in a way that I hope will foster much-needed dialogue involving everyone.

I very much welcome feedback – comments, reviews, emails, etc. Please spread the word!

Table of Contents

Chapters

Prologue

1. Numbers and Computation
2. Buddhist Ethics
3. Computers and Intelligence
4. Modelling Mind and Processes
5. Designing Sustainable Social Networks
6. Ensuring Online Safety
7. Are We Here Yet?

Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgements
About the Author

Introductory Articles

I’m pleased to have shared a taste of the book in an introductory piece in the Daily Alternative, in which I try to bring attention to essential needs and from that basis assess technology. I’m also grateful for the publication of an article, Designing Software for the Present Moment, inspired by the late Ninian Smart, which seeks to broaden engagement. This appeared in Inter-religious Insight, the journal of the World Congress of Faiths, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 65–67, 2021

How do we design systems that lead to generally wholesome states of mind? Having studied some of the psychological observations concerning social media, it is evident that cognitive interventions already feature prominently, generally in a way that fosters addiction, which is an unwholesome state.

However, cognitive interventions can also be incorporated in the design process so as to foster positive states. Furthermore, there are well-established methods, particularly Harvard University’s Project Zero thinking routines that suggest how this might be implemented. This was the subject of my paper: Cultivating sīla Online: the use of Cognitive Interventions in Systems Design, which I presented at the Ninth annual conference of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. A copy of the paper is available on the conference website, as well as on Academia. 

We may furthermore specify such systems mathematically using a formalism such as process algebra and then specify safety properties in a temporal logic, which we apply to the model for validation. Whereas in the last millennium, formal methods were considered too rarefied for general use, nowadays they have become much more mainstream spear-headed by Petri Nets and the Pi-Calculus.

These are only early intimations, but I’m quite sure this research would be worthwhile.

All mental phenomena have mind as their forerunner; mind is their chief, and they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts with a defiled mind, then suffering follows one even as the wheel follows the hoof of the draught ox.

All mental phenomena have mind as their forerunner; mind is their chief, and they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, then happiness follows even as one’s shadow never leaves.

Dhammapada verses 1 and 2

These short verses encapsulate how it is our own behaviour that determines whether or not we are happy. Accordingly, I’m using it to base my endeavours in research and development.

Introduction

Two verses is probably too minimalist by way of introduction, so, allow me to provide a little more orientation, for which I shall quote from Buddhism and Computing: How to Flourish in the Age of Algorithms.

The Buddha originally gave his teachings in person, tailored to his audience, which was comprised of people from all castes of Indian society. Even though he was well-versed in Sanskrit, he preferred to use local dialects. A formal language, let alone one with precise linguistic rules, was not considered important to the practice or to the nature of the Buddha’s realisation. After the Buddha’s passing, the transmission of his teachings continued orally, but as disagreements over interpretation grew, it was then that a written canon was introduced some hundreds of years later.

Referred to as the Tipiṭaka, a Pali term meaning ‘three baskets’, it comprises vinaya (rules of monastic discipline), suttas (sermons), and abhidhamma (higher teachings). As a kind of condensation, like any record, it loses something of the actual immediacy of the event, but it is a generally reliable reference that still inspires and guides practice. The Pali canon remains the primary source in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia today.

My work is mainly drawing on the suttas, with occasional reference to the vinaya and abhidhamma for further elucidation.

Buddhist practice is typically expressed as threefold, comprising in order: sīla (moral virtue), samādhi (concentration of mind), pañña (wisdom). So, to reach wisdom we first need to learn about and develop sīla; the subject to be learnt is Buddhist ethics, somewhat akin to, though not the same as, Greek virtue ethics as taught by Aristotle.

Moral Virtue for Daily Life

For day-to-day living, the practice is encapsulated in the Five Precepts. They’re not commandments, just rules of training that we voluntary undertake. These are usually formulated as vāritta (avoidances):

1. Refraining from taking life.
2. Refraining from taking that which is not given.
3. Refraining from sexual immorality.
4. Refraining from false speech.
5. Refraining from intoxicants that lead to heedlessness.

It might at first seem counterintuitive to restrict how one behaves as a means to fulfilment, but diligently observing these rules is enabling. It becomes more obvious when considering the cāritta (positive performance) counterpart, which is to cultivate compassion, generosity, contentment, honesty and heedfulness – qualities widely regarded as the characteristics of a model member of society.

The Fifth Precept

All the precepts are vitally important, but the Fifth Precept deserves special attention, because breaking this precept makes one vulnerable to breaking any of the others. Intoxicants are generally assumed to be mind-altering drugs and alcohol, but there is a deeper sense of any substance or activity that induces heedlessness with respect to the path of virtue and has an addictive quality. On that basis, technology can certainly qualify as an intoxicant, which is why we need to know how it arises and how to uproot it. As the application of Buddhist ethics provides effective solutions, it underpins my approach to tackling problems with online social networking.

For my Master’s in the Study of Religions, I undertook some research into the canonical meaning and also contemporary practice, implementing an online survey. This resulted in a technical report and a dissertation:

• Report, University of Oxford, 2009 Observations from an Online Survey concerning the Practice of the 5th Buddhist Precept: Report of Preliminary Findings
• Master’s thesis, University of Oxford, 2009 Avoiding pamāda: An analysis of the Fifth Precept as Social Protection in Contemporary Contexts with reference to the early Buddhist teachings.

Ever since I was a child I have tried to explore mind in a subjective-objective manner, that is, in a way that feels right, helps me to really know what’s going on, not just having logical, rational consistency. So, I naturally became interested in meditation (or mental cultivation) quite early on whilst also studying formal methods in computer science. I have explored numerous avenues as a result, trying always to retain coherence of an overall picture. In some cases, I have not got very far.

Just a few glimpses on this page, with further reading in the respective sections.

Mind, Brain and Education

Advances in neuroscience, aided by ever-higher spec’ed imaging equipment, has led to ever-finer neural correlates being established between human behaviour and well-being and observable phenomena in the brain. In recent decades, a particular area of research has been emotional development, especially among children. It is an area that I first learnt about through the work of Antonio Damasio, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and colleagues at the University of Southern California, who observed in the context of online engagement that nobler instincts take time.

I then learnt about the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES) and was encouraged to submit a poster proposal for their 2018 annual conference, my first consideration of the use of cognitive interventions — in the form of thinking routines — in the design of systems. But whilst the selection panel found it interesting, they considered that it didn’t meet the conference remit. Nevertheless, I decided to continue the research and shortly after posted a couple of articles on my blog

• Blog post, 27 August 2018: Pause for Thought: The Use of Interventions in Social Networking Sites
• Blog post, 4 September 2018: Pause for Thought: The Use of Interventions in Social Networking Sites (Part 2)

There is a lot of talk in academic circles about interdisciplinary research, but based on my experiences at Oxford University, whilst there continue to be some wonderful discoveries across boundaries, it is more normal for activities to be specialist and compartmentalised, at the expense of being holistic.

In the case of mind and education, the assumptions about mind are objective/materialist. From this the research inevitably becomes heavily dependent on machinery and thereby prevents a vital broadening of inter-disciplinary dialogue to encompass other methods in cognitive science. There are indeed many approaches to study the mind, and their proper appraisal should lead to a fuller, more holistic understanding its nature.

Mapping Mental Processes

The Buddhist approach to studying mind is epitomised in Abhidhamma, an exceedingly detailed and systematic analysis of the processes in which our minds are caught up. The technical term is citta and it may be broken down into many kinds of cetasikas (thought moments). I believe it is useful to study Abhidhamma to create mind maps and thereby learn more about how processes become variously wholesome and unwholesome. It helps to establish the right basis on which to introduce cognitive interventions, but the study is not for beginners — a general understanding of basic teachings is a prerequisite.

Mind and Artificial Intelligence

How do humans think? And what about machines? We may approach this from an orientation of cultivating more discerning awareness, as intimated above. There are many useful applications of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in the field of education and personalised learning. However, unrestrained development is likely to be disastrous and where it is used there needs to be transparency in the methods and processes.

We may also gain clues by studying historical figures who displayed extraordinary creativity, particularly in the field of mathematics. One such figure was Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematical genius, who displayed extraordinary intuition. I have spent some time exploring his approach by reference to recollections from contemporaries. He features prominently in my book, Buddhism and Computing: How to Flourish in the Age of Algorithms.

My original motivation for studying Abhidhamma was to seek some rigour as I approached the nebulous area commonly referred to as ‘mind, brain and consciousness’. Since developing the Sigala project, I have narrowed this down to the consideration of safety-critical aspects in human cognitive processes. By safety, I mean protection from serious human loss across the khandhas i.e. body, feelings, perceptions, memory and mental formations and consciousness.

Abhidhamma says a lot about processes, so my basic idea is to identify key (safety-critical) processes in the lifecycle of social media use and then seek to model them formally in terms of Abhidhamma processes involved. Such processes may typically be characterised as wholesome, unwholesome or neutral — and can be broken down to the micro level — as cetasikas (‘thought moments’).

The mind maps below are offered as an aid to navigating just a portion, concerning some of the more well-known aspects. They were created using XMind on a Mac (for other systems, you may need to choose another font for viewing).

Please download the zip file and then unzip the archive. This should provide you with five files:

• mātikā (classification of terms): matika.xmind
• citta (consciousness, heart/mind) : citta.xmind
• cetasika (mental properties): cetasika.xmind
• paccaya (conditions): paccaya.xmind
• vīthi (processes): viithi.xmind

Application to cognitive activities

How do we design systems that lead to generally wholesome states? We may use cognitive interventions!

Feel free to get in touch with queries via the contact form, though please note I am not an expert in Abhidhamma!