测不准的爱情 -- 佛、量子力学、逻辑和AI

Love Under the Uncertainty Principle: Buddhism, Quantum Mechanics, Logic and AI

> By Colin Huang · 2016-04-26 · [Original link](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yRQgd2MZaYKwooUD4o0-Mw) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

From when I was little I'd follow my grandfather in worshipping the bodhisattvas. Whether my grandfather counted as a Buddhist I can't really say, but he firmly believed that bodhisattvas exist, that a super power exists that is higher than this world of ours but not entirely knowable. Back then, when burning paper ingots and offering food, it seems we'd sometimes also make offerings to "White Impermanence" and "Black Impermanence" [Translator's note: 白无常 and 黑无常, two deities of Chinese folk religion who escort the souls of the dead], though I didn't know what they were. Later, studying in middle school, we were told that the Buddhist saying "it is not the wind moving, nor the flag moving, it is the mind moving" is idealism. And then I read some books on Chan, which always said the Dharma has to be grasped through awakening and can't be spoken; whatever can be explained clearly is not the true way to becoming a Buddha. Later still, on a trip to Fo Guang Shan, I watched Master Hsing Yun's popular promotional film saying the Buddha is a person, not a god, and everyone is a Buddha. Buddhism says all is empty, and one should cling to nothing. The above is roughly the core of my memories of the Buddha, as a non-Buddhist with reverence for Buddhism. Obviously, my understanding of the Buddha is extremely shallow and vague.

In university there was a course I took a little of, which I didn't fully understand but was very drawn to, and that was quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics says everything has wave-particle duality, which is to say I am both a wave and a particle. There's a famous principle called the uncertainty principle: for a particle, the more precisely its position is measured, the greater the deviation in its velocity, and vice versa. Besides these two points, there are two more that are my own thinking. One is about waves. The wave is a very interesting thing: each small local part basically embodies the overall characteristics of the whole wave, yet you can't, completely and entirely, feel that you truly see its whole picture the way you look at a particle, because it can pervade infinity, and the observer is also immersed in it. Any measurement of ours is actually an interaction with the whole wave, its reaction after being disturbed; at the moment of measurement it is no longer its original self, and what its original self is you actually can't fully know, because as soon as you measure it, it is no longer its original self, and if you don't measure it you can't perceive its existence; even if you're within it, or it's right before your eyes, if there's no interaction then it's as if it never existed. Some of this feels very like what Buddhism says about impermanence and the unknowable: you can only guess, only awaken to it, but can never "grasp" it. It is impermanent, it is everywhere, you are within it; if it is a wave pervading the boundless, then perhaps you are part of this wave, you yourself are all the characteristics of this wave, yet you can't truly catch hold of it. Any attachment of yours, any deliberate measurement of yours, is a kind of disturbance to it; after the disturbance it is no longer its original self, and even you are no longer your original self. And what exactly is it? You have no way of knowing, and don't need to know, because in fact you are it.

The other thought is about our means of knowing the world. When we look through the various sciences by which we know the world, it seems, without exception, to be "seeing is believing": science's measurement of the world relies mainly on light. I don't understand relativity, but I vaguely think that relativity, in order to accommodate light (to give light a special, unchanging speed), has to make time change conceptually (of course, what time is was a question to begin with: when time is measured with light it is one thing; what if it were measured by touch, or by the silent contemplation of the mind?). Our dependence on light is so strong that I can't help feeling the world we see is like this precisely because we use light to measure it, that is, our way of measuring created this world. This world was created by our own subjective measurement; if we could do without it, what would the world be like? But perhaps that's simply impossible for us, because we ourselves are some kind of broad wave; if so, then all so-called seeing-is-believing materialism is itself idealism.

In 1931, the genius mathematical logician Gödel, who died young [Translator's note: so in the original, 英年早逝, "died in his prime"; Kurt Gödel in fact died in 1978 at the age of 71], put forward the incompleteness theorem, shattering a dream of nearly a thousand years of all mathematicians and philosophers. The basic meaning is that within a self-consistent (self-consistant) system made up of a finite number of axioms [Translator's note: the English spelling "self-consistant" is as in the original], there will always be propositions that can't be inferred as true or false by this logical system, that is, there are always problems this system can't know/can't decide. It tells us plainly that our attempt to explain the world with a finite number of principles plus logic is futile. Gödel proved this is impossible.

AI has been especially hot lately, and many people have started to feel AI will replace humans, but my vague feeling is that if it's computers based on the current kind of 0101 deterministic (mechanical) decision [Translator's note: the original reads 判定的基础多计算机; the 多 appears to be a slip for 的, and the phrase is translated by that sense], they should have huge limitations. It runs fully into the undecidable problems spoken of in Gödel's proof. If in the future we have quantum computers, what will that be like? I don't know, because in theory quantum computers can be unconfined by a finite number of axioms, unconfined by 01 mechanical decisions.

Buddhist thought, quantum mechanics, and the incompleteness theorem of mathematical logic all seem to be telling us:

The world and life as a whole are unknowable, at least can't be measured precisely; they can't be measured exactly, they are uncertain.

Describing and regulating the world with finite rules is impossible; things are imperfect and incomplete

Besides this, I have a faint feeling that what you see is to a very great extent determined by how you look; the part may describe the whole, even though the whole is unknowable.

And yet we humans often want whatever we lack: lacking an arm we want an arm, lacking a leg we want a leg; life will finally pass away, yet we often seek eternal youth; love is not eternal, yet we pin our hopes on an unchanging stone. Perhaps this world can't be determined to begin with, is impermanent to begin with, and that's why we pursue eternity, pursue a certain sense of security, so tirelessly. Not only do we pursue it, we always want to grasp it, and disturb it to prove its existence and our own existence. But little do we know that its existence may not be at all what we imagine, and it has never been unchanging: the more you measure it, the more you disturb it, and the more you disturb it the less it is its original self. After you've tested it countless times to set your heart at ease, it has already been changed by you. Like trust, like love: it can't be measured exactly, and measure it too much and it's gone. Only if you firmly believe, only if you accept an uncertain fate and accept it, is it there, and are you happy.

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