You live in a simulation. This simulation is not created by a digital computer. This simulation is created by your brain, which is a biological computer.
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The purpose of your brain is to direct your body’s actions. In order to send adaptive output signals, your brain needs to have a model of its environment. Your brain receives sensory input signals from your senses, and uses them to creates a real-time simulation of your environment. This simulation is called your umwelt.
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Everyone has an umwelt. You have an umwelt. I have am umwelt. This squirrel has an umwelt.
To create your umwelt, your brain is constantly predicting what it’s sensory inputs will be, and then comparing its predictions to the real inputs. Your brain propagates a surprise whenever its predictions conflict with the sensory input data. This kind of surprise-propagating generative algorithm is called predictive coding.
If all your brain did was simulate reality, then causation would all flow in one direction. The environment would affect your brain, but your brain wouldn’t affect the environment. But the whole purpose of your brain is to make decisions that affect the environment! Sensory inputs about the world affect your brain’s umwelt at the same time that your brain’s umwelt is affecting the environment.
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Your brain creates its umwelt by trying to predict what will happen in the environment. But what will happen in the environment is, partially, the result of what your brain will do to affect the environment. And what your brain will do to affect the environment is dependent on its umwelt. This creates a feedback loop where your brain’s umwelt is dependent on your brain’s umwelt. Self-referential feedback loops can cause nasty problems.
For example, suppose your brain gets a hunger signal. Is everything okay? That depends. Are you going to eat food? If so, then the food problem is addressed and everything is fine. But if everything is fine then you don’t need to eat food. And if you don’t need to eat food then everything is not fine. Feedback loops like this, where logical states oscillate back and forth, are called limit-cycle oscillations. Limit-cycle oscillations can be system-breaking bad.
To solve this the problem of self-referential feedback loops, your brain stops trying to predict its own output decisions. Instead, your brain wraps its output decisions into a black box called willful volition. Your brain says to itself “My own decisions to influence the world through output signals are fundamentally uncomputable”. Subjectively, this is misperceived as non-deterministic free will.
Broadly-speaking, the brain disassociates its umwelt into two regions, depending on whether they are involved in self-referential feedback loops:
- The region with self-referential feedback loops. This includes your body, which you have direct volitional control over, along with other self-referential aspects of your umwelt, such as your desires. Collectively, this is referred to as the self, and is misperceived as an immortal soul.
- The region without self-referential feedback loops. This mostly includes the behavior of inanimate objects. Collectively, this is referred to as the other. The other is misperceived as external environment, when it is, in fact, part of the umwelt inside of your brain.
There are many animist edge cases, including animals and other people. They sometimes seem like they have free will and souls too because your brain uses self-referential empathy circuits to model them. But they don’t always. Whether these people seem to have souls is often contextual. Your pet seems to have a soul. The chicken you ate for breakfast doesn’t.
This division of your umwelt into self and other is a form of disassociation called dualism. Dualism is an artifact of a janky umwelt, and is the root cause of many normative-yet-harmful dysfunctions, including craving and ego-centrism.
Dualism is a dysfunction caused by an out-of-control feedback loop between your umwelt and environment. Meditation cures dualism by cutting the feedback loop. When you meditate, you stop moving and stop thinking. Stopping moving stops your brain’s influence on its environment. Stopping thinking stops your brain’s influence on its self-referential fabrications like craving. Meditation is usually done in a quiet peaceful place too, which reduces surprises to your brain via sensory inputs. Together, this replaces the bidirectional feedback loop between your brain and environment with a one-directional open circuit.
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If you live well, meditate properly and behave morally, then your brain can drop temporarily from a dualistic umwelt into a nondual umwelt. These are called nondualist altered states. With enough practice, your brain shifts into a nondual umwelt permanently in a process called awakening. Awakening causes permanent altered traits, such as ego death, that permanently improve your qualia.
Cyberbuddhism is the application of the scientific method to Buddhist data via cybernetic models. We endeavor to figure out what the brain is doing, so that we can fix it.
Ph’nglui nirodh’nafh Buddha parinibbāna wgah’nagl fhtagn.