What I call the “Three Paradigms,” and in a universe that seems utterly despairing and meaningless, I experienced a meaning that moved me to tears.

An Ordinary Day

July 19, 2023, was a long day. I remember these events: watching Lex Fridman’s interview with Yuval Noah Harari, working, studying Kosmos-2, downloading Llama 2, conversing with GPT-4 and Claude2, scheduling a meeting with friends, watching a video by Lao Gao about artificial life, watching Garp’s farewell with a smile, watching Satya Nadella’s Inspire 2023 speech, recalling his books and deeds. Looking at my freshly trimmed lawn, which appeared neat and beautiful after watering. Accompanying Mabel (my 20-month-old daughter) on her scooter, observing the neighbor’s wind chimes, flamingo wind chimes, ants, blooming flowers, ants, a rabbit eating grass, watching passersby, cars returning home, and the slowly opening garage door. As usual, giving Mabel a bath, brushing her teeth, and reading storybooks.

Meaninglessness

Suddenly, I had an epiphany that almost all experiences could be explained in the same way: input certain signals, process them, and output the next behavior (which could be words, thoughts, speech, actions). I call this the “Three Paradigms.” Artificial life forms, only the size of cells, can exhibit a myriad of behaviors just because of different shapes in the same environment; when telling Mabel a story, I say the first sentence, and Mabel says the next; LLMs are constantly predicting the next token, starkly demonstrating the emergence from signals, parameters to intelligence, and even consciousness. I had this idea long ago, but too much evidence finally led me to almost believe it without a doubt, completing a “leap of faith.” All phenomena are just the operation of the “Three Paradigms,” without more divine or poetic elements. This idea made me feel that everything is “just so,” “just like that,” which is colder and more meaningless than knowing that everything is meaningless. I looked at Mabel in front of me, at her still immature logic, her hesitation in understanding the content of books, her attention shifting to things glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. This is humanity, constantly learning humans, extracting signals during the day, stuffing them into the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, and conducting intensive training and adjusting brain parameters at night. Every waking moment is spent receiving visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory signals, spinning in the neural network, thinking they are in control of themselves and some external people and things. But to what extent are they just receiving and outputting signals, acting on conditioned reflexes, intuition, and experience, while consciousness doesn’t even participate in decision-making, only explaining its thoughts and actions.

But don’t humans have rich emotions? I can clearly feel the anger rising in me when I’m interrupted by a passionate question from someone I love while I’m focused on studying, then telling myself it’s just because I didn’t nap and my mental state is poor, but still barely responding, worrying that my tone might be a bit cold, fortunately, the other person doesn’t seem to notice, and I can continue studying, so diligent, yet enlightened, knowing to observe my emotions and adjust in time, though still not full of passion. Recalling this fleeting psychological activity earlier today, even if they seem so detailed and rich, aren’t they just ripples caused by an interruption? Input signal, process signal, generate thoughts, actions, even writing it down now. These words will be seen by you, input into your brain, causing ripples or not. Isn’t this nonsense? Of course, it is, the Earth still orbits the Sun, the Sun still explodes the equivalent of 900 billion tons of TNT per second, somewhere in the universe a supernova collapses into a black hole, the words I write and the storybooks I read are like dust, insignificant.

Everything is meaningless, there is no universal evaluation system, no afterlife, no God, not even judgment, no divine official will remember the good or evil you have done. Of course, humans might create a virtual world, or create and control life on another planet, letting them see miracles, believe in gods, that is, us humans, giving them a sense of meaning, letting them live, reproduce, without knowing why, maybe for love, to pass the time, or to pursue a special story. If we are just living in a virtual world, would the civilization that created our virtual world have a very different understanding of meaning? The world is so meaningless, it really makes one feel like withered wood, heart like dead ashes.

Rebuilding Meaning

But accepting the essentially meaningless reality makes everything simpler. Are humans just operating biological machines? Through people’s daily complex and exquisite emotional changes and enigmatic behaviors, at a deeper level, we seem to be seeking a sense of being seen, heard, and loved, aren’t we? Mabel acting spoiled or even crying for me to tell her a story, is it simply wanting to hear a story? Or is it wanting to get adult affection? Can I give Mabel’s brain processor different signals to produce different results? I say, “It’s too late, Mabel needs to sleep,” I can’t tell you a story anymore, but I can care about your desire to hear a story, make you laugh and say goodnight. I see you seem to feel my love, you stop crying, you smile, making everything meaningful, my actions are meaningful, they have a response. The chaotic bedtime becomes tender and natural. Human actions are as dead as mechanical arms, but to me observing these responses, my feelings are another matter, they are meaningful. Loving Mabel unreservedly and getting a response, in these 10 minutes from despair to tears of emotion, I felt meaning again.

Could this be a rebirth? First, let your heart be like dead ashes, thus eliminating all joy, even anxiety is uprooted, then you can be reborn, seeing the most important thing, for me, it is love. Material life is limited, but love is infinite, the more you love, the more love you have. There is no predetermined goal, nor is a goal needed, just follow the Tao, and there will be no anxiety and urgency. Everything will be fine, respect the Tao and go with the flow, care for the people around you, live with heart.

Three Paradigms

The “Three Paradigms” have had a positive impact on all aspects of my life. I use it to understand all kinds of incredible phenomena and behaviors, making change and adjustment a bit easier. I will share more of my understanding and application of the “Three Paradigms” in future articles.