(laughs) Yes, we have here a full hour.

A full hour?

Yes.

Till you sleep.

Till I sleep. That’s right.

So, the eight hours you said—are they consecutive?

If I can, but it doesn’t matter. I can also do four and four.

Four and four?

Yeah, or five and two and one.

But in total, you keep eight hours.

Yeah, I don’t defer the debt. Interest rate too high.

I see. So, yeah, thank you so much for accepting.

My intention is, in the first place, just having a chat with you; but I really respect your policy to make whatever you say public.

Yeah, public domain.

Public domain. So, okay, how can I use this precious conversation with you?

I have a podcast program in English.

Yes, you can edit however you want and use it for your podcast.

Thank you. And also, you said you want to use this one, so…

You can do it for your podcast. I will just publish it as text.

Sure, sure. A textual transcript.

Yeah. The public domain doesn’t need to extend to your podcast—you can use whatever license.

Yeah. Okay. So this podcast is around the question: “How can we become good ancestors for the future generation?”

I will ask about your memory or relationship with ancestors, and from that question, go deeper—not only about your life story, but also your philosophy and vision for future generations.

Okay.

Thank you so much for joining this podcast. It’s great to finally meet in person.

In high resolution. We were like pen pals.

Yes. When I translated the book Good Ancestor from English to Japanese—just before publishing—I had a chance to meet you online, live. That was really a great opportunity to ask a question: “How can we become good ancestors for the future generation?”

What you said really resonated with me, so I was happily surprised as the translator of the book. You have a message around ancestors, right?

Yes, I want to be a good-enough ancestor.

Yes. Could we start by hearing your thoughts and ideas around this “good-enough ancestor”?

Sure.

When I first became Digital Minister in 2016, there had been no Digital Minister before in Taiwan. So the people in the Executive Yuan—our Cabinet—asked me to write my own job description. I wrote one when I was in Wellington, New Zealand. It’s very short and goes like this:

When we see the Internet of Things, let’s make it an Internet of Beings.When we see Virtual Reality, let’s make it Shared Reality.When we see Machine Learning, let’s make it Collaborative Learning.When we see User Experience, let’s make it about Human Experience.And whenever we hear “the Singularity is near,” let us always remember: the Plurality is here.

That’s my job description. The idea is not to solve everything for the next generation—to be a “perfect” ancestor. Because no matter what “optimal” means, if we try to converge on a single vision, we take possibilities away from future generations. We’d be designing their lives for them.

But “Plurality” means being humble—not destroying the canvas, but also not overcrowding it, leaving future generations a wider canvas on which to paint. So that, when we log out of this world, we leave behind a bigger canvas than the one we logged into. That’s “good-enough ancestry”—not perfect, not bad, just good enough.

Wow. Such a beautiful job description, in the first place.

What you said resonates very strongly with the philosophy of Shinran in Japan. Shinran was the founder of Jōdo Shinshū and made a great effort to seek enlightenment on Mount Hiei—like a university for Buddhist priests at that time. But after 20 years of practice, he realized, “I can’t fully attain enlightenment because I can’t overcome my attachments and my ego.”

In regret, he left the mountain and went down to the city, where he met his teacher, Hōnen, who taught a different way of Buddhism—one open to anyone, not just monks. In this tradition, people accept that they can’t fully become enlightened by themselves because of attachments and other human limitations, yet there’s still a way to become a Buddha.

So humility is central—like the philosophy of Socrates, who acknowledged the limits of our perception. The notion of a “perfect human” is an illusion and is very limiting. In that sense, I find something very similar in your message and Shinran’s.

Yes. People know I sleep for eight hours a day; I have to do that. It’s my routine. But I don’t do it “perfectly”—eight hours consecutively. Sometimes I wake up in the middle; sometimes, because of jet lag, I do four and four, or three and three and two. It doesn’t really matter.

I think this is less about perfectionism. Seeing a shortcoming can be an invitation, as Leonard Cohen wrote: “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” That imperfection opens the door for new ideas, innovation, and potential. If I followed the same “perfect” routine all the time, I wouldn’t have the chance to explore flexibility.

Yes, totally agree.

I’d love to hear about your feelings and thoughts around your own ancestors. I don’t just mean blood-related family ancestors but also teachers, friends who’ve passed away, even historical figures…

…or Lucy?

Lucy, yes.

Well, my family name is Táng; my mother’s family name is Lǐ. There’s a famous philosopher called Lǐ Ěr, allegedly the author of the Tao Te Ching. The Taoist tradition thus started with that text. When I was a child, I had a heart condition that made it impossible for me to get too angry or too happy—if my heart rate rose above a certain point, I would faint and wake up in the ICU. That condition wasn’t cured until I finally had surgery at age twelve.

Because of that, I had to keep my emotions extremely stable. The Taoist practices—qigong, breathwork, meditation, visualization—were not just philosophy to me; they were survival skills. We don’t call it zazen, but it looks exactly the same, with Tai Chi, acupuncture, traditional medicine…all those Taoist traditions were part of my everyday life. Even before reading the Tao Te Ching, I was living Lǐ Ěr’s ideas.

My paternal grandparents were Catholics, so they had their own tradition of prayer. My father eventually got into Tibetan Buddhism and many other schools of Buddhism. I’ve read many scriptures, but always as operation manuals—things to practice with my body and life rather than simply studying intellectually. In that sense, I feel these ancestral practices come alive when I do them; I’m embodying the spirit of my ancestors.

You’re a product of many different ancestral lineages.

Yes, definitely. Also, when I was four, doctors told me and my parents that there was only a 50% chance I’d survive until surgery. So every night when I went to sleep, I felt like I was flipping a coin. If I lost, I wouldn’t wake up.

That’s why, even now, I don’t say, “Oh, I’ll just sleep on the weekend.” Because for all I knew at four years old, there might be no weekend. So I learned to publish before I perish—recording everything I learned that day on a tape recorder, or typing it up, or publishing it online in the public domain. That way, even if I didn’t wake up, it wouldn’t matter. I could still be a “good-enough ancestor” to whoever came after. They wouldn’t have to wait 75 years for copyright to expire.

So that idea of ancestry was also passed on to me, and I try to pass it on—hopefully in an even richer form—to future descendants.

Because you were always at risk of death, could you elaborate on your notion of ego or self?

For me, the lifetime of the ego is one day. I only have continuity for one day.

I see. So after eight hours of sleep, you get reborn, live one day, and die?

That’s right—eight hours “dead,” and then reborn. It’s like practicing dying every night.

That’s easy to say, but for most people, even if they understand it intellectually, they still feel, “I need more money, more property,” and so on.

I don’t feel that way.

I was just interviewed by a YouTuber from the channel White Crypto, and she was puzzled. I’ve had a Bitcoin wallet since around 2012 or 2013, and I used to consult for one Bitcoin per hour. But I never actually held any Bitcoin in the wallet. If a client paid me whatever Bitcoin was worth—100 or 200 US dollars—I would just spend it. Maybe donate it, maybe buy a flight ticket to share some experience with friends. I never accumulated Bitcoin, so the wallet stayed empty.

That’s what happens when your ego lasts only one day.

It sounds like the mindset of people in Japan’s Edo period, where they’d earn money in the daytime and spend it in the evening, living day by day. From your perspective, how do you see this world that’s so focused on control, power, and ownership?

On my keyboard, I see keys labeled “Control,” “Command,” “Escape,” “Shift”…lots of different philosophies. But to me, the most important key is the biggest one: “Space.” It creates space for everyone, and it works with all the other keys.

The most important key is space—yes, in Japanese, 空 (ku) means emptiness or void, a central concept in Mahayana Buddhism.

Yes. When I filled out the HR form for my job description, in the “Party Affiliation” field, I wrote 無 (void), and in the “Gender” field, I also wrote 無 (void).

I’ve always felt you’re like someone from the future. Meeting you in person, I still feel you’re like a bodhisattva.

I once asked you online, “How can we become good ancestors?” It was a privilege to hear your answer—“good-enough ancestors.” Do you remember how you responded?

No—that was a different lifetime.

Right, your previous lifetime.

But that ancestor of yours said, “Leave more options for future generations to choose.”

Yes! And today I said, “Leave a wider canvas.” It’s the same idea, just a different vocabulary.

I see. Could you elaborate on the “wider canvas”?

Yes. Saying “leave more options” might sound like giving future generations five discrete choices, and they can only pick one. But “wider canvas” implies they can paint in multiple ways at once, combine different philosophies, etc. It’s more about open space—空 (kong) in Mandarin, or 無 (wu)—which means anything can fill this canvas, interdependently.

It’s not that I give you five options and if you pick one, the other four vanish. Rather, we empower our descendants to be good-enough ancestors themselves, leaving them an even bigger canvas. So a shared canvas is a better metaphor than discrete choices.

That’s very inspiring. I often share your perspective with other leaders when I ask, “How can we become good ancestors?” Sometimes they worry that if we leave too many options or too wide a canvas, people get confused. What do you think?

That’s why I prefer the canvas metaphor. If you just list a million options, that’s overwhelming. But with a canvas, you can start painting anywhere. You don’t have to read every possibility. A canvas is “dependent arising”: you begin here, which touches other parts of the canvas. It’s all connected. That way, complexity isn’t paralyzing; you can pick any simple corner and start from there.

I see. From your philosophical perspective, we’ve focused on human choices, but how do you view animals, plants, and every other form of life and matter? Recently, thinkers in the Western world—like our mutual friend Glen Weyl—have approached me to discuss AI and animism. I’m curious how you include non-human existences.

We’re already included; it’s just that some people exclude themselves from nature. From a Taoist perspective, heaven, earth, animals, microbes, plants…they’re all our ancestors. Lucy may or may not have been a “modern human,” but she’s still our ancestor. It’s just a matter of humility to admit this.

Some humans resisted the idea that Earth isn’t the center of the universe, or that we evolved from a primate ancestor. Those transitions caused upheaval. Now, it’s difficult for some people to realize that any question with a clear right-or-wrong answer is something machines can handle better than we can.

But it all comes from excluding ourselves from the broader fabric. Then we say, “We’re the best.” And then a machine becomes the best, and we feel lost. If we see ourselves as part of the fabric, we just welcome new members. No problem.

That aligns perfectly with my recent thinking. We’re witnessing a shift in the meaning of “humanity,” especially in cultures heavily influenced by the Abrahamic religions, where humans are considered special, separate from other species—“We’re not Neanderthals.”

“We are not even Lucy.”

Yes. We used to think we were special because of our rationality and logos, which enabled science and civilization. But ironically, that capacity produced AI, which now seems to dominate the logos realm—better programmers, etc. So we need a new foundation for uniqueness. Thinkers are rediscovering, “We are animals,” with physical bodies, emotions, families, memories, and so on.

And every night we might die.

Yes. So, in this way, we’re different. That’s why thinkers come to me wanting to talk about the relationship between AI and animism, which recognizes spirit or presence in everything—animals, plants, stones, rivers.

Also thunder. I was in Kyoto…

Yes. In this animistic perspective, we don’t need to position humans as superior.

Some cultures might find it painful to let go of human supremacy, but hopefully it won’t be as tumultuous as past scientific or evolutionary transitions.

Exactly. Let me shift the question slightly.

When I ask, “How can we become good ancestors?” people often think, “What can I leave behind?” But we might also need to consider what we should stop or put an end to, so as not to leave certain burdens behind.

Like pollution?

Yes, or it could be GDP.

Also a kind of pollution.

As a Japanese Buddhist who often leads funeral ceremonies, I wonder: what would you like to hold a funeral for?

That’s a great question. I think we can hold a funeral for “human superiority” or “human supremacy in all dimensions.” The sooner we lay that to rest, the sooner we can return—inevitably—to the fabric of nature. Why not do it now, rather than prolong that belief?

Maybe we can provide hospice care for those who can’t let go immediately—help them find something fun to do first. But we can hold smaller funerals step by step. For example, we once thought humans were better than computers at playing Go; then AlphaGo arrived, so we held a funeral for that superiority. And for chess, shogi, transcriptions, voice synthesis, translations—funerals for each piece of human superiority. We don’t need a big funeral all at once.

Yes, we need a funeral for human superiority among species, but also within humanity—so many people feel they must be superior to fellow human beings, right?

It’s like playing tic-tac-toe at three years old. Being the “superior tic-tac-toe player” matters when you’re that small, but by the time you’re six, you’ve outgrown it. You wouldn’t brag, “I’m the best tic-tac-toe player in the world!”

(laughs) Exactly. Building on that, people often ask me about growth or having a purpose, a dream, or a goal. But for someone like you, who essentially lives only one day at a time—what does having a goal or a purpose mean?

My goal tonight is to sleep for eight hours. Otherwise, my “descendant” tomorrow will wake up confused and with a smaller emotional canvas. It’s my basic responsibility to have a well-rested sleep so that tomorrow’s version of me can function.

Also, if I learn something from you today and publish this transcript, my responsibility is to put it in the public domain so people won’t have to ask my permission later. They might make a report, a manga, or a film—whatever. I might not be around to say “yes,” so permissionless innovation is part of my duty to future generations.

Whereas if people insist on intellectual property, they view future generations almost like competitors—“Wait until I’m done with this idea; then you can use it.” That’s fundamentally different.

Do you consider yourself a long-term thinker or a short-term thinker?

If I remove myself from tomorrow, then “tomorrow,” “next generation,” and “seventh generation” are basically the same. I’m free to treat short- and long-term as having equal value. But if someone expects to be around for the next quarter, that short term often overshadows the seventh generation. For me, any period longer than one day is effectively the same.

That’s a really interesting view.

One more thing: about AI, especially large language models—I feel my notion of literacy has changed significantly since using them. These models analyze text in vector spaces. I used to focus heavily on exact wording, but now, every translation prompt I give a large language model comes back slightly differently, yet the meaning feels the same.

Yes, the vector is the same—just different expressions, or different “fingers” pointing to the same “moon.”

Exactly. It reminds me of the old metaphor of finger and moon: the “finger” is language—could be the Bible, a sutra…

…or the Tao Te Ching.

But it’s never the moon itself. The moon is beyond language or rational description—like truth or deeper values. Religious people sometimes get stuck on the finger, declaring, “This text is the only truth.” But large language models treat words more like vectors.

It’s fluid.

Yes, fluid—illustrating that the specific text is less important than the vector of meaning. We’re in the age of AI, but also in an age that calls for new literacy. What do you think of new literacy in this context?

If we fixate on one form of expression, we try to keep the canvas the same size and angle as when that text was first written. Even if it was the best expression of some truth in its time, we’re treating that environment as the only environment.

If the canvas is growing and fluid, we can reinterpret or re-express the text in a new environment.

People who cling to a text as “perfect” feel compelled to keep the world unchanged, so that text remains perfect. It’s that “perfect ancestor” mindset.

But if the canvas keeps growing, each day, or each time we meet a new person, we might need new fingers, new metaphors. Whether the world must remain the same or expands fluidly—that’s the key difference.

As an author of a book about cleaning as meditation, let me ask you about entropy. Historically, humanity has produced countless concepts without “cleaning up,” so the logos world is quite messy. We have so many words and ideas that it’s overwhelming. As we anticipate a new literacy era, do you think we need to “clean up” the scattered concepts?

When you say “clean,” I hear “reduce.” But reduction is only one method. We can also “reuse” or “recycle.”

“Reuse” means taking a concept and applying it in a different context—like using “finger” as a stand-in for language in large language models. “Recycle” means treating old concepts not as final forms but as raw material.

So if your personal aim is to clean your mind, then “reduce” is best. If you want to help the older world communicate with the younger world, you can “reuse” as metaphor. If you want to create something entirely new, you can “recycle” the old materials to form fresh ideas—like turning spilled coffee into brown paint on a bigger canvas.

Whether you work alone, as a bridge, or as a creator of new canvases, you might use different R-strategies.

So we can reuse what looks like waste—how creative! Thank you.

All right, let’s stop here. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast. I really appreciate it.

It was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.