I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?

Thank you.

It was a lot of fun. Thank you.

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

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 ...

“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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

It’s fluid.

…or the Tao Te Ching.

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

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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.

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!”

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 ...

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?

Also a kind of pollution.

Like pollution?

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.

Also thunder. I was in Kyoto…

And every night we might die.

“We are not even Lucy.”

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.

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.

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.

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. ...

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.

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 ...

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

No—that was a different lifetime.

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).

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.

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

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 ...

I don’t feel that way.

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

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

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.

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 ...

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.

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

…or Lucy?

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, ...