Can Buddhist economy help us better grasp LLMs (and capitalism in general)?

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Can Buddhist economy help us better grasp LLMs (and capitalism in general)?

Buddhist economy tries to enhance well-being. Commodities and consumption are a means to this enhancement but not its end.

It has 3 purposes:

  1. Giving a person a chance to utilise and develop their faculties,
  2. overcome egocentredness by joining a community,
  3. bring the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.

When we use LLMs, we are riding the same wave of industrialisation that started with the Madeira Island centuries ago. As we can, we should.

So we mechanised ourselves even more. But we need to be clear on a crucial difference that only the craftsperson can distinguish: the mechanisation that enhances a person's skill and power versus the one that turns a person's work into a mechanical slave. This is precisely what TPS teaches us in the Jidoka pillar with the Human / Machine Separation - respect people through the quality of their work and environment.

As LLMs mimic us with good thinking and craftsmanship, we can easily fall into the slave-to-machine pattern simply by the words we put into these textareas. The separation is blurrier than it has ever been.

Just as important, the externalities can't be overlooked: concentration of power in the hands of a few that threatens democracy, the huge amount of energy, mineral resources, and plagiarism it requires, people threatened with unemployment, misinformation, and of course, the ecological impact. The feeling of belonging to an ecosystem is not restored. How will look the bust from this boom?

It is irrational to measure "standard of living" by the amount of goods a person consumes. Instead, Buddhists try to maximise well-being with a minimum of consumption, which is only a means to that end. "Eat or be eaten" has alternatives. Consumption is not the purpose of all economic activity.

References

@youtube

  • The True Origin of Capitalism - George Monbiot (Part 1) | How To Academy

@youtube

  • Clara Mattei: capitalism is not natural - it’s enforced | Channel 4 News
  • Small is beautiful | E.F. Schumacher - 1977
  • Jidoka Remanso