I mean, sure, it’s a time honored practice to lie to people and tell them they can make a substantial fraction of the total progress (“deep”) with very little effort, intending to get them to start when otherwise they simply wouldn’t, so that they’ll find out that it takes very little effort to make a lot of progress even though they’ll also find out that the total is more vast than they ever imagined and their little amounts of effort didn’t yield a substantial fraction of the total progress.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying, “It’s dishonest to tell people that 10 minutes of daily meditation has worthwhile benefits”? Are you speaking from personal experience with meditation? Are you aware of the many benefits supported the scientific literature? Are you aware of any research that establishes necessary timelines or “ROI” estimates for those benefits? Do you think there might be a lot of individual variability around the benefits of meditation?
I’ve elaborated on my position here. Happy to hear your thoughts!
Some personal experience. On the order of… ~100 hrs, I think?
I am not saying it’s dishonest to say it has worthwhile benefits. My guess is that if someone hears about this enlightenment thing and thinks hmmm I wonder if I can...? and then tries insight meditation for 30x 10 minute sessions, the modal result is probably (a) some worthwhile benefits, and (b) believing that the scope of potential worthwhile benefits is far far larger than what 30x 10 minute sessions resulted in. Or, rephrased, that 30x 10 minute sessions just scratched the surface. Or, rephrased, that 30x 10 minute sessions was not “deep”.
If you want to throw regular 12-person themed dinner parties every weekend, cooking every day for 10 minutes is a fantastic place to start learning the skills you need, and something like that is absolutely necessary for long-term success if you’ve never cooked, and will definitely have worthwhile benefits, and absolutely is going to miss covering tons and tons of necessary skills. If you told someone your goal and they said “it’s actually easy, just cook for 10 minutes a day for 30 days”, they would be telling you a false thing. Their advice, if followed, might be the best way to start, but that’s not the same thing as true.
Are you aware of the many benefits supported the scientific literature?
Could you please elaborate? The last time I checked (quite thoroughly, but it was few years ago), the only confirmed benefit of meditation was in treating chronic anxiety. But even then, it was not more beneficial than other treatments.
We study the impact of yoga and meditation on various cognitive and behavioral functions. Our results suggest that meditation can produce experience-based structural alterations in the brain. We also found evidence that meditation may slow down the age related atrophy of certain areas of the brain.
I mean, sure, it’s a time honored practice to lie to people and tell them they can make a substantial fraction of the total progress (“deep”) with very little effort, intending to get them to start when otherwise they simply wouldn’t, so that they’ll find out that it takes very little effort to make a lot of progress even though they’ll also find out that the total is more vast than they ever imagined and their little amounts of effort didn’t yield a substantial fraction of the total progress.
I still hate it.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying, “It’s dishonest to tell people that 10 minutes of daily meditation has worthwhile benefits”? Are you speaking from personal experience with meditation? Are you aware of the many benefits supported the scientific literature? Are you aware of any research that establishes necessary timelines or “ROI” estimates for those benefits? Do you think there might be a lot of individual variability around the benefits of meditation?
I’ve elaborated on my position here. Happy to hear your thoughts!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Mf2MCkYgSZSJRz5nM/a-non-mystical-explanation-of-insight-meditation-and-the?commentId=g6QYqBEpt7KPYSsyj
Some personal experience. On the order of… ~100 hrs, I think?
I am not saying it’s dishonest to say it has worthwhile benefits. My guess is that if someone hears about this enlightenment thing and thinks hmmm I wonder if I can...? and then tries insight meditation for 30x 10 minute sessions, the modal result is probably (a) some worthwhile benefits, and (b) believing that the scope of potential worthwhile benefits is far far larger than what 30x 10 minute sessions resulted in. Or, rephrased, that 30x 10 minute sessions just scratched the surface. Or, rephrased, that 30x 10 minute sessions was not “deep”.
If you want to throw regular 12-person themed dinner parties every weekend, cooking every day for 10 minutes is a fantastic place to start learning the skills you need, and something like that is absolutely necessary for long-term success if you’ve never cooked, and will definitely have worthwhile benefits, and absolutely is going to miss covering tons and tons of necessary skills. If you told someone your goal and they said “it’s actually easy, just cook for 10 minutes a day for 30 days”, they would be telling you a false thing. Their advice, if followed, might be the best way to start, but that’s not the same thing as true.
Could you please elaborate? The last time I checked (quite thoroughly, but it was few years ago), the only confirmed benefit of meditation was in treating chronic anxiety. But even then, it was not more beneficial than other treatments.
Have you looked at the work of Sara Lazer PhD?
https://scholar.harvard.edu/sara_lazar/publications
And that’s just from one researcher.
A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Effects of Meditation on Empathy, Compassion, and Prosocial Behaviors
“Clinicians and meditation teachers should be aware that meditation can improve positive prosocial emotions and behaviors.”
Judging by the abstract, that paper is irrelevant:
It is about metta meditation, not insight meditation (or at least some other popular kind of meditation)
The supposed benefits are to the society and not to the individual undertaking the practice.
“Most control groups were wait-list or no-treatment”