I looked through scientific research on meditation a few years ago, and much to my surprise and dismay found nothing to support the popular claims of its many benefits. Whenever a new study was touted in pop-science headlines, a tiniest amount of scrutiny would reveal methodological shortcomings at best, or blatant manipulation at worst. I have thus dismissed meditation as belonging to the realm of magical thinking, somewhere between Reiki and Eucharist.
A few facts have lead me to investigate the subject again:
LW community in general seems very positive about meditation. This is the most important consideration, as it means that either way I will improve my model of the world at the end of this research: Either meditation is helpful and I will gain a new tool in my toolbox, or it’s not and I will learn to put less trust in the LW community.
When doing my literature review few years ago, I didn’t know a rationalist community that could criticise my efforts and so I might have missed something. Hopefully, once I start posting here, this question will gain enough attention for people to point out my omissions.
Sam Harris believes in benefits of meditation and I trust that guy. However, I won’t be surprised if that’s explained away by him having a blind spot here.
I’m going to purposefully keep to myself my personal history with meditation (or lack thereof), and any ideological bias that I might have against or in favour of meditation. All of that information is irrelevant in the context of this question, and would only serve to clog judgement.
First, a short backstory:
I looked through scientific research on meditation a few years ago, and much to my surprise and dismay found nothing to support the popular claims of its many benefits. Whenever a new study was touted in pop-science headlines, a tiniest amount of scrutiny would reveal methodological shortcomings at best, or blatant manipulation at worst. I have thus dismissed meditation as belonging to the realm of magical thinking, somewhere between Reiki and Eucharist.
A few facts have lead me to investigate the subject again:
LW community in general seems very positive about meditation. This is the most important consideration, as it means that either way I will improve my model of the world at the end of this research: Either meditation is helpful and I will gain a new tool in my toolbox, or it’s not and I will learn to put less trust in the LW community.
When doing my literature review few years ago, I didn’t know a rationalist community that could criticise my efforts and so I might have missed something. Hopefully, once I start posting here, this question will gain enough attention for people to point out my omissions.
Sam Harris believes in benefits of meditation and I trust that guy. However, I won’t be surprised if that’s explained away by him having a blind spot here.
What made me restart this investigation now in particular is a brief discussion that I had with another LW reader under Kaj_sotala’s recent post A non-mystical explanation of insight meditation and the three characteristics of existence: introduction and preamble, as well as the warm reception that the post has received (and for good reasons, I think it’s valuable regardless of which way this investigation will go).
I’m going to purposefully keep to myself my personal history with meditation (or lack thereof), and any ideological bias that I might have against or in favour of meditation. All of that information is irrelevant in the context of this question, and would only serve to clog judgement.