I admit there might be reasons to invest in meditation practice that are not based on scientifically proven benefits (e.g., curiosity, sense of novelty, sense of belonging to a community). At the same time, I hope that most LW readers attach very little weight to those non-evidence-based reasons to meditate, just like I do.
I suppose I should admit the main reason I started meditating a long time ago was curiosity. I read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (reviewed on SSC here) and thought “well, this person sounds like they are explaining mental states that seem pretty unbelievable to me, I wonder if this is all BS.” I was/am mentally healthy and emotionally stable more than the average person. I don’t meditate that consistently anymore, only when things are more stressful than usual. Having it in the toolbox, like fitness, is enough for me. I did enough practice to know that what MCTB is pointing at is a real phenomenon, but that’s it. I actually think that viewing it as a hobby is the healthiest way to approach the kind of serious practice needed for enlightenment.
Let’s start with the easy to verify claims that I generalise as...
In my experience, these claims are false. I occasionally tried to use mindfulness to help me with dieting or exercising, since those are also things I do, and it never helped in a way I could discern.
Do you have some sources to back this up? I’ve heard many declared reasons why people begin their meditation practice, and it was quite a diverse set, none seemed dominant.
Thank you for challenging me on this, that was based only on personal observation, which as I admit above doesn’t even square with my own experience! This survey has concrete data on why people meditate in Fig. 1. The top reason is “General wellness and general disease prevention.” None of them are specifically happiness related, so maybe that’s an overly specific claim.
I don’t buy this at all. If the only observable benefit of me meditating is that I used to self-report average well-being of 5.17 out of 10, and now I self-report 7.39 on average
Based on my mental model of meditation, you probably would be dissatisfied with the results. In section IV of the post above, Scott Alexander summarizes thus:
Ingram dedicates himself hard to debunking a lot of the things people would use to fill the gap. Pages 261-328 discuss the various claims Buddhist schools have made about enlightenment, mostly to deny them all. He has nothing but contempt for the obviously silly ones, like how enlightened people can fly around and zap you with their third eyes. But he’s equally dismissive of things that sort of seem like the basics. He denies claims about how enlightened people can’t get angry, or effortlessly resist temptation, or feel universal unconditional love, or things like that. Some of this he supports with stories of enlightened leaders behaving badly; other times he cites himself as an enlightened person who frequently experiences anger, pain, and the like. Once he’s stripped everything else away, he says the only thing one can say about enlightenment is that it grants a powerful true experience of the non-dual nature of the world. [9eb1: I’ve excluded the possible counterargument here for brevity]
There are external benefits I think meditation has given me that feel like they are real, but the effect size is too small for studies to realistically find them. I can fall asleep reliably by using meditation as a tool. I can tactically break my own rumination thought cycles by meditating as a tool (or I can workout, but sometimes you’ve already worked out that day). I definitely feel like I am harder to surprise (lack of “jump”), but that’s not a particularly practical superpower.
I’ve meditated for >300 hours (maybe 4 or 5). I don’t regret my hours. It is a hobby, it satisfies my curiosity, it makes me happy when I need it. Lack of personal transformation is fine.
To be clear, my values with regard to self-rated wellness are different from yours. I am glad to improve my self-rated wellness even if it has no measurable outward impact on my behavior. My happiness is super important to me. If I move the needle on that, that’s great even if I’m still an asshole. I have no interest in being a miserable saint.
There are several characteristics of nutrition and eating that make scientific scrutiny very difficult, and those characteristics are not shared with meditation
Those differences are subsumed in the “high short-term costs” side of my statement. The exact costs are different, that’s all. You can tell people not to do all the things you mentioned during a diet study, but they won’t follow your instruction.
I suppose I should admit the main reason I started meditating a long time ago was curiosity. I read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (reviewed on SSC here) and thought “well, this person sounds like they are explaining mental states that seem pretty unbelievable to me, I wonder if this is all BS.” I was/am mentally healthy and emotionally stable more than the average person. I don’t meditate that consistently anymore, only when things are more stressful than usual. Having it in the toolbox, like fitness, is enough for me. I did enough practice to know that what MCTB is pointing at is a real phenomenon, but that’s it. I actually think that viewing it as a hobby is the healthiest way to approach the kind of serious practice needed for enlightenment.
In my experience, these claims are false. I occasionally tried to use mindfulness to help me with dieting or exercising, since those are also things I do, and it never helped in a way I could discern.
Thank you for challenging me on this, that was based only on personal observation, which as I admit above doesn’t even square with my own experience! This survey has concrete data on why people meditate in Fig. 1. The top reason is “General wellness and general disease prevention.” None of them are specifically happiness related, so maybe that’s an overly specific claim.
Based on my mental model of meditation, you probably would be dissatisfied with the results. In section IV of the post above, Scott Alexander summarizes thus:
There are external benefits I think meditation has given me that feel like they are real, but the effect size is too small for studies to realistically find them. I can fall asleep reliably by using meditation as a tool. I can tactically break my own rumination thought cycles by meditating as a tool (or I can workout, but sometimes you’ve already worked out that day). I definitely feel like I am harder to surprise (lack of “jump”), but that’s not a particularly practical superpower.
I’ve meditated for >300 hours (maybe 4 or 5). I don’t regret my hours. It is a hobby, it satisfies my curiosity, it makes me happy when I need it. Lack of personal transformation is fine.
To be clear, my values with regard to self-rated wellness are different from yours. I am glad to improve my self-rated wellness even if it has no measurable outward impact on my behavior. My happiness is super important to me. If I move the needle on that, that’s great even if I’m still an asshole. I have no interest in being a miserable saint.
Those differences are subsumed in the “high short-term costs” side of my statement. The exact costs are different, that’s all. You can tell people not to do all the things you mentioned during a diet study, but they won’t follow your instruction.