Claims about “if you keep doing this thing, after a lot of hard work you will achieve these amazing results” seem memetically useful regardless of their truth value. It gives people motivation to join the group and work harder; and whenever someone complains about working hard but not getting the advertised results, you can dismiss them as doing it wrong, or not working hard enough.
Also, consider the status incentives. Claiming to achieve the results after a lot of hard work is high-status; admitting to not achieving the results is low-status; and the claims are externally unverifiable anyway.
I believe monks have a taboo against talking about their attainments
I suspect this rule appeared as a consequence of many monks following the status incentives too obviously. Letting them continue doing so would be good for them but bad for the group, so the groups that made the taboo were more successful.
(Cynically speaking, the actual rule seems to be: Low-status people are not allowed to talk about their attainments. If you are high-status, others will make assumptions about your attainments, and you can just smile mysteriously and speak some generic wise words, or otherwise confirm it in a plausibly deniable way.)
Claims about “if you keep doing this thing, after a lot of hard work you will achieve these amazing results” seem memetically useful regardless of their truth value. It gives people motivation to join the group and work harder; and whenever someone complains about working hard but not getting the advertised results, you can dismiss them as doing it wrong, or not working hard enough.
Also, consider the status incentives. Claiming to achieve the results after a lot of hard work is high-status; admitting to not achieving the results is low-status; and the claims are externally unverifiable anyway.
I suspect this rule appeared as a consequence of many monks following the status incentives too obviously. Letting them continue doing so would be good for them but bad for the group, so the groups that made the taboo were more successful.
(Cynically speaking, the actual rule seems to be: Low-status people are not allowed to talk about their attainments. If you are high-status, others will make assumptions about your attainments, and you can just smile mysteriously and speak some generic wise words, or otherwise confirm it in a plausibly deniable way.)