I scoff at neurobabble and suspect anyone talking about “mental tech” to be infected with scientology.
Scientology is a particular brand of techniques that comes with the belief that anything not invented by Hubbard doesn’t work. Scientology itself has a bunch of techniques that do have effects and mess up many people.
One way to deal with that is to categorically reject the field. That works for many people but others feel like experimenting around. If I would meet a rationalist who gets into contact with scientology (maybe because he read LukeProgs endorsement of Scientology 101 on LessWrong) it’s worth to be articulate the dangers and ways it messes up people in more detail.
Recently, a rationalist wrote on Facebook about considering meditation to be dangerous in general and given outcomes like Pasek or Eric Bruylant noticing some danger makes sense.
Both cases share similarities beyond just meditation. Both of them include taking substances (even when in the case of Pasek the hormones were legal), a lot of meditation and personality splits. In both cases most of what they did was autodicatic and not learned from experienced teachers.
If I look at other similarities that both share is that they were intent to create rationalist communities outside of existing hubs.
Scientology is a particular brand of techniques that comes with the belief that anything not invented by Hubbard doesn’t work. Scientology itself has a bunch of techniques that do have effects and mess up many people.
One way to deal with that is to categorically reject the field. That works for many people but others feel like experimenting around. If I would meet a rationalist who gets into contact with scientology (maybe because he read LukeProgs endorsement of Scientology 101 on LessWrong) it’s worth to be articulate the dangers and ways it messes up people in more detail.
Recently, a rationalist wrote on Facebook about considering meditation to be dangerous in general and given outcomes like Pasek or Eric Bruylant noticing some danger makes sense.
Both cases share similarities beyond just meditation. Both of them include taking substances (even when in the case of Pasek the hormones were legal), a lot of meditation and personality splits. In both cases most of what they did was autodicatic and not learned from experienced teachers.
If I look at other similarities that both share is that they were intent to create rationalist communities outside of existing hubs.