As far as I can tell, this post successfully communicates a cluster of claims relating to “Looking, insight meditation, and enlightenment”. It’s written in a quite readable style that uses a minimum of metaphorical language or Buddhist jargon. That being said, likely due to its focus as exposition and not persuasion, it contains and relies on several claims that are not supported in the text, such as:
Many forms of meditation successfully train cognitive defusion.
Meditation trains the ability to have true insights into the mental causes of mental processes.
“Usually, most of us are—on some implicit level—operating off a belief that we need to experience pleasant feelings and need to avoid experiencing unpleasant feelings.”
Flinching away from thoughts of painful experiences is what causes suffering, not the thoughts of painful experiences themselves, nor the actual painful experiences.
Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self are fundamental aspects of existence that “deep parts of our minds” are wrong about.
I think that all of these are worth doubting without further evidence, and I think that some of them are in fact wrong.
If this post were coupled with others that substantiated the models that it explains, I think that that would be worthy of inclusion in a ‘Best of LW 2018’ collection. However, my tentative guess is that Buddhist psychology is not an important enough set of claims that a clear explanation of it deserves to be signal-boosted in such a collection. That being said, I could see myself being wrong about that.
Well, I’m significantly more confident that at least one is wrong than about any particular one being wrong. That being said:
It seems wrong to claim that meditation tells people the causes of mental processes. You can often learn causal models from observations, but it’s tricky, and my guess is that people don’t do it automatically.
I don’t think that most people implicitly act like they need to avoid mental experiences.
I don’t know if ‘suffering’ is the right word for what painful experiences cause, but it sure seems like they are bad and worth avoiding.
My guess is that unsatisfactoriness is not a fundamental aspect of existence.
That being said, there’s enough wiggle room in these claims that the intended meanings would be things that I’d agree with, and I also think that there’s a significant shot that I’m wrong about all of the above.
As far as I can tell, this post successfully communicates a cluster of claims relating to “Looking, insight meditation, and enlightenment”. It’s written in a quite readable style that uses a minimum of metaphorical language or Buddhist jargon. That being said, likely due to its focus as exposition and not persuasion, it contains and relies on several claims that are not supported in the text, such as:
Many forms of meditation successfully train cognitive defusion.
Meditation trains the ability to have true insights into the mental causes of mental processes.
“Usually, most of us are—on some implicit level—operating off a belief that we need to experience pleasant feelings and need to avoid experiencing unpleasant feelings.”
Flinching away from thoughts of painful experiences is what causes suffering, not the thoughts of painful experiences themselves, nor the actual painful experiences.
Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self are fundamental aspects of existence that “deep parts of our minds” are wrong about.
I think that all of these are worth doubting without further evidence, and I think that some of them are in fact wrong.
If this post were coupled with others that substantiated the models that it explains, I think that that would be worthy of inclusion in a ‘Best of LW 2018’ collection. However, my tentative guess is that Buddhist psychology is not an important enough set of claims that a clear explanation of it deserves to be signal-boosted in such a collection. That being said, I could see myself being wrong about that.
I’d be interested in you going into the details of which claims seem wrong and why.
Well, I’m significantly more confident that at least one is wrong than about any particular one being wrong. That being said:
It seems wrong to claim that meditation tells people the causes of mental processes. You can often learn causal models from observations, but it’s tricky, and my guess is that people don’t do it automatically.
I don’t think that most people implicitly act like they need to avoid mental experiences.
I don’t know if ‘suffering’ is the right word for what painful experiences cause, but it sure seems like they are bad and worth avoiding.
My guess is that unsatisfactoriness is not a fundamental aspect of existence.
That being said, there’s enough wiggle room in these claims that the intended meanings would be things that I’d agree with, and I also think that there’s a significant shot that I’m wrong about all of the above.
Reducing the extent to which people with various world views talk past each other seems core to rationality.