The causally primary reason for my belief is that while I was growing up in a TM-practicing community, I was told repeatedly that there were many scientific studies published in respectable journals demonstrating this effect, and the “square root of one percent” was a specific point of doctrine.
I’ve had some trouble finding the articles in question on academically respectable, non-paywalled sites (though I didn’t try for more than five or ten minutes), but a non-neutrally-hosted bibliography-ish thing is here.
(Is there a general lack of non-paywalled academically respectable online archives of scientific papers?)
.
(Edited to add: if anyone decides to click any of the videos on that page, rather than just following text links, I’d assign Fred Travis the highest probability of saying anything worth hearing.)
.
(Edited again: I was going to say this when I first wrote this comment, but forgot: The obvious control would be against other meditation techniques. I don’t think there are studies with this specific control on the particular effect in my top-level comment, but there are such studies on e.g. medical benefits.)
.
(Edited yet again: I’ve now actually watched the videos in question.
The unlabeled video at the top (John Hagelin) is a lay-level overview of studies that you can read for yourself through text links. (That is, you can read the studies, not the overview.)
Gary Kaplan is philosophizing with little to no substance in the sense of expectation-constraint, and conditional on the underlying phenomena being real his explanation is probably about as wrong as, say, quantum decoherence.
Nancy Lonsdorf is arguing rhetorically for ideas whose truth is almost entirely dependent on the validity of the studies in question and that follow from such validity in a trivial and straightforward fashion. Some people might need what she’s saying pointed out to them, but probably not the readers of Less Wrong.
Fred Travis goes into more crunchy detail, about fewer studies, than any of the others, but still not as much detail as just reading the papers.)
I understand now.
The causally primary reason for my belief is that while I was growing up in a TM-practicing community, I was told repeatedly that there were many scientific studies published in respectable journals demonstrating this effect, and the “square root of one percent” was a specific point of doctrine.
I’ve had some trouble finding the articles in question on academically respectable, non-paywalled sites (though I didn’t try for more than five or ten minutes), but a non-neutrally-hosted bibliography-ish thing is here.
(Is there a general lack of non-paywalled academically respectable online archives of scientific papers?)
.
(Edited to add: if anyone decides to click any of the videos on that page, rather than just following text links, I’d assign Fred Travis the highest probability of saying anything worth hearing.)
.
(Edited again: I was going to say this when I first wrote this comment, but forgot: The obvious control would be against other meditation techniques. I don’t think there are studies with this specific control on the particular effect in my top-level comment, but there are such studies on e.g. medical benefits.)
.
(Edited yet again: I’ve now actually watched the videos in question.
The unlabeled video at the top (John Hagelin) is a lay-level overview of studies that you can read for yourself through text links. (That is, you can read the studies, not the overview.)
Gary Kaplan is philosophizing with little to no substance in the sense of expectation-constraint, and conditional on the underlying phenomena being real his explanation is probably about as wrong as, say, quantum decoherence.
Nancy Lonsdorf is arguing rhetorically for ideas whose truth is almost entirely dependent on the validity of the studies in question and that follow from such validity in a trivial and straightforward fashion. Some people might need what she’s saying pointed out to them, but probably not the readers of Less Wrong.
Fred Travis goes into more crunchy detail, about fewer studies, than any of the others, but still not as much detail as just reading the papers.)
Wow that was a super in depth response! Thanks, I’ll check it out if I have time.