With therapists, you can ask about their experience of "graduating" clients, that is, being done with a client because the client doesn't need therapy anymore, they actually worked through whatever problem they were seeking help with.
This distinguishes those who help people fix their problems, from those who expect to be your paid supportive friend for the rest of your life.
I enjoyed the post. My experience in meditation circles is that people are awfully resistant to talking about results - for good reasons and bad. Speaking opening about the results of yourself or others makes you a target. But, as your post implies, not talking about results could be a convenient excuse for not having results.
For those looking for verified results in I think one’s best bet is finding mentors or communities of practice where results of members can be relatively verified. Even there, epistemic are hard.
Also, side point that I think you would agree with, I don’t think meditation practice is the quickest intervention to achieve mundane life benefits like making deeper friendships, or having a flourishing home life. I’m not sure about that though, because my maturing has been intertwined with meditation practice, so I don’t know the counterfactual.
Even though I have never been in therapy or practiced inner work, this point reminded me of Abigail Shrier's Bad Therapy where she argues that a major part of therapeutic interventions actually brings more harm than good.
UPD: There is Zvi observing that Math Anxiety Is Often Due To Knowledge Gaps...
My guess is simply that almost nothing works, and to the degree that it works it only works a little, and insofar as it works a little it is really time-consuming, and probably reverts to the mean if not actively maintained.
"Adjust your effect size estimates downwards."
Also, almost nobody is quantitatively tracking what they try, the degree to which they try, wouldn't know when they're wrong or are simply performing great contortions in selection bias. So even people who claim they have huge effects can't actually distinguish the effects from random positive noise. (This also applies to the person mentioned at the end of the post.)
CFAR tried, but it was really expensive, and the results were middling. (They're best in class for this, still.) From everyone else I demand at least track records.
So: What are you doing differently? I reckon you're going to publish the follow-up data from your clients from two years ago, soon?
Um, trainers reviews are mostly like this too, I'd imagine?
What should be a good review and good advertisement isn't the same as what is.
Which is not to disagree that results -based thinking is the ideal, and I think you could do great business by actually promising and getting testimonials for results
Imagine you’re looking for a personal trainer.
You open one trainer’s webpage and read their testimonials: “I had an experience tied for the most intense experiences of my life”; “They do it all with fun, care, and a sense of humour.” You notice that none of the testimonials mention improved body composition, fitness, or bloodwork. What would you think?
Personal training should improve your body. Inner work should improve your life. If inner work were optimized for results, what would we expect to see?
I’d expect to see success stories: people who got undeniable life changes. Like:
“Founder was single for years due to anxiety; today, they’re celebrating their one-year anniversary.”
“Researcher used to lose 4–5 hours per day to coping behaviors. After our program, he got bored of them all and stopped. It’s been six months; he’s used the extra time to host parties for his friends.”
“Executive recovered from burnout, negotiated for the first time, and started shipping again.”
But this is not what we see.
Look at the testimonials
I reviewed every testimonial posted by a popular retreat, a well-known coach, and a prominent organization in my network. How many describe a specific life change — something the client durably started doing, stopped doing, does differently, or achieved?
The organization also had an additional ~200 testimonials posted on another page, which I had Claude review. Finally, we found 2 of 200+ testimonials that described specific life changes: a husband confirming his wife sleeps better, and a CEO crediting the work with helping quadruple revenue.
Nearly every testimonial from every practitioner focused on fleeting emotional states (“I had an experience tied for the most intense experiences of my life”), practitioner personality (“They do it all with fun, care, and a sense of humour”), and unfalsifiable claims (“The ROI is immeasurable”), but not results. Experiences appear to be the product.
This surprised me, so I checked another ~15 similar practitioners. Almost none of their testimonials described specific life changes either.
I’m sure some clients get lasting results, but isn’t it odd that these practitioners don’t get testimonials long enough after the intervention to show durable results? If lasting life improvements were the product, wouldn’t practitioners highlight their success stories?
Check for yourself: Pick the practitioner you most recommend, and count how many testimonials describe a lasting change in what the client does, avoids, or achieves.
If the purpose of most inner work were to improve people’s lives, then why do testimonials focus on experiences? Why don’t practitioners solicit testimonials about lasting results? And why don’t clients write about them?
Seven years of Duolingo
Two people say they want to learn Chinese. One downloads Duolingo and embarks on a 1,000-day streak. The other finds a friend of a friend who got fluent in two years and copies everything they did…
I believe the purpose should be results. I'm reminded of an AI researcher I worked with in 2024 called his prior seven years of inner work (Vipassana, Tibetan Buddhist meditation, various retreats, IFS) “LARPing working on the problem.”
Seven years of Duolingo
When we caught up this month, he added: “It’s like entertainment. It’s like identity. It’s like wearing a costume.”
Once he gained the ability to ask people out without anxiety and to stop avoiding relationships, he lost interest in communities organized around talking about problems they haven’t solved. Last month he celebrated one year with a girl he loves.
Are you playing Duolingo or are you getting results?
—@chrislakin | Writing | Now
Next post: Most "inner work" is not optimized for results.