Here is how I think we should approach the topic of meditation/Buddhism in the rationalist community. The short version is that a meaningful "yes" requires a credible possibility of "no", and the long version is that:
- If we post scientific studies showing that "meditation works", then we should either also post scientific studies showing that "meditation doesn't work" or explicitly mention their absence. Otherwise there is a possibility that simply by doing a lot of studies about any topic, 5% of them will confirm the hypothesis at "p<0.05". In other words, is there a meta-review on meditation research? (Then we should ask Scott Alexander to review it.)
- There are many different claims made about the effects of meditation. I find it quite plausible that some of them may be true (e.g. "meditation helps you relax") and some others may be false (e.g. "meditation helps you remember your previous reincarnations"). So instead of talking about proving "meditation" we should talk about proving specific claims about meditation.
- Actually, we should first make the list of "claims usually made about meditation" and then evaluate each of them individually. Otherwise, if we mention the claims that are supported by evidence, but keep silent about those that are not, it creates a biased overall picture, and contributes to a halo effect. (It is easier to assume that X is supported by evidence if all you know is that A, B, C are supported; compared to a situation where you know that A, B, C are supported, but D, E, F are not.)
- The problem with anecdotal evidence about meditation is that we would get it even in a universe where meditation helps 1/3 of the population, does nothing for another 1/3, and actively harms the remaining 1/3. The people who get no or harmful results would simply stop doing it, the people who get useful results would continue... and one or two of them would happen to be high-status in the rationalist community.
- Generally, how do you distinguish between "meditation only works for some people, or only in some situations" and "you are doing meditation wrong / not enough"?
- What about the anecdotal evidence in the opposite direction, such as sex scandals of famous experts on meditation? (In context of Buddhism, "sex scandals" is not just a bad behavior, but specifically the kind of behavior that meditation is supposed to prevent. So I am not mentioning it here as a moral judgment, but as an evidence that the claims of effects of meditation are falsified by the very people who spent huge amounts of time meditating presumably the right way.)
- If you find scientific support for some Buddhist dogma, consider the possibility that you could also find scientific support for its opposite, if you approached it with the same degree of charity. For example, if the teaching of "no self" makes you say "yes, mind is composed of agents which are not themselves minds", maybe a teaching of "all self" would make you say "yes, neurons are all over the human body, not just in brain; also our mood is influenced by gut bacteria and sunshine and talking to other humans". Similarly, if the teaching of "impermanence" reminds you of changing moods, growing up, effects of sickness, etc., maybe a teaching of "permanence" would remind you of the stability and heredity of the OCEAN traits. So maybe the actual lesson is not "Buddhism is correct about so many things" but "for a sufficiently general statement one can always find a charitable interpretation".
- Especially if you keep silent about those Buddhist teachings where there is no charitable interpretation that would appeal to the rationalist community. (Such as Buddha doing miracles, using the superpowers he got as a result of meditation.)
4 years ago, before I started meditation, I was appropriately skeptical (I still am), not just of the obviously bullshit claims of reincarnations and the weird reverence that people had for the historical buddha, but I was extremely skeptical of the descriptions of advanced states of meditation. So I started meditation with great skepticism in order to calm myself down, which is what the studies showed that it was good for... and then weird shit started happening exactly like the books said it would. Vibrating sensations started happening exactly like the books said they would, I started gaining on-demand access to states of immense happiness, joy and contentment (jhanas), and I started having the exact insights that were predicted. I even started, with extreme skepticism and no small measure of disgust in myself, reading books about chakras, and practicing the exercises they said would "open" my chakras, and again I was supremely surprised to find that, indeed, there were very strong sensations I could feel at specific points along my spine, exactly where the book said the "chakras" ought to be. The books were filled with nonsensical attempts to connect these sensations to phenomena of cosmic significance, but that didn't make the sensations themselves false.
As far as I am concerned, the books made advance predictions, I made the experiment by practicing the techniques, and found that the predictions were borne out, and updated my beliefs accordingly about the likelihood of advanced states of meditation. Then I started talking in private with people with decades of practice about the claims of reincarnations and weird powers, and came away from those conversations convinced that these people had indeed had something like the experience of a hyper-realistic wakeful dream where they seemed to interact with people they didn't know, but treated as their family. These practitioners interpreted these as "past lives experiences", and even though It's impossible for this frame to actually be true, the experiences themselves appear real.
The problem with using studies of meditation is that they are likely to severely underestimate the long-term potential upside. The money and interest just isn't there to track people over a decade of intensive meditation practice (which is what would be required to get the large upside).
What I would like to say when trying to recommend meditation to people is " (in a desperate voice) You fool! You are burning alive and fundamentally confused about why you are suffering, please, for the love of everything good in the universe, walk to the lake right there and extinguish your flames!". There was a period where normal conversation seemed almost cruel to me, how could I sit here talking about the weather when my interlocutor was in so much suffering, and I knew the solution to their problem?! I quickly realized that my zealousness didn't convince many people at all, and I found that I could make more people meditate by telling them that they could get a little stress relief from it. I was deceiving them, since I would never spend so much of my own time meditating if stress relief was all I was getting, but this seemed like the utilitarian thing to do. This is all to say that people who have actually achieved some of the more extreme benefits of meditation very very rarely talk about them with normal people, since painful experience has shown this to not be useful at all. Whereas people with negative experiences have no such problems in talking about it.
Thank you for your thoughtful and extensive reply. Whilst I have read up on the subject, the matter is esoteric and widely opinionated online; I was curious on your take and signed up just to ask that question (I didn't realise you replied). I have also largely forgotten about the subject since a long time has passed without anything of note.
And thank you for relating your experience. I have never spoken to anyone directly about this who has also experienced similar.
I will relate my experience just to hone into a point at the end...
I have also experi... (read more)