In my defense, a year and a half later, in 2012 (before the replication crisis! I am a prophet), I expressed *some* skepticism: https://vividness.live/2012/09/13/epistemology-and-enlightenment/ …pic.twitter.com/L8XYvBydHN
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In my defense, a year and a half later, in 2012 (before the replication crisis! I am a prophet), I expressed *some* skepticism: https://vividness.live/2012/09/13/epistemology-and-enlightenment/ …pic.twitter.com/L8XYvBydHN
Later in 2012, I proposed an fMRI experiment to detect p-zombies (people who lack subjective experience, such as—apparently—Daniel Dennett). This was not altogether serious, but I knew then that fMRI mostly doesn’t work. (I still think this might work…) https://vividness.live/2012/09/13/epistemology-and-enlightenment/ …pic.twitter.com/uvBa4vqo16
What I know about neuroscience, I mostly learned around 1990. I had a pretty good idea of what was known and knowable. The main new thing since then was fMRI, which I had good reasons to think is mostly not a thing. So why was I (mostly) taken in by the hype?
Around this time, I discussed the meditation research with my sister, who was the Chair of the neuroscience program at UC Davis. She was characteristically taciturn, but reading between the lines slightly her reaction was “almost certainly mostly nonsense.” Why didn’t I listen?
Clearly, in part, I *wanted to believe*, for essentially religious reasons. That’s really embarrassing. https://vividness.live/2011/04/25/translating-the-meditation-research/ …pic.twitter.com/qsX9NniM4b
Well, the same reason my homeopath friends persist, I guess… “seems to work for me and people I know. :( The particular type of meditation I do is very different from MBSR, so I can tell myself maybe the near-zero results from that don’t apply.
Also, my reasons for meditating are quasi-religious and mainly aim at long-term, subtle changes in perception and action, so maybe (as you noted in the podcast) RCTs on six-week interventions are irrelevant. I’d like to know whether we’re fooling ourselves about this though!
To what extent was your stopping due to reevaluating the scientific literature, and to what extent due to deciding it didn’t seem to do much for you personally?
It’s tempting to think about what separates hypothetical “responders” and “non-responders”... but we kinda know studies like that don’t go well...
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