One possible problem is that a sufficiently good mind hack that makes you stop being stressed and worried about things might also stop you from becoming sufficiently irked by perceived shortcomings in your surroundings to set about on a laborious and complex process to repair them. Quite a lot of advancements in society sound a lot like people being caught up in the suffering-causing desire to stay attached to transient things like warmth, a food supply, memories or life.
That’s a good point and appears plausible to me. Changing a problem in your own mind in such a way that it doesn’t need fixing in the external world anymore seems fairly common among meditators in general (myself included). There’s probably a strong (but not necessarily intentional) overlap with wire-heading and its usual implications.
However, science as a social game (including very tight career paths), weirdness filters and some of the bad woo clustering around meditation seems more likely as a general explanation.
Still, there are some more-or-less scientifically trained meditators (e.g. Shinzen Young, B. Alan Wallace and they all tend to focus on their own lives or on teaching meditation afaik.
Much of humanity’s progress depended on being unreasonable and willing to suffer for questionable gains (see Jared Diamond). Enlightenment might not be useful for that.
That’s a good point and appears plausible to me. Changing a problem in your own mind in such a way that it doesn’t need fixing in the external world anymore seems fairly common among meditators in general (myself included). There’s probably a strong (but not necessarily intentional) overlap with wire-heading and its usual implications.
However, science as a social game (including very tight career paths), weirdness filters and some of the bad woo clustering around meditation seems more likely as a general explanation.
Still, there are some more-or-less scientifically trained meditators (e.g. Shinzen Young, B. Alan Wallace and they all tend to focus on their own lives or on teaching meditation afaik.
Much of humanity’s progress depended on being unreasonable and willing to suffer for questionable gains (see Jared Diamond). Enlightenment might not be useful for that.
(Also, checking out Egan.)