You both latched onto the least interesting part of the post. The part that is literally just Romeo throwing out some wild speculations.
That is not the impression given by either the post or Romeo’s replies. He seems to be making it clear that he is, indeed, making the affirmative claims that I attributed to him, and has thus far given no indication of intending to retract or weaken them.
But let me ask you this: do you think the post would stand on its own, without these “speculations” (as you call them)? By way of attempting to answer this question, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a copy of Romeo’s post on Google Docs, where I’ve crossed out every “speculative” claim for which we’ve not been given evidence.
I was fairly conservative in choosing parts to cross out; I’ve left intact, for example, almost everything that mentions or talks about forms of psychotherapy and other concepts from psychology. (Although, by rights those ought to go as well; we do not accept such claims without evidence ordinarily; why should we accept them when speaking about meditation or Buddhism? But perhaps speculating about the “softer” sciences is a lesser offense, so I mostly let these things stand.)
What is left, nevertheless, is a post that is missing any justifications or explanations of its core claims; a post essentially indistinguishable from any number of similar posts that have appeared on Less Wrong, since its relaunch almost two years ago.
The more interesting part is the general framework where he matches up the some of the processes mentioned in Buddhism with some insights from behavioral psychology, psychotherapy, and pop psychology. It gives a framework to start understanding why anecdotally people claim such big effects from extended meditation practice, and gives an insight about how one might begin to test the hypothesis that this is what’s happening, both personally and on a broader scale.
Allow me to make a suggestion, then, for anyone who writes these sorts of posts in the future:
First, enumerate, explain, and cite the “insights from behavioral psychology, psychotherapy, and pop psychology” which you intend to use as explanations. Be specific in your claims, and be diligent in your references. Consult the latest available sources, to make sure that your insights of choice have survived the replication crisis; provide these sources to your readers.
Then, having established a basis for what follows, make all the interesting connections to Buddhism, meditation, or what have you.
This approach would kill two birds with one stone: it would prevent such distracting digressions as we’re now engaged in, and it would also strengthen your own understanding of the ideas that you are presenting.
It seems to me that doing things in this way would benefit everyone involved.
I don’t mind the speculation, just the wild ones. Putting forward a hypothesis based on your own experience is incredibly useful, especially if it makes novel predictions that people can then go test themselves.
I don’t know how for instance Romeo would have gotten the “electrical resistance” thing from his own experience, but many of the other tools I can see by him noticing similarities between what happens in meditation, and various other psychotherapies he has tried or read about. This is actually one place where I expect phenomenological experience to provide valuable hypotheses, which is why I think this sort of post can be credible enough to want to test/further explore the hypotheses.
That is not the impression given by either the post or Romeo’s replies. He seems to be making it clear that he is, indeed, making the affirmative claims that I attributed to him, and has thus far given no indication of intending to retract or weaken them.
But let me ask you this: do you think the post would stand on its own, without these “speculations” (as you call them)? By way of attempting to answer this question, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a copy of Romeo’s post on Google Docs, where I’ve crossed out every “speculative” claim for which we’ve not been given evidence.
I was fairly conservative in choosing parts to cross out; I’ve left intact, for example, almost everything that mentions or talks about forms of psychotherapy and other concepts from psychology. (Although, by rights those ought to go as well; we do not accept such claims without evidence ordinarily; why should we accept them when speaking about meditation or Buddhism? But perhaps speculating about the “softer” sciences is a lesser offense, so I mostly let these things stand.)
What is left, nevertheless, is a post that is missing any justifications or explanations of its core claims; a post essentially indistinguishable from any number of similar posts that have appeared on Less Wrong, since its relaunch almost two years ago.
Allow me to make a suggestion, then, for anyone who writes these sorts of posts in the future:
First, enumerate, explain, and cite the “insights from behavioral psychology, psychotherapy, and pop psychology” which you intend to use as explanations. Be specific in your claims, and be diligent in your references. Consult the latest available sources, to make sure that your insights of choice have survived the replication crisis; provide these sources to your readers.
Then, having established a basis for what follows, make all the interesting connections to Buddhism, meditation, or what have you.
This approach would kill two birds with one stone: it would prevent such distracting digressions as we’re now engaged in, and it would also strengthen your own understanding of the ideas that you are presenting.
It seems to me that doing things in this way would benefit everyone involved.
Thanks for the clear suggestions/feedback.
I don’t mind the speculation, just the wild ones. Putting forward a hypothesis based on your own experience is incredibly useful, especially if it makes novel predictions that people can then go test themselves.
I don’t know how for instance Romeo would have gotten the “electrical resistance” thing from his own experience, but many of the other tools I can see by him noticing similarities between what happens in meditation, and various other psychotherapies he has tried or read about. This is actually one place where I expect phenomenological experience to provide valuable hypotheses, which is why I think this sort of post can be credible enough to want to test/further explore the hypotheses.