When I first encountered the breakthrough people in the Bay I thought that surely they must be aware that 90 percent of breakthroughs are flaky, don’t last and the last 10 percent gives at most moderate benefits [or harms....]. Surely any educated person past the age of twenty knew that coaches were the scammers, grifters that spiritual gurus almost without a fault turn out to be sexual predators, that most studies that claim strong benefits from interventions are p-hacked garbage thrust on the trusting public by a swarm of self-interested wilfully high-on-their-own-supply neuroscientists slash drugs addicts, that well-done long-term scientific studies pretty conclusively show that lifestyle interventions rarely work etc etc?
Entering the rat/ea sphere I met many very smart people who were completely taken in I was quite mystified by their behaviour and seeming earnestness. I had many speculations about this phenomenon: was it a social signalling thing? A cultural difference between California and my home? Did it bring people social benefits in terms of friends and romantic prospects? Was the coaches thing a way to signal wealth, or maybe an euphemism for a therapist? Was the spiritual guru shtick a way to pick up chicks? just a type-of-guy like the jock, nerd, or the moody artist that a certain type of girl is into? Was the whole thing an act, mostly for fun, a passing fad, a folly of youth they would harmlessly grow out of? Were the crazy diets, hacky lifestyle interventions just a fun way to pass the time, the equivalent of brewing craft beer or knitting circles in another place? Was I just too cynical, too european, too upper class to appreciate something beautiful, creative, American, innovative I couldn’t quite fit into my preconceived notions? Was I simply being judgemental because I lacked the brain structures for woo vibing?
The sad thing is that ultimately I concluded that no—it seems many or most of them were- are!- honestly and earnestly deluded. As the years passed a steady trickle of post-mortems came in. People who are after many years of fruitless questing slowly and begrudgingly admitted that the whole thing was misguided, some still in the overeager tones of having achieved a great insight. And that it is—a great insight. A hard-earned and slow-learned insight but a great insight nonetheless. Happiness is not achieved by one weird trick—the psychological equivalent of the silicon valley unicorn. They are gained by luck of genes and circumstance, a bit of solid work, a cultivation of a carefree attitude and solid group of friends, an honesty with oneself and ones limitations, an acceptance of the way things are.
It is uncouth and unbecoming for me to gloat ′ I told you so’ because the truth is I did not. I bit my tongue. I made an sly remark here, an ironic allusion there. I thought we were all in on the game surely but in the end what I should have done was speak frankly and earnestly: this path is misguided, not just the specific New Thing you are trying—the entire philosophy can be yeeted. Don’t trust these grand claims that people about completely changing their lives. Distrust and verify. Check in a year later. Ask their mother how they are really doing. Ask: who benefits? Is this objectively surprising claim a conveniently high-status thing to say? etc and many more
There is no end of samsara in this life. The human RL loop won’t allow it.
When I first encountered the breakthrough people in the Bay I thought that surely they must be aware that 90 percent of breakthroughs are flaky, don’t last and the last 10 percent gives at most moderate benefits [or harms....].
90 percent of breakthroughs being flaky sounds plausible—I myself have definitely had my fair share of them—but the bit about the last 10 percent sounds too pessimistic to me.
For example, between 2017 and now I feel like I’ve gone from having really bad self-esteem and basically assuming that I’m a bad person who ~everyone dislikes by default (and feeling that this is terrible if they do), to generally liking myself and assuming that most people do so as well + usually not caring that much if they don’t.
While a big chunk of that came from gradual progress and e.g. finding a better community, I do also feel that were some major breakthroughs such as this one that were major discontinuities and also helped enable later progress. (The other breakthrough moments feel a little too private to share.) In that if I hadn’t had those breakthroughs, I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to find a community in the same way, as I’d have been too afraid of people’s judgment to feel fully at home in one. So even much of the gradual progress was dependent on the breakthroughs.
Also part of the reason why I got into coaching myself was that I’d previously applied some techniques to helping my friends and they told me (later, when I happened to mention to them I was considering this) that they’d found my help valuable and encouraged me to go into it. And then e.g. one client emailed me unprompted almost exactly one year later to express gratitude for the benefit they’d gotten from just a few sessions. When I asked them if I could use their message as a testimonial, they provided the following that they said was okay to share:
I attended a few IFS sessions with Kaj towards the end of 2022.
I don’t say this lightly, but the sessions with Kaj had a transformative impact on my life. Before these sessions, I was grappling with significant work and personal-related challenges. Despite trying various methods, and seeing various professionals, I hadn’t seen much improvement in this time.
However, after just a few sessions (<5) with Kaj, I overcame substantial internal barriers. This not only enabled me to be more productive again on the work I cared about but also to be kinder to myself. My subjective experience was not one of constant cycling in mental pain. I could finally apply many of the lessons I had previously learned from therapists but had been unable to implement.
I remember being surprised at how real the transformation felt. I can say now, almost a year later, that it was also not transient, but has lasted this whole time.
As a result, I successfully completed some major professional milestones. On the personal front, my life has also seen positive changes that bring me immense joy.
I owe this success to the support from Kaj and IFS. I had been sceptical of ‘discrete step’ changes after so many years of pain with little progress, but I can now say I am convinced it is possible to have significant and enduring large shifts in how you approach yourself, your life and your pursuits.
(“Some major professional milestones” and “personal positive changes” sound vague but the person shared more details privately and the things they mentioned were very concrete and significant.)
Getting this big of a lasting benefit in just a few sessions is certainly not a typical or median result but from my previous experience with these kinds of methods, I didn’t find it particularly surprising either.
I share the sense that “flaky breakthroughs” are common, but also… I mean, it clearly is possible for people to learn and improve, right? Including by learning things about themselves which lastingly affect their behavior.
Personally, I’ve had many such updates which have had lasting effects—e.g., noticing when reading the Sequences that I’d been accidentally conflating “trying as hard as I can” with “appearing to others to be trying as hard as one might reasonably be expected to” in some cases, and trying thereafter to correct for that.
I do think it’s worth tracking the flaky breakthrough issue—which seems to me most common with breakthroughs primarily about emotional processing, or the experience of quite-new-feeling sorts of mental state, or something like that?—but it also seems worth tracking that people can in fact sometimes improve!
This is honestly exactly what I first thought of, in particular Jhourney which I first learned of via Kuhan’s post strongly recommending one of their remote meditation retreats. That said there’s a bit of evidence contra my suspicion in this retrospective survey (coauthored by Jhourney and Nadia Asparouhova).
When I first encountered the breakthrough people in the Bay I thought that surely they must be aware that 90 percent of breakthroughs are flaky, don’t last and the last 10 percent gives at most moderate benefits [or harms....]. Surely any educated person past the age of twenty knew that coaches were the scammers, grifters that spiritual gurus almost without a fault turn out to be sexual predators, that most studies that claim strong benefits from interventions are p-hacked garbage thrust on the trusting public by a swarm of self-interested wilfully high-on-their-own-supply neuroscientists slash drugs addicts, that well-done long-term scientific studies pretty conclusively show that lifestyle interventions rarely work etc etc?
Entering the rat/ea sphere I met many very smart people who were completely taken in I was quite mystified by their behaviour and seeming earnestness. I had many speculations about this phenomenon: was it a social signalling thing? A cultural difference between California and my home? Did it bring people social benefits in terms of friends and romantic prospects? Was the coaches thing a way to signal wealth, or maybe an euphemism for a therapist? Was the spiritual guru shtick a way to pick up chicks? just a type-of-guy like the jock, nerd, or the moody artist that a certain type of girl is into? Was the whole thing an act, mostly for fun, a passing fad, a folly of youth they would harmlessly grow out of? Were the crazy diets, hacky lifestyle interventions just a fun way to pass the time, the equivalent of brewing craft beer or knitting circles in another place? Was I just too cynical, too european, too upper class to appreciate something beautiful, creative, American, innovative I couldn’t quite fit into my preconceived notions? Was I simply being judgemental because I lacked the brain structures for woo vibing?
The sad thing is that ultimately I concluded that no—it seems many or most of them were- are!- honestly and earnestly deluded. As the years passed a steady trickle of post-mortems came in. People who are after many years of fruitless questing slowly and begrudgingly admitted that the whole thing was misguided, some still in the overeager tones of having achieved a great insight. And that it is—a great insight. A hard-earned and slow-learned insight but a great insight nonetheless. Happiness is not achieved by one weird trick—the psychological equivalent of the silicon valley unicorn. They are gained by luck of genes and circumstance, a bit of solid work, a cultivation of a carefree attitude and solid group of friends, an honesty with oneself and ones limitations, an acceptance of the way things are.
It is uncouth and unbecoming for me to gloat ′ I told you so’ because the truth is I did not. I bit my tongue. I made an sly remark here, an ironic allusion there. I thought we were all in on the game surely but in the end what I should have done was speak frankly and earnestly: this path is misguided, not just the specific New Thing you are trying—the entire philosophy can be yeeted. Don’t trust these grand claims that people about completely changing their lives. Distrust and verify. Check in a year later. Ask their mother how they are really doing. Ask: who benefits? Is this objectively surprising claim a conveniently high-status thing to say? etc and many more
There is no end of samsara in this life. The human RL loop won’t allow it.
90 percent of breakthroughs being flaky sounds plausible—I myself have definitely had my fair share of them—but the bit about the last 10 percent sounds too pessimistic to me.
For example, between 2017 and now I feel like I’ve gone from having really bad self-esteem and basically assuming that I’m a bad person who ~everyone dislikes by default (and feeling that this is terrible if they do), to generally liking myself and assuming that most people do so as well + usually not caring that much if they don’t.
While a big chunk of that came from gradual progress and e.g. finding a better community, I do also feel that were some major breakthroughs such as this one that were major discontinuities and also helped enable later progress. (The other breakthrough moments feel a little too private to share.) In that if I hadn’t had those breakthroughs, I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to find a community in the same way, as I’d have been too afraid of people’s judgment to feel fully at home in one. So even much of the gradual progress was dependent on the breakthroughs.
Also part of the reason why I got into coaching myself was that I’d previously applied some techniques to helping my friends and they told me (later, when I happened to mention to them I was considering this) that they’d found my help valuable and encouraged me to go into it. And then e.g. one client emailed me unprompted almost exactly one year later to express gratitude for the benefit they’d gotten from just a few sessions. When I asked them if I could use their message as a testimonial, they provided the following that they said was okay to share:
(“Some major professional milestones” and “personal positive changes” sound vague but the person shared more details privately and the things they mentioned were very concrete and significant.)
Getting this big of a lasting benefit in just a few sessions is certainly not a typical or median result but from my previous experience with these kinds of methods, I didn’t find it particularly surprising either.
I agree with this
I do this
I think this is jumping to conclusions
I share the sense that “flaky breakthroughs” are common, but also… I mean, it clearly is possible for people to learn and improve, right? Including by learning things about themselves which lastingly affect their behavior.
Personally, I’ve had many such updates which have had lasting effects—e.g., noticing when reading the Sequences that I’d been accidentally conflating “trying as hard as I can” with “appearing to others to be trying as hard as one might reasonably be expected to” in some cases, and trying thereafter to correct for that.
I do think it’s worth tracking the flaky breakthrough issue—which seems to me most common with breakthroughs primarily about emotional processing, or the experience of quite-new-feeling sorts of mental state, or something like that?—but it also seems worth tracking that people can in fact sometimes improve!
Couldn’t have said it better!
What could current examples be where very smart people are deluded? Jhanas?
This is honestly exactly what I first thought of, in particular Jhourney which I first learned of via Kuhan’s post strongly recommending one of their remote meditation retreats. That said there’s a bit of evidence contra my suspicion in this retrospective survey (coauthored by Jhourney and Nadia Asparouhova).