If this post wasn’t written by 4o, I’ll eat my hat.
jbkjr
Karma: 361
Did the studies specify the dosage, frequency, and duration of use in the long-term users they studied? I would not be surprised if they show that taking MDMA e.g. once a week for months on end caused significant damage, but I would be much more surprised if there were significant long-term deleterious effects from reasonable doses spaced months or years apart.
I think I was remembering Ingram sharing this same story in a different context (maybe a talk he gave or a group discussion), but the context here is interesting; thanks for sharing!
I’m happy to offer my take on what he’s saying here, but I will also note that I’m slightly more uncertain about what Ingram’s views/claims are after reading this.
First, I notice that the context for the quote is him critiquing the traditional account of the four-path model for implying arhats must have attained some kind of emotional perfection. (This is what he’s talking about when he says “a tradition whose models of awakening contain some of the worst myths.”)
In terms of the mention of this teacher and their experience, I mostly think that Ingram is being slightly sloppy with the use of the word “suffering,” in the manner against which I argue in this post. In the context of the criticism of emotional range models, he seems to be pointing out merely that this teacher, who he does claim is an arhat (as quoted), is still capable of experiencing some negative emotions. Another clue can be found earlier in the linked chapter:
It is important to note that arahants who are said to have eliminated “conceit” (in limited emotional range terms) can appear to us as arrogant and conceited, as well as restless or worried, etc. That there is no fundamental suffering in them while this is occurring is an utterly separate issue. That said, conceit in the conventional sense and the rest of life can cause all sorts of conventional suffering for arahants, just as it can for everyone else.
It’s pretty clear that Ingram is making a distinction between what he’s calling “fundamental suffering” and “conventional suffering,” which I believe corresponds neatly with what I’m simply calling “suffering” and “pain,” respectively. If I were to clarify with Ingram personally, I could simply use Buddhist terms like vedana (hedonic tone/affect) and tanha (craving/aversion, the cause of suffering). I believe he’s making the claim that negative/unpleasant vedana can still arise for arhats, but they are free of tanha, free of dukkha. To my understanding, this is not in conflict with the traditional account/models (the Buddha was said to have chronic back pain, iirc, but no one claims he suffered for it). Neither does it conflict with my own experience: without tanha, pain/displeasure (physical and emotional) still happens sometimes, just without any associated suffering.
Ingram has also told a story about getting kidney stones after awakening. I would certainly believe that was quite a painful experience, but I would be very surprised if Daniel (claiming arhatship at that time) would say that tanha arose and caused dukkha. I don’t think one can reasonably claim arhatship is not identical with a complete elimination of tanha and a complete liberation from dukkha, but I don’t think that’s what he actually thinks/claims, either. I think his main critique of the traditional four-path model has to do with the ‘emotional perfection’ stuff, e.g. the idea of arhats supposedly not being able to be sexually aroused.
Anatta is not something to be achieved; it’s a characteristic of phenomena that needs to be recognized if one has not yet. Certainly agree that AI systems should learn/be trained to recognize this, but it’s not something you “ensure LLMs instantiate.” What you want to instantiate is a system that recognizes anatta.
I assume that phenomenal consciousness is a sub-component of the mind.
I’m not sure what is meant by this; would you mind explaining?
Also, the in-post link to the appendix is broken; it’s currently linking to a private draft.
It sounds to me like a problem of not reasoning according to Occam’s razor and “overfitting” a model to the available data.
Ceteris paribus, H’ isn’t more “fishy” than any other hypothesis, but H’ is a significantly more complex hypothesis than H or ¬H: instead of asserting H or ¬H, it asserts (A=>H) & (B=>¬H), so it should have been commensurately de-weighted in the prior distribution according to its complexity. The fact that Alice’s study supports H and Bob’s contradicts it does, in fact, increase the weight given to H’ in the posterior relative to its weight in the prior; it’s just that H’ is prima facie less likely, according to Occam.
Given all the evidence, the ratio of likelihoods P(H’|E)/P(H|E)=P(E|H’)P(H’)/(P(E|H)P(H)). We know P(E|H’) > P(E|H) (and P(E|H’) > P(E|¬H)), since the results of Alice’s and Bob’s studies together are more likely given H’, but P(H’) < P(H) (and P(H’) < P(¬H)) according to the complexity prior. Whether H’ is more likely than H (or ¬H, respectively) is ultimately up to whether P(E|H’)/P(E|H) (or P(E|H’)/P(E|¬H)) is larger or smaller than P(H’)/P(H) (or P(H’)/P(¬H)).
I think it ends up feeling fishy because the people formulating H’ just used more features (the circumstances of the experiments) in a more complex model to account for the as-of-yet observed data after having observed said data, so it ends up seeming like in selecting H’ as a hypothesis, they’re according it more weight than it deserves according to the complexity prior.
Why should I include any non-sentient systems in my moral circle? I haven’t seen a case for that before.
To me, “indecision results from sub-agential disagreement” seems almost tautological, at least within the context of multi-agent models of mind, since if all the sub-agents were in agreement, there wouldn’t be any indecision. So, the question I have is: how often are disagreeing sub-agents “internalized authority figures”? I think I agree with you in that the general answer is “relatively often,” although I expect a fair amount of variance between individuals.
I’d guess it’s a problem of translation; I’m pretty confident the original text in Pali would just say “dukkha” there.
The Wikipedia entry for dukkha says it’s commonly translated as “pain,” but I’m very sure the referent of dukkha in experience is not pain, even if it’s mistranslated as such, however commonly.
Say I have a strong desire to eat pizza, but only a weak craving. I have a hard time imagining what that would be like.
I think this is likely in part due to “desire” connoting both craving and preferring. In the Buddhist context, “desire” is often used more like “craving,” but on the other hand, if I have a pizza for dinner, it seems reasonable to say it was because I desired so (in the sense of having a preference for it), even if there was not any craving for it.
I think people tend to crave what they prefer until they’ve made progress on undoing the habit of craving/aversion, so it’s understandable that it can be hard for such a person to imagine having a strong preference without an associated craving. However, the difference becomes clearer if/when one experiences intentions and preferences in the absence of craving/aversion.
Perhaps it would be informative to examine your experience of preferring in instances other than e.g. eating, where I think there is more of a tendency to crave because “you need food to survive.” For example, if you’re writing and considering two ways of articulating something, you might find you have a strong preference for one way over another, but I imagine there might be less craving in the sense of “I must have it this way, not another.” Perhaps this isn’t the best example possible, but I think careful consideration will reveal the difference in experience between “desire” in the craving sense and “desire” in the preferring sense.
ETA: Another example I thought of is selecting a song to listen to if you’re listening to music—you might want to listen to one song vs. others, but not necessarily have a strong craving for it.
Does then craving (rather than desire) frustration, or aversion realization, constitute suffering?
No, because craving something results in suffering, even if you get that which you crave, and being averse to something results in suffering, even if you avoid that to which you’re averse.
But still, it seems to make sense to say I have an aversion to pain because I suffer from it
I think it makes more sense to say there’s an aversion to pain because pain feels bad; since suffering is not a necessary consequence of pain, it doesn’t make sense to say that you’re averse to pain because it results in suffering. The causal chain is aversion->suffering, not the other way around.
I’d be interested if you have any other ideas for underexplored / underappreciated cause areas / intervention groups that might be worth further investigation when reevaluated via this pain vs suffering distinction?
Unfortunately, I don’t have much to point you toward supporting that I’m aware of already existing in the space. I’d generally be quite interested in studies which better evaluate meditation’s effects on directly reducing suffering in terms of e.g. how difficult it is for how many people to reduce their suffering by how much, but the EA community doesn’t seem to currently be focused on this very much. I am still supportive of existing organizations with a direct focus on reducing suffering; I just wanted to make the point that such organizations would do well to recognize the distinction between suffering and pain in order to ensure their efforts are actually aimed at suffering and not merely pain on the margin.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality.
The point is that the words ground out in actual sensations and experiences, not just other words and concepts. What I’m arguing is that it’s not useful to use the English word “suffering” to refer to ordinary pain or displeasure, because there is a distinction in experience between what we refer to as “pain” or “displeasure” and what is referred to by the term “dukkha,” and that “suffering” is best understood as this dukkha. That we commonly say things like “he suffered the pain” is an indication of this distinction already existing in English, even if there is a tendency to messily equivocate between the two.
My point is that in English “experience such severe pain that one might prefer non-existence to continuing to endure that pain” would be considered an uncontroversial example of “suffering”, not as something suffering-neutral to which suffering might or might not be added.
Sure, but I think that’s just because of the usual conflation between pain and suffering which I’m trying to address with this post. If you ask anyone with the relevant experience “does Buddhism teaching me to never suffer again mean that I’ll never experience (severe) pain again?”, they’ll just answer no. I don’t think it’s reasonable to think of this as a “bait-and-switch” because the dhamma never taught the end of pain, only the end of suffering; it’s not the dhamma’s fault if novices think the end of suffering means an end to pain.
The assumption that these can be completely dropping the habit is entirely theoretical. The historical Buddha’s abilities are lost to history. Modern meditators can perform immense feats of pain tolerance, but I personally haven’t heard one claim to have completely eradicated the habit of suffering.
I believe Daniel Ingram makes such a claim by virtue of his claim of arhatship; if he still suffers then he cannot reasonably claim to be an arhat. He also has an anecdote of someone else he considers to be an arhat saying “This one is not suffering!” in response to a question at a retreat. I think it’s often the case that someone who has found the end of suffering doesn’t go around proclaiming it widely for various reasons.
More directly, I know a complete cessation of craving/aversion and therefore suffering is possible because I have experienced it; I do not suffer. I hesitate to make this claim publicly because I’m not interested in getting into debates about whether or not I actually do not suffer—I know so, and that’s enough for me. However, if it’s helpful to know that the complete cessation of suffering is actually attainable by a kind of existence proof, I do not mind speaking simply about what I know in my own experience(s).
I think you’re right about all the claims of fact. The Buddha won’t suffer when he feels pain. But unenlightened beings, which is all the rest of us, particularly animals, will.
But the example of the Buddha goes to show that humans have the capacity to not suffer even in painful circumstances, even if right now they do. It’s not like “unenlightenment” is something you’re forever resigned to.
So taking pain as a proxy for suffering is pretty reasonable for thinking about how to reduce suffering
I agree that in most cases where someone suffers in the presence of extreme pain, they’re likely to suffer noticeably less if that pain is alleviated, but I don’t think this means “the best way to alleviate suffering is to reduce pain as a proxy for it,” since what’s actually causing the suffering is not the pain but the aversion to it.
The message of Buddhism isn’t “in order to not suffer, don’t want anything”; not craving/being averse doesn’t mean not having any intentions or preferences. Sure, if you crave the satisfaction of your preferences, or if you’re averse to their frustration, you will suffer, but intentions and preferences remain when craving/aversion/clinging is gone. It’s like a difference between “I’m not ok unless this preference is satisfied” and “I’d still like this preference to be satisfied, but I’ll ultimately be ok either way.”
I wouldn’t say suffering is merely preference frustration—if you’re not attached to your preferences and their satisfaction, then you won’t suffer if they’re frustrated. Not craving/being averse doesn’t mean you don’t have preferences, though—see this reply I made to another comment on this post for more discussion of this.
I don’t know if I would say depression isn’t painful, at least in the emotional sense of pain. In either case, it’s certainly unpleasant, and if you want to use “pain” to refer to unpleasantness associated with tissue damage and “displeasure” to refer to a larger category of sensations which includes both pain and other “unpleasant-but-not-‘painful’” experiences such as depression, I don’t really have an objection—my point is still that suffering is distinct from ordinary displeasure.
My sense is that existing mindfulness studies don’t show the sort of impressive results that we’d expect if this were a great solution.
If you have any specific studies in mind which show this, I would be interested to see! I have a sense that mindfulness tends to be studied in the context of “increasing well-being” in a general sense and not specifically to “decrease or eliminate suffering.” I would be quite interested in a study which studies meditation’s effects when directly targeting suffering.
Also, I think people who would benefit most from having less day-to-day suffering often struggle with having no “free room” available for meditation practice, and that seems like an issue that’s hard to overcome even if meditation practice would indeed help them a lot.
I really appreciate you raising this point in detail; I think it’s something I haven’t included enough in my own considerations. Having enough free time and energy for meditation practice is indeed a kind of privilege.
I’m going to chew on this some more, but one initial thought I’ve had is that the general quality of life needed as a prerequisite to devoting enough time and energy to meditation practice may be lower than one may expect, at least by Western standards. For example, in a place like India, there seems to be a good amount of people in difficult circumstances that nonetheless make time for meditation and spiritual pursuits. However, I agree that in the limit, if all of your waking moments are focused on simply acquiring enough food today, it seems much less reasonable to prescribe meditation as the solution for their suffering.
I want to address a common misconception that I see you having here when you write phrases like:
not many people… are going to remain indifferent about it
“… I can choose to react on them or to ignore them, and I am choosing to ignore this one”
when people feel pain, and a desire to avoid that pain arises…
a person who really has no preference whatsoever
to the level that they actually become indifferent to pain
Importantly, “not being averse to pain,” in the intended sense of the word aversion, does not mean that one is “indifferent to pain,” in the sense of (not) having intentions and preferences. When I speak of “craving” or “aversion,” I am referring to a very specific kind of mental action and experience which results in suffering, not to intentions and preferences. Craving/aversion is the kind of desire which finds the way things presently are fundamentally unacceptable. Craving is like an attempt to grab at sensations and experiences, and aversion is like an attempt to hold them at arm’s length.
So, it isn’t the case that someone who has let go of craving/aversion and therefore suffering is completely indifferent to pain or that they won’t take action to alleviate the pain. If you stab a non-sufferer, they’ll still e.g. go to a hospital and have the wound treated. They’ll still have a general preference for pleasure over pain and take actions in accordance with those preferences; they just won’t seek pleasure or avoid pain in the sense of “I am not ok without this pleasure, or with this pain”—that’s craving and aversion. Pain still serves its important functional role, without the extra mental (re)actions of aversion and suffering.
This is also why I prefer to use terms like craving, aversion, and clinging to terms like “desire.” Sometimes you hear the Buddhist teaching formulated as “the cause of suffering is desire” and “stop desiring in order to stop suffering,” but I think the layperson is likely to misinterpret this as “so I can’t have any intentions or preferences,” due to the common usage of the word “desire” as “intending” or “preferring.” For example, see this LW comment thread which discusses the use of the word “desire” in this context, or Daniel Ingram’s discussion (and eschewal) of “no-preference models” of awakening.
Similarly, one could mean by “aversion” something like “dispreference” and describe someone who simply intends to alleviate pain as being averse to that pain, but this is not “aversion” as used in the Buddhist context to refer to the cause of suffering, tanha. While “aversion” may still be misinterpreted in such a manner, I think it’s less likely to be misunderstood than terms like “desire.” Same for “craving”—I think people are generally already familiar with “craving” in experience in the sense of “I must have that which I crave, I am not ok without having that which I crave.”
I often like to have Claude summarize longer LessWrong posts for me if I’m unsure whether I want to commit to reading the entire thing. Lately, however, I’ve noticed that probably 75+% of the time, it fails to fetch the page because of rate limits. Maybe LW would just be overloaded by fetches from AIs, so it must limit them? Is there any solution to this on my end besides e.g. saving the page as a PDF and uploading it manually?