Thread by @Meaningness

🎙 @fourbeerspod Two psychologists, one having published several studies on meditation, discuss the state of research.

Spoiler: thousands of studies and decades of work have found pretty much nothing, partly but not only for #replicationcrisis reasons.

fourbeers.fireside.fm/27

@fourbeerspod For decades, I’ve been criticized for being too cynical and skeptical about scientific practice.

History shows I’m never cynical and skeptical enough.

The very first post on my Buddhist blog was embarrassingly credulous: vividness.live/2011/04/25/tra…

@fourbeerspod In my defense, a year and a half later, in 2012 (before the replication crisis! I am a prophet), I expressed *some* skepticism:

vividness.live/2012/09/13/epi…

@fourbeerspod 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…)

vividness.live/2012/09/13/epi…

@fourbeerspod 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?

@fourbeerspod 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?

@fourbeerspod Clearly, in part, I *wanted to believe*, for essentially religious reasons. That’s really embarrassing.

vividness.live/2011/04/25/tra…

@fourbeerspod The other thing is that neuropsychological self-confidence and hype peaked roughly around 2012. Having not paid attention to the field for 20 years, I misread “tens of thousands of scientists think they are making amazing progress” for “presumably, there’s something there.”