People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study | Hacker News Reader

People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

qz.com

142 pointsjxub91 comments

People need to understand that the stuff like meditation that's popular right now and gets taught is just a very small subset of Buddhist practice. Real Buddhist teachings go much further. Same for yoga. Yoga is meant to be a way of life but what most Westerners see is just a form of aerobics with a few spiritual words sprinkled in.

Ironically, the biggest evidence of this here might be the idea that the ego should be kept as small as possible. Whether or not it's a real thing, it still needs maintenance (arguably a huge benefit of meditation), and there's probably a healthy size (though I hate this spatial metaphor; people are far more complex than that).

It’s walled so I can’t read it. But my impressions make this sound like yet another concept ripped from religion or philosophy into psychology/sociology - and not kept whole, in context, or even given an honest consideration.

My understanding of Adyashanti's teachings is that... the ego doesn't really go away. It is clearly seeing through the ego (that the ego is not the source of identity) that allows the egoic impulse to stop interfering with experience. That individuality does not go away with unity consciousness, and then there is "no-self", that is, no inherent self. I speak about Adyashanti's teachings, but I find this echoed in many teachers. It's just that his words seem to convey some of this better for me.

"Ego" is a fairly loaded word too. Most people don't use that word in the same sense that psychologists do, and psychologists don't have a consensus view on what ego means. In the vernacular, it tends to refer to pride, arrogance, and defensiveness.

The ego is a tool. Ego death is temporary and should not be aimed for 24/7. In a 3D, physical world, the ego is what you use to differentiate your actions from others, to take responsibility, and to make changes. We can recognize and feel deeply that we are all connected, but an ego-less person in a physical world is like a formless void, and has forgotten it's point in being alive.

Yes, it's necessary to live in the world.

Having no ego isn't really a good thing.

Before modern times it makes you starve and die, because you didn't feel like you need to be selfish to take precautions for winter and put the needs of others first.

Today, it'll prevent you from becoming well off and free from corporate bullshit, because you don't really have ambition. So you have to work for the rest of your life in some middle class job.

Having a big ego is bad, having no ego is bad.

You need to figure out in which situations you need a big ego and in which you need none.

I would say that you’re onto something. I personally spent years finding myself, doing all sorts of things from dance, to drawing, and of course yoga and meditation. What struck me — regardless of whether I was amongst engineers or artists — is how many of us never advanced our sense of self, even though we became better and better at what we did.

You know what happened after all of that? Well we generally became more and more condescending towards people less accomplished than us, and all that impostor syndrome became directed outward.

Maybe I’m a little annoyed at the simplistic view towards “ego.” Ego is not just good or bad. Even in Western thought, the Jungians had a deeper treatment of the self than most would ever read, and there’s an idea that the best parts of ourselves are also related to the worst parts of ourselves. This is where someone with Buddhist inclinations might say it’s important to be able to see past/through the ego. Losing the self is important. Among other things, it helps you get in touch with your own mortality. Just as important is accepting one’s inevitable death, and for that, one must find some peace with the sense of self. So I wouldn’t read too much into it if some scientist, trying to stick verifiable labels onto things, mistook finding the self for “self-enhancement.” Then a journalist continued with their interpretation of the paper, and now we have a game of telephone. Last but not least, it is possible to do yoga and meditation badly.

Big workout movements in the US (and elsewhere I guess) took the physical parts of yoga and left the spiritual parts behind starting in the 80's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_as_exercise Plenty of people do remember that yoga has a spiritual component though, which caused a lot of confusion when it was added to some schools' PE classes. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-appeals-court-yo...

Tangent: there's a great history on modern yoga ... huh, I forgot the title of the book. It is in my Kindle library somewhere. The book talked about how various yoga teachings came into America, starting as far back as Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also talked about some of the distortions of Tantra from India when it came out to the US.

Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated has a section on the history of classical non-dual Shaiva Tantra, and how parts of it evolved (or perhaps, devolved) into the modern yoga, which then got imported into America.

The Subtle Body by Stephanie Syman. Great read.

Modern yoga has little if anything to do with any ancient spiritual practice:

https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/iyengar-inventio...

the linked essays here changed how i think about (western) buddhism pretty deeply:

https://vividness.live/2015/09/23/buddhist-ethics-is-a-fraud...

especially this one:

https://vividness.live/2015/10/05/buddhist-ethics-is-adverti...

> When students were evaluated in the hour after their yoga class, they showed significantly higher self-enhancement, according to all three measures, than when they hadn’t done yoga in the previous 24 hours.

I wonder, is this what ego means in Buddhism? Also, is this what ego historically meant in Buddhism? For a long time, people in Buddhist communities would call you crazy if you meditate. Having followed one theological course on Buddhism at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, I am convinced that whenever you study meditation, you need a theologian specialized in Buddhism next to you in order to see if you're comparing the same constructs.

I also wonder if only meditation is supposed to have an effect on diminishing the ego, according to Buddhism. Buddhism in general is much more than only meditation. It's probably analogous to teaching people to pray and through prayer they'll figure out the 10 commandments. The result is interesting in the sense of how meditation affects someone from a western culture (someone like me). But it is dangerous to imply that this applies to Buddhism. They could've easily circumvented that by putting the scientific terms in the title.

> I wonder, is this what ego means in Buddhism?

That's the correct question to ask, and the short answer is "no."

Non-self means that there is no sperate, unchanging self. You are a constantly changing phenomenon that has arisen due to causality.

You can see how the two might be correlated, but it's loose at best.

Even if yoga or meditation had diminished your ego (whatever you choose it to mean), would that make you less likely to answer affirmatively to a statement like, "Compared to the average, I'm relatively free from bias"? If you really were selfless, wouldn't you always answer "yes"? Or would you answer "no" because "the average" has no meaning once you realize oneness with everything? I'm not convinced it's a useful measure.

There may be other better questions on the inventory, but that's the example given in the article. I also noted that they didn't mention practitioners having scored higher on narcissism, but only on "self-enhancement". (I haven't read the actual study, so this could all just be bad reporting.)

Here's the study ...

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/420273/

Ego is measured by answering questions like ...

> “At the moment, I have high self-esteem” (1 = does not apply at all, 7 = applies completely).

I'm unconvinced that vague self-reports like this have any useful meaning.

I agree (having only read the article, not the study) - I think the overall premise that improvement in a skill is incompatible with ego reduction is simplistic. You can absolutely improve on something overall while perhaps regressing on some small part (Simpson's Paradox). It's like saying that no-one can be truly humble if they believe (but not brag!) they're more humble than average - they're probably just right about that and can still be an unassuming person all around.

The Onion nailed the West's current interest in yoga twenty years ago[0], and it's only gotten worse. It's amazing how much money you can make as long as you divorce religion and spirituality from a practice optimized over a thousand years by religious and spiritual experts. Sort of like having an amazing search light but not the slightest idea where to point it or what we are searching for would look like.

[0] https://www.theonion.com/monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-...

I'm not really interested in buddhism, but have practiced meditation. I have to say meditation itself brings a great calmness, especially for my anxiety, and I was quite skeptical when it was recommended.

I think meditation should be examined outside of the scope of eastern mysticism, it need not be associated with it.

> I think meditation should be examined outside of the scope of eastern mysticism, it need not be associated with it.

While there is always an airy of "hoaky mysticism" to most religions, one possible self-consistent explanation is that that this "hoaky mysticism" of eastern religions might in fact be the logical consequence of thousands of hours, days, weeks, months, years, of meditation. Maybe western self improvement is just in fact a precursor to a precursor to the final enlightenment that hey, none of this self-improvement shit matters?

>Maybe western self improvement is just in fact a precursor to a precursor to the final enlightenment that hey, none of this self-improvement shit matters?

These are hardly new concepts in the West. It's even in Ecclesiastes.

The methodology seems strange. Questionnaires were compared based on whether yoga students had just done yoga, vs not in 24 hours (but presumably do yoga regularly). So essentially, there's a statistically significant correlation with time from last session, but it doesn't say anything about correlation with frequency of sessions.

And as usual, correlation is not causation. Was there a control group with another physical activity? Reading? Solving Sudoku puzzles? One could also postulate a perfectly reasonable-sounding theory that people's egos get bigger with any activity where there's a surge in endorphins, regardless of whether that activity is yoga or not.

Very well said.

There is a big difference between ego and narcissism.

Many people have low self-esteem, which means that they are constantly doubting themselves, feeling less worthy than others, feeling destined for failure, feeling too timid to take reasonable risks, etc.

Meditation helps to restore correct ego functioning in humans, creating a balanced perspective where the self can thrive and does not inflict self-harm by allowing impulses of self doubt and fear to hijack a person's productive effort.

The idea that selfless humans are simply humans with very low self esteem is absurd, and this article suggests that the two are equivalent.

Humans who possess the virtuous quality of being good team players and contributors to society are quite likely very good at goal directed behavior and do not wallow in the emotions of self-inferiority and fearfulness that low self-esteem individuals do.

Think about the stereotypical low self esteem douche who goes around insulting others to make himself feel better. That person is not a model of selflessness and virtue. It takes a deep well of inner confidence and belief in the value of one's own worth to be mentally strong and courageous enough to stand up to injustice or ridicule and to make the world a better place.

The issue of self esteem is confounded by millennia of religious dogma that tells people that "selflessness" is virtuous, when in fact quite the opposite is true. Virtue comes from the channeling of one's desire and one's life force toward noble ends, not by suppressing one's confidence and simply letting others (such as religious or political leaders) tell us that we are worthless and that they know what is best for us.

Yea, I found this positioning odd too. Many people in my life could use some more, err, self love and maintenance. This is hard to balance right, but that's something meditation would help with massively.

>The issue of self esteem is confounded by millennia of religious dogma that tells people that "selflessness" is virtuous, when in fact quite the opposite is true. Virtue comes from the channeling of one's desire and one's life force toward noble ends, not by suppressing one's confidence and simply letting others (such as religious or political leaders) tell us that we are worthless and that they know what is best for us.

This mode of thinking is echoed in some Stoicism books I've read. Both "Meditations", and "A guide to the good life" include similar entries.

I really enjoy seeing the parallels between western(?) Meditation/mindfulness practice, and Stoicism. I do believe the meditation we predominantly practice in the west is at least slightly different from the more traditional eastern Buddhist meditation practice. But I do believe that is to be expected, the cultures are fairly different so the adaptation process was bound to create some offshoots.

There was a submission a while ago[0] that I believe does a great job of summarizing some of the cultural changes that meditation practice went through in the west, and how it contrasts to the more traditional eastern practice.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891276

"To advance this perspective, millions of people around the world practice yoga and meditation."

I don't think this is true though. I don't think most people who aren't Buddhist do Yoga for renouncing the material world, but just for getting in shape and perhaps relaxing. I think the premise here is wrong.

Totally agree. I had to stop reading after reading: "These findings suggest that spiritual Buddhist practices like yoga and meditation may not do what proponents typically say they do"

I think comparing yoga/mediation in the context of our current society versus how a Buddhist practices is very apples and oranges.

Yoga is a Hindu concept. Buddhists don't do yoga. Meditation, absolutely; yoga, not quite.

The conflation of Buddhism and Yoga is orientalism and confuses everything in this article. Funny results though.

Buddhism is just a form of Hinduism

That's simplifying things too much. You might as well claim that Islam is just a form of Christianity.

Indian Hindu here, you are absolutely correct

The data is fascinating, but the conclusion that this is somehow apposed to Buddhism is just absurd. A healthy sense of self worth does not stand in the way of eliminating the view of a separate, persistent self for the betterment of all beings.

I think many here are mistaken that yoga/meditation are of Buddhist origins. They are in fact of Hindu origin.

Yoga mainly focuses on 1. Exercises that stimulate the base of the spine, and 2. Breathing technics. If you imagine the brain as a flower and the spine as a stalk/root; a flower needs stimulation at the root for it to blossom. The focus on breathing is to get more oxygen to the brain. Combinedly these two help improve the potential of your brain.

Yoga does not necessarily make you a good person. It just enhances the knowledge/potential of your brain. You can use that advanced knowledge to become a good person or a bad person.

"Yoga does not necessarily make you a good person."

Of course.

"It just enhances the knowledge/potential of your brain."

I'm gonna need a study here.

In fact Buddhism itself is of Hindu origin. In the west, they are often characterized as separate religions, but in India they are a blend. Buddha is considered the 9th avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu and Buddhism more of a philosophy. Hindus frequently visit Buddhist temples and worship the Buddha.

This immediately reminded me of Chögyam Trungpa's book "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism".

Wikipedia: "He uses the term [Spiritual Materialism] to describe mistakes spiritual seekers commit which turn the pursuit of spirituality into an ego building and confusion creating endeavor, based on the idea that ego development is counter to spiritual progress." [1]

Very interesting read, a good friend of mine gave it to me early on in my path on meditation. I think it's really a necessity for anyone seeking deeper meaning beyond using yoga & meditations as an ego pursuit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_Through_Spiritual_Mate...

Was going to mention this book as well. This should be hammered on from the beginning of any practice.

While anecdotal, my experience with interacting with most western followers of "eastern" practices is that they just use them to feed their egos.

>> Though yoga and meditation were originally intended as ways to calm the ego, many non-Buddhist practitioners do these activities with an eye to self-improvement or calming personal anxieties.

I have noticed meditation being pitched more and more as a self-help/productivity tool/cure all for a range of issues. Is the main difference between 'traditional' (for lack of a better word) and Western meditation just the motive behind it, or is there something else Westerners are missing?

The reality, at-least for me is that it is a productivity tool. After meditation, I just do things I normally would procrastinate on like its not a big deal. Chores don't seem like chores etc.

I don't think westerners are missing anything, at least not anything more than people who live in places where Buddhism is typically practiced. I'm western, I live in Thailand, I'm a meditator, and I often feel like some Buddhist scholar compared to Thai people. I think many people feel Buddhism is sort of re-blooming in the west, of course with its own style. There are a bunch of highly respected western monks now, even in the Thai forest tradition.

I think it's just easy to get confused about this stuff. There's the goal, there's how the goal is supposed to be accomplished, there's what you actually do every day, and there are various related practices. It's easy to get confused and think that the things that are happening are the point, like that calming down is the point, or that rapture is the point, or even that bowing to monks a certain way or donating things to the temple is the point.

It's pretty normal for people to grow up in Buddhist/Christian/Muslim/Whatever culture not know much about that religion. I grew up in a Christian country as a nominal Christian but I know almost nothing about Christianity other than a few holidays and stories.

Every major religion has some kind of meditative tradition, but the vast majority of people in all religions don't perform "meditation" in the Western sense. Even Buddhists, the vast majority do NOT practice meditation, it's only certain sub-groups that have developed various kinds of meditation practices that are commonly used in the West today. We think, for instance, of insight meditation, loving-kindness, body-scanning, and such techniques in the West.

To study these in India, Vietnam, Nepal, or elsewhere, you'd likely receive a lot of learning from the reading of texts, ancient or more recent, which is not as widely received by Westerners in today's meditation craze. Go to the Apple Store, you'll see over a dozen meditation apps, though I doubt any would explain jhana or the four-noble truths of Buddhism. Yet, here or abroad, most people will not know those ancient texts or the techniques you've been practicing for months on end.

I wonder if doing any form of work or exercise would increase someone's ego...?

I've been performing an experiment the last two years were I don't really do anything outside of work. I just sit on the couch being a fat piece of shit. No exercise. No Yoga. No mediation. I think it has helped me keep my ego under control, and foster a healthy amount of self hatred.

This is actually an interesting subject. There is a Dao "master" who chiefs a temple in California and he wrote his dissertation on how meditation is actually bad for you. I believe he is featured on the "What's this dao all about" podcast but he doesn't go too far into the subject there.

Bytematic, I'd be quite interested if you could track down the details on him and his research.

I think OP meant `What's this Tao all About?` found here: http://whatsthistao.com/

The episode regarding meditation is Episode 4 (http://whatsthistao.com/2015/09/21/epiosode-4-meditation/) but I would be weary of the source as Dr. Carl Totton is a "Reiki master" and Chinese spiritual healer.

I personally believe meditation is fantastic in calming the mind and relaxing you.

That podcast only has positive things to say about meditation. I found his dissertation mentioned a few places, but couldn't find the actual document...

I miswrote my original comment, I didn't mean to suggest anyone thought that meditation was bad. Just that someone who is probably more justified to write on the subject, had once wrote that it was bad and he still talks about it.

Why is this surprising? Any spiritual practice is a way to better ones "self". My yogi friend put it well: the difference is with yoga and meditation the goal is to get rid of things, while in "the west" we generally associate happiness with having more things.

It's surprising because 'selflessness' and thinking highly of oneself are a somewhat inconsistent.

I wish I had the source for this but I read somewhere the first obstacle to the path of enlightenment is the self righteousness of the aspirant ... i.e. as soon as someone starts learning higher truths, their sense of ego expands, which is kind of the opposite of the point.

A sort of Dunning–Kruger effect for the soul? :)

This is like saying working out and gyms make the 'ego bigger'. Maybe those who want to 'improve themselves', be fit may already have bigger egos and a self focus to start with. A study on gym goers would produce identical maybe worse results.

Sweeping assumptions on large groups and immeasurable concepts like ego are rarely credible because you will never have the kind of data to justify any blanket claims.

This seems more like a 'fetishisation' of the other based on a lack of understanding, and often there is no desire to understand, just label and dismiss. Why would anyone even do a study like this?

Western "Buddhism" is totally messed up, and you can see this from the strange behaviors of its practitioners. The majority of Buddhists in the West aren't a part of a community with a living Buddhist tradition, and they don't read or write in a language that has evolved with the particularities of the Buddhist religions. American Buddhists, in particular, don't have an idea of "initiation," "dharma transmission," and "religious community" which are so important to the Buddhist practitioners in Asia. It makes complete sense that this type of meditation doesn't work well.

I am not familiar with the Pali or Hindi languages, but, for example, in Chinese, there are over 20 words that all mean "karma", and the language has taken on many loanwords and native associations as a result of Buddhist influence. In the West, this type of transformation was brought forward by Christianity, not from Buddhism. When you read a Buddhist sutra translated into English, you get six-syllable Latinate constructions that sound more like a neuroscience paper than a living religion, such as "contingently-originated phenomenon", which is actually just two syllables in Chinese. I am sure that there's even more ingrained Buddhist ideas if you are a native Pali speaker.

I've come to believe that community practice of a thing isn't necessarily any better. For example, Buddhism is the dominant tradition in Myanmar. But that didn't stop the burning of hundreds of Rohingya villages.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/0928/Is-Rohingya...

Meh... China has a living Buddhist tradition, and I've hardly ever seen anyone meditate at all – mostly people seem to approach is as a karmic quid-pro-quo to bring themselves good fortune and avoid illness. I'm not sure that's really a superior version of Buddhism.

Hilariously strange article...

It starts with the unbelievably blunt (and imo, true): "the self is an illusion." Then is proceeds to go on about how this illusion can be either magnified or diminished by doing certain things!

What!? How can something that doesn't exist be manipulated?

I know "I'm" being a bit dense on purpose here, but really!

The thing may not exist, but the illusion of it does.

Well, perhaps the illusion (which is pretty permanent, nirvana and psychedelics aside) can be manipulated.

It is a trash article, though.

I couldn't find any specifics on their control group:

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/420273/2/online_supplement.pdf

Did they practice some other form of physical activity?

Orthodox Christianity has a very rich contemplative history. In particular, understanding concepts like the nous do quite a bit to illuminate our more modern idea of ego and the false dialectic of big vs. small / null ego.

Any recommended reading? Thanks!

There is quite a lot, not what I would consider to be easy reading but thought-provoking nonetheless:

- Byzantine Theology is a good overview of many of the concepts that differentiate the East from the West (https://www.amazon.com/Byzantine-Theology-Historical-Trends-...)

- Divine Essence and Divine Energies (a critical distinction that has been lost in the West) (https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Essence-Energies-Ecumenical-Re...)

- Any of the works by St. Maximus the Confessor

Lots more...

So if meditation and yoga don't help the average person in this way, perhaps we need to change the meaning of MAGA to Make Acid Great Again. LSD induced ego death could be our new national high school graduation ritual.

The early pioneers of LSD believed in ego death and yet had huge egos that only got bigger with successive doses.

That's weird, usually people claim the opposite. Perhaps perceiving having less of an ego is actually a symptom of having a huge ego. I wouldn't know; I've barely got an ego at all.

I see what you did there.

Meditation has boosted my ego, in some meanings of the word, and given me a sense of self worth. It's also taught me that everyone is interconnected and self is an illusion. Those two things go hands in hand to make me much more generous and giving than I used to be.... Still no saint though.

I think people lack the language or don't realize the two concepts of self-worth and non-self are sperate. The word ego just gets thrown around. "Oh yeah I have a tiny ego but great self esteem." == "I have a strong view of non-self and a huge ego."

"My ego is the smallest. Truly tiny. Everyone says I basically have no ego."

I used to practice yoga and meditation with a goal of transcending my own ego. I largely stopped because it felt like I was forcing it, and I felt that particular kind of self-discipline wasn't the right way for me. This study (if it has any validity) reinforces that thinking from a different angle. Maybe yoga and meditation are just outward signs of the natural enlightenment process, and using them as tools to pursue enlightenment is simply cargo cultism. Or maybe that's just my ego justifying itself...

Seems like meditation (maybe yoga as well) gives you access to control the Ego. Westerners just want to dial the knob in the opposite direction.

I honestly am more inclined to think that in the world we live in (and the rules we operate according to), having a way to boost your Ego isn't necessarily bad. There is no way you can achieve anything significant (involving many other people), without at least some use for your Ego. Of course you can "crash the ship" if you don't know when to use it.

Don't think of dealing with your ego nor should you worry about being right or wrong when something comes up regarding your ego when meditating. Also, when meditating, you overcome mental/emotional blockages which naturally makes you energetic. Don't get attached to conclusions and stay calm after you experience a mental shift.

I’m quite sure yoga classes (more so teachers) that focus on Buddhist philosophy are few and far between, in the West. The majority are fitness classes.

It seems like they’ve deliberately drawn an extremely broad conclusion.

It would be very interesting to run this kind of study focusing / assessment for students of specific teachers, types of yoga or lineages of teaching.

Assuming that they just used breathing meditation (the most popular form of meditation), then I wouldn't be surprised. It's just one form of meditation to bring calmness to a busy mind.

Other religions like Buddhism, also have analytical meditation which they use to minimize/eliminate the ego to obtain nirvana/enlightenment.

Is it possible that the ego in this article and the ego that the Buddhists are talking about are two different things? This may be a miscommunication, using the same word to point to different ideas. How can we know when the article never clarifies exactly what it means by ego?

You can see the egos as big as the sun in certain areas. Go down to Miami Beach and yoga is a competitive sport. It’s so fake and so phony and you’ve got people spending $200/hr for yoga/meditation sessions and it’s completely bonkers.

What's worse is all the "hipster yoga" classes and movements taking place.

Remember seeing that "Yoga with goats" class? Or "Yoga with kittens" in the studio.

It's a great example of first-world privilege and "living in the bubble" that we do here.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with this, why does everything have to be completely authentic to the original source?

I think the person you were responding to was remarking more on the ridiculousness of it, rather than the inauthenticity.

What exactly is specifically crazy about it, as opposed to all the other stuff we do in the modern world?

I wonder, if this is the next ‘power pose’ BS?

http://fortune.com/2016/10/02/power-poses-research-false/

This completely misses the point. Perhaps recruiting people from Facebook is not the best way to find humble people.

A lot of people I know use meditation or even spiritual advancement as a way to treat their inferiority complex.

After they fail to realize success in other areas of life they hang on to their egos and find a false sense of superiority in the fact that they are spiritual ones.

Some of these people are the hardest working Buddhists I know. What they truly lack however is empathy and and the desire to face themselves.

Wanting to love oneself and other living beings is more important than any other aspect of the spiritual path. Without that, every teaching is just a string of empty words.

There are some on the spiritual path that seek knowledge and awareness. Pure awareness. They are human yet their karma doesn't involve getting entangled with their fellow men. Hermits. Loving, hating, its all the same to them because their focus is elsewhere. Most would say they are selfish and lack empathy but they are just different kind of seeker.

I don't want to be "that guy" but... why is this news? It's fairly self-evident in our culture. Just look at the way the people who practice these are portrayed in media. (at least when it's set in the west in modern times)

The study itself is valuable, I'm not against testing things that are "obvious". Just that when the culturally accepted result is upheld by the study, it's not generally worth reporting on IMO.

It is worth reporting in a scientific article though. Null-results, everything should be reported and accessible somewhere. The reproducibility crisis should be stopped, otherwise I can just claim whatever I want and be as wrong as the social scientists who have trouble finding any verifiable fact.

Regarding to what is news worthy and therefore publishable on news: whatever makes money, I wouldn't know what makes money in that regard.

> It is worth reporting in a scientific article though. Null-results, everything should be reported and accessible somewhere.

Which is exactly what I said in my original post.

> Regarding to what is news worthy and therefore publishable on news: whatever makes money

I'm usually pretty cynical but I do at least wish we could hold news to a higher standard than "Make money".

Ah, my apologies, didn't catch that.

Regarding the news: I hope so too. I suppose I betrayed my cynicism.

Read the details of the study. They made up the meditation styles to trick participants. Horseshit bias.

There are definitely traps along the meditative path, like thinking that rapture is the point, or thinking highly of yourself, e.g., "wow, I'm a better meditator than other people". But it's a bit like worrying about overexercising, not a problem most people are likely to face.

So we have this silly study showing whatever, and then we have 2500 years of brilliant monks like Ajaan Chah, Thich Nhat Hanh, on and on and on, telling us it's exactly like the Buddha said, and that we should meditate and see it for ourselves. I think I'll go with the larger study.

There is only one way to study meditation. Do it.

There is no Buddhist Pope that makes proclamations that you just have to accept on faith. There is no Buddhist scientific organization holding press conferences on their latest discoveries. It is all about practice and experience, the rest (and I know there is a lot of it..) is just fluff and colorful decoration.

Ego is Small Mind, noisy mind, chattering monkey mind. When you quiet that through mediation you start to experience Big Mind, the source of intuition and wisdom and a clearer look at reality. But, as the ancient books say, it is nothing special.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com