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Comment by ajb | Hacker News Reader

Works for me -> everybody should do it

...is an incredibly common fallacy. I don't say that to dismiss your experience, as I'm sure the things helped you and you are genuinely trying to help others- and that these things can help lots of people. My issue is solely with the word 'everybody'

Here is why it is toxic: for people who those things don't work, or for whom the proposed solution is beyond their ability, it's a short step to blaming them for their problems and writing them off. Which is a very common reaction to mental health problems, even among mental health professionals.

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It's hard to do harm with meditation. It's a bit like saying everybody should exercise. Yes, there might be a person on earth who shouldn't exercise, although I find that hard to imagine, but the statement is still valid. Similarly, it's hard to imagine someone who wouldn't benefit from meditation. Just a few minutes is beneficial.

Meditation and exercise are not comparable. The latter is something our bodies were designed by our evolution to do. The former is something we ourselves developed in certain cultural environments. The actual difference in confidence of benefit between these two is enormous.

I'd argue that exercise (for some) can be a form of meditation and achieve similar effects. Running for a long time will result in a focus on your breath and each stride and step.

I heard once that meditation is an inherently introspective practice. It brings your focus towards yourself and being present in the moment. Hence if you are narcissistic, the last thing you want is to draw more focus to yourself And meditate.

To loosely quote "McMindfulness", it's possible to be mindful about shitty things. The Western form of mindfulness has been largely washed of the Buddhist dogma that it's rooted in. This is because it was heavily coopted by corporations as a way for people to "meditate" towards tolerating a crappy work environment or coworkers.

Sure. I’m only reporting one thing that I heard. I’d rather read more ideas of why it’s wrong rather than be down voted.

I was agreeing with you - I'm not sure why people wouldn't downvote you, other than not liking to hear about the ugly side of mindfulness.

Firstly, even if mediation was completely harmless in itself, there is such a thing as opportunity cost. Spending a year unsuccessfully thing to get something from mediation is a year when they could have been trying lots of other things. (You could try other things at the same time, but most medical professionals actively discourage that)

Isn't this a fallacy in itself? There is opportunity cost in everything. How would you know a year of meditation wasn't working out without actually doing the meditation?

If a year didn't work, how would you know that 2 years want going to work? or 5 years?

The problem isn't that you have to try it to see if it's works. The problem is that psych professionals a) have a poor grasp of decision theory and b) have an incentive to optimise their time and not the patients.

> If a year didn't work, how would you know that 2 years want going to work? or 5 years?

The time frame is not relevant as people differ in their abilities, as you have noted. Typically there would be some measurable change that helps determine how "you" are feeling overall in the process, not how other people felt at the indicated time frame. After all the goal is for "you" to feel better, which is subjective to everyone.

> The problem isn't that you have to try it to see if it's works.

I'm not sure I see how this would work any other way than trying it. A person is only trying the recommendation not perfecting it.

> The problem is that psych professionals a) have a poor grasp of decision theory and b) have an incentive to optimise their time and not the patients.

I'm not directly following how this relates to the original comment stating that recommending something for someone was toxic. Much like all professions some people are better at their job than others, sometimes you find the right fit, sometimes you have to keep going. We all have to walk our own path, no one can walk it for us.

*"you" is in the objective sense, not directed at you specifically.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure how to explain this to you any further. Nothing you are saying is actually wrong, it just doesn't actually refute what I have been saying.

Unfortunately, I do think it refutes your point. You stated the following based on someones post of "everybody should try meditation":

>Here is why it is toxic: for people who those things don't work, or for whom the proposed solution is beyond their ability, it's a short step to blaming them for their problems and writing them off.

It seems very illogical to be on a recommendation engine of a site if its difficult for you to to reason with the recommendations posted and/or the direct feedback that people also post, relating to the topic at hand. I pointed out that this is what HN was based on. I disagree that it is toxic for someone else to make a recommendation, based on their perspectives, to try something on a site like HN.

If you had possible insight I would like to understand two things:

1. Why is someone one a site like HN if they aren't the intended audience?

2. What value would they derive from the site, presumably knowing their own mental health and that any recommendation they could read would be toxic to them because they may not be able to achieve the desired outcome?

If you want to figure out what someone else is saying, you need to figure out the way they have conceptualised the issue. You won't be able to do this by insisting on your conceptualisation.

By all means, please expand on this, preferably in more than a one or two sentence answer. I've posed two questions already to help frame what you are speaking too and so far I've only seen surface level responses.

How would you know a priori that doing it is better than what you could otherwise do with your life? Spending time to build meaningful relations with people around you could be a better use of time. With your spouse or kids, for example.

I'm not saying meditation is bad per se. But claiming straiht away that it can't do harm before you try it is just too strong of a statement. It's easy to dismiss the effect of opportunity cost.

>How would you know a priori that doing it is better than what you could otherwise do with your life?

You don't. Just as equally you can't say a recommendation is harmful that you haven't actually evaluated or performed yourself. No one dismissed opportunity cost, in fact its was clearly stated above that everything has a cost, both doing and not doing something.

There is a population who doesn't necessarily benefit, but we're pretty small: Those of us who have severe dissociative problems can sometimes not do well with meditation - we're basically so used to ignoring our mental and physical cues that training us to do so more isn't a good idea. It essentially reaffirms some toxic priors and heuristics we've developed. Also can really fuck with you if you have issues with things like derealization/depersonalization because you're contributing to that internal wall by detaching yourself.

You might want to read the Wilson et al paper on mindfulness significantly increasing susceptibility to false memories, that’s quite the downside.

> It's hard to do harm with meditation

It's hard to do harm with taking a one hour walk every day.

It's hard to do harm doing yoga for an hour a day.

It's hard to do harm with cooking a really healthy meal every day.

It's hard to do harm watching a self-improvement video on youtube every day.

It's hard to do harm writing down self-reflective thoughts for half an hour before going to bed every night.

...

No, if you compare it with sitting on the sofa staring into the wall, then no, it's likely not going to harm. But that's the wrong comparison. You need to compare with what you instead do not do with your limited time. And then doing all those things can do a lot of (relative) harm.

It's easy to do harm with claiming a certain thing is hard to do harm with.

If it doesn't work for you, then you should work on finding out why not and what does work. It's also why I definitely recommend therapy. But most people just accept that they can't change or improve and that's that.

Being judged for recommending meditation is weird. I bounced off of meditation too. I don't actively practice it nowadays. I think at a certain point in my life, it wasn't helpful at all because of where I was psychologically and emotionally. It was way too painful. However, I learned from that experience, and I do think it was a valuable experience that led me to CBT, and tried different things.

I find your comment far more toxic and encouraging of doing nothing. How about you not blame people? I don't. Everybody is on their own journey and that's okay. If somebody feels meditation doesn't work for them, that's fine. Maybe something else will. However, I do feel that it's a universal skill that can benefit everybody. If somebody is unwilling or unable to train it, that's totally fine. I won't force anything on anybody or judge them for it. As an individual, it's up to you to make your own choices and decide what's best for you. All I can do is share my experience and my advice.

I'm happy that it works for you.

This has been a very controversial comment, but a lot of people who disagree are reading things into it that I did not say. All I'm saying is, people are different, and something working for you doesn't mean it will work for everyone. You don't need to let your enthusiasm for something lead you into making categorical statements which gaslight those for whom it doesn't work.

I guess there is something badly worded about my comment which appears to insult you, which was not my intention, so I apologise for that.

As a bit of insight, the first response you had referred to using the word 'everybody' as toxic. Further, it appears you have doubled down and condemned what has worked for Sakos and their shared enthusiasm for a topic, as psychological manipulation[1] to undermine random people that 'might' read their posting.

I think that if you are getting the feeling that responders are coming across as adversarial or misinterpreting what you are presenting, which happens with text, its a good time to reflect on things. Hopefully this helps.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gaslighting

Furthermore, my observations among my colleagues is that the folks who do this meditation among other things are also not really successful at it either, for the most part. A great example is the Parks and Rec clip where Chris and Ron go for meditation [1] - quite an exaggeration to be sure but it is very conflicting that you actively try to not think. In the show the running line is that for someone who tries to do everything right Chris doesn’t really attain inner peace or even true good health.

I myself have never meditated much, but have had my dad who used to disappear in to the forest for a few weeks at a time (he has done that all his life, something he learned from his father etc, as part of the culture of a traditional medicinal healer). He meditates. To clarify, he meditates ALL the time. In a loud train. While my mom watches loud annoying soap operas. While lying down. Not on a schedule he puts in the calendar. To him that was the default state of mind. In some ways not very dissimilar to what Ron Swanson does in the clip. Maybe some day I’ll try that out, but it sure ain’t gonna be by popping headphones with an app playing white noise. It’s gotta be a fundamental change in what you do in every step of life.

Having said that, it looks like even forced meditation on a schedule still helps a bit. Just don’t expect to be a long term miracle cure. It’s safe to say anything Tim Ferris says works in helping him calm down is likely not a real solution lol.

1. https://youtu.be/7lHARAJFSgw

Do you feel its a benefit in his life?

Unclear TBH. He was a remarkable individual in his younger days but as he reached retirement wisdom did seem to part ways in an unfair way and all his calmness didn’t help slow down that decline. I continue to try and get what lessons I can from his life and others, and for me the lesson is not to meditate but just slow down, not to hurry on anything and just do things with purpose.

This entire site is a recommendation engine. What the person stated above was a recommendation, much like advice, people don't have to do anything with it. Your example of something being toxic because not everyone succeed as well as others or do not poses an innate ability in something is very difficult to conceptualize for few reasons.

1. There are plenty of people who excel at items better than others. Athletes, researchers, hackers, plumbers, electricians, basically anyone. 2. Our entire human evolution has been taking chances on things that might not succeed. 3. This is literally what YC/Hacker News is and was formed from, i.e Things posted or commented on are not given with the intention that it will work for everyone. Its all an experiment.

To loosely quote Eleanor Roosevelt[1]: > "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/

This is all true. But my point is true as well. HN is recommendation engine, but it's kind of targeted to people who have the time and space to do a lot of experiments, because they are young and without responsibilities.

People who have mental health issues often have limited energy, so need to consider carefully the amount of time they should invest in each possible thing that might help them.

I believe your first statement makes a broad assumption about the targeted audience.

>People who have mental health issues often have limited energy, so need to consider carefully the amount of time they should invest in each possible thing that might help them.

This can apply to everyone not just people with mental health issues. The onus is placed on the reader here since we have established that HN is just an recommendation engine. Everyone is has a responsibility to do their own due diligence, especially from comments made on the Internet.

One way to reconcile the two viewpoints is to find the conditions in which the recommendation is useful and instead of saying:

“everyone can benefit from this therefore everyone should do it”

“People who are X and Y can benefit from this and should try it”

Kind of like the sanity checks/boundary checks we put in the beginning of a function before we start processing data.

As a person making the recommendation why would you place bounds on it? There could be an unlimited number of conditions in which the suggestion could work as intended verse trying to consider all possible interpretations of your recommendation by all the people that might read it.

Why would the onus for this not be on the reader to place within their own bounds of understanding and abilities?

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