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Comment by DrThunder | Hacker News Reader

There are multiple scientific studies show the positive affects of meditation and a myriad of health benefits....

I'm not sure what "gurus" you're seeing but it's not really relevant to objective studies that show it works and makes changes in the brain. I'm sure they are making some claims that are pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean meditation in its entirety is just a "feel nice" routine.

Here's just one of several I found in a quick search-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/

I think of meditation as exercise for your brain. Just like you need to physically exercise to "prepare" your body you need to be doing stuff to keep your brain from going haywire and jumping from though to though like its hopped up on caffeine all the time. There are various ways to do "train your brain" but meditation/mindfulness is one very good way to do it.

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PMC has a lot of junk journals. Don't fall for them, especially if you want to use "Dr" in your nick. Most meditation research is rather low quality. Don't go around just googling your confirmation bias. One would not regard any journal on Ayurveda to have much scientific merit. It's essentially quackery. Their standards for peer review are low. This "paper" uses oxymorons such as "Vedic science".

Take this text for instance: "A feedback loop to the DNA starts a new cycle to provide whatever is needed for the activities of the cell. In meditation, the feedback loop to the deep inner Self (the seat of knowledge, like DNA) provides inner peace and bliss, which removes the accumulated stresses of life and improves overall health."

That gibberish would be an instant reject from any serious reviewer. This is not how science papers are written. This is the snake oil of the meditation world I was talking about. Minus the citations, this qualifies at best as a Facebook post. This might be an example of how meditation makes an educated man talk silly.

I also know several meditators. Anecdotally, not one improved his powers of concentration with meditation. They procrastinate and get distracted like everyone else, all while claiming they feel so much focused after meditation. Maybe, meditation makes them feel focused, while not actually being so.

There's also a lot of studies showing that meditation can cause harm.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2

True... but this lends credence to the fact that it's not just a cult pseudoscience. It's actually having an effect positive or negative on people.

I did not argue that it was inert. I actually argued that

1.) not really doing what enthusiasts claimed it was specifically doing. 2.) making people become develop bizarre beliefs and generally become irrational.

It can be a cult pseudoscience while not being inert.

fixing terrible writing

1.) meditation was not really always doing what enthusiasts claimed it was doing.

2.) it was making people develop bizarre beliefs and generally become irrational.

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