jules22

GPUs will be bought like TVs. It took 4060, about 6 years to double the Passmark score over 1060.

Yes, which is why individuals cannot do research alone. We need a well organized effort with proper subject recruitment so that there is a sufficient pool to investigate and all the research precautions are taken.

Modern research does not just happen casually and individually. It is a sophisticated activity with a lot of planning and organization.

That is how pseudoscientific studies often look like. Low n, fantastic p, yet no replicability when you should expect 100% replicability. Why? They always turn out to be badly conducted experiments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Scientific_recept...

The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Targ and Puthoff's remote viewing experiments that were carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. In a series of 35 studies, they were unable to replicate the results so investigated the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates. Marks was able to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues. James Randi has written controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.

Playing the fantasy of an "omniscient oracle" often seems to be the ego trip of popular meditation gurus today. They are all quite scientifically illiterate.

> stacking shit like rocks on top of each other

They still do in India. Cow dung cakes are a rural fuel.

I am not doubting that India is likely the first to write about derealization. But it was mistaken to be the ultimate reality.

I don't believe that you do. I said you used a familiar argument that quacks use. I do not believe that you believe in quackery. This isn't facebook. On hacker news, I assume people are generally critically minded.

> Disengaging because of the amazing amount of bad faith in your responses.

I don't know what you mean by bad faith here. I have no need to deceive you and don't feel anyone here is trying to deceive me either. I am not refusing facts unreasonably. I do have an unpopular position based on considerable thought on the matter. I am citing literature on the topic that is not dubious. You can't ground arguments any better than that. This is not bad faith.

Taylor, Greenberry B., et al. "The adverse effects of meditation-interventions and mind–body practices: A systematic review." Mindfulness 13.8 (2022): 1839-1856.

Britton, Willoughby B., et al. "Defining and measuring meditation-related adverse effects in mindfulness-based programs." Clinical Psychological Science 9.6 (2021): 1185-1204.

Shapiro Jr, Deane H. "Adverse Effects ofMeditation: A Preliminary Investigation ofLong-Term Meditators." International Journal of Psychosomatics 39.1-4 (1992): 63.

In any case, I do also agree that further exchange with you on this topic is not productive.

I do avoid them (figuratively, not literally) because I value my critical thinking.

What I observe in meditators is a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things and have insight beyond even experts.

If they produced some new knowledge through that, I would be all for it. But no, it just is a collapse of common sense.

Experiments under Jahn's purview also explored remote viewing and other topics in parapsychology. In 1982, at the invitation of the editors of Proceedings of the IEEE, Jahn published a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective.[8] A subsequent critique of this review by psychologist Ray Hyman, which was also invited by the journal's editors, discussed Jahn's work in the context of a long history of flawed psychic research.[9] Psychologist James Alcock carried out an extensive review of Jahn's research and found there to be "serious methodological problems".[10] Statistical flaws in Jahn's work have been proposed by physicist Stanley Jeffers.[11] Jahn closed the PEAR lab in 2007.[12]

Where is the evidence for this? None.

> the fear of "never coming back"

Psychedelics sound like fun, but I have seen quite a few broken people on the streets, all because of them. It's not just fear, it is a serious concern.

Kuijpers, Harold JH, et al. "Meditation-induced psychosis." Psychopathology 40.6 (2007): 461-464.

All the more reason, to not take reason for granted.

> Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality

They do, and my concern is they contribute no new insights, especially given the vast investments of time.

> Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating

These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

To me, this is just a variation of "never mind the science, why don't you try for yourself" argument you find in quackery. I found a disconnect between what people were reporting and actual behavior in meditators.

> only the most incidental and bottom-of-the-barrel evidence.

Are scholarly reports of psychosis bottom of the barrel or are testimonials from meditators the bottom of the barrel? Perhaps next, you want to make an argument from popularity?

You might just be completely unfamiliar with the emerging scholarly literature on the topic.

Lambert, D., N. H. van den Berg, and A. Mendrek. "Adverse effects of meditation: A review of observational, experimental and case studies." Current Psychology (2021): 1-14.

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.

Generally a bad idea. Usually leads to quackery, pseudoscience beliefs etc. Individuals are much worse than institutions on matters of research.

Despite significant literature on meditation psychosis, meditation is promoted as a completely safe practice and risks are almost never mentioned to new practitioners.

This is the argument of quacks and charlatans (including the meditation charlatans aka "gurus").

A quack will always argue to ignore criticisms of his snake oil and just try it for yourself and find out.

Evidence is not personal, it's universal.

Denying universal facts and saying this is true for me is a position of a closed mind. You are being invited to prove facts, not just assert personal truths. It can't be more open minded than that.

Buddhism can deny self, but Buddha can also say, his self alone exists.

In any case, these are just beliefs. We know the world exists and there are no souls around. So much for "enlightenment".

I never said they weren't good at tech and engineering. Anyway, the army and CIA make none of those. They just contract it out to Northrop or such, no? I haven't accused defense contractors of paranormal pseudoscience.

However, my point is not one of presenting a representative sample, but rather easily accessible and video instances of highly visible subjects to illustrate.

There is plenty of scientific literature on meditation induced mental disorders for what you prefer. I have looked at that too.

These are called derealization hallucinations and are reported in meditators.

I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones.

> that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience

Not disagreeing.

I know some meditating academics. They all have this tendency to irrationality.

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.

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.

All the senior meditators I know have some element of irrationality. The openness that meditation seems to promote seems to also promote a certain level of gullibility that I did not expect from them.

Obviously, an out of body experience is not really true and is just a hallucination. People have looked at these.

I generally find the followers to be quite suggestable by people they designated as a guru.