SOE13: The goal of religion

I agree, study is worth doing, and worth doing well. That is why I think it's so important to really read those studies carefully, just as you would read a historical document. Journalist accounts are often very inaccurate.

If I were designing a study to look at whether a specific mindfulness practice increases pleasure compared to something else a person could be doing in that same time (considering we are finite), I would compare it to asking one comparison group to do a personally pleasurable activity on the same schedule, and a control group who just rated their pleasure (that could cause them to change their routines, but control groups are impossible to rid of confounders in this type of project). And hey, maybe a group that did half the time mindfulness and half their fun activity.

I'd look at their pleasure/pain ratings during the activities and through the day, and for any ongoing effects. Best to do a long term study, at least a year, since these are practices people are being asked to do long term and some effects might take time.

My hypothesis would be that a personally chosen pleasurable activity will win over mindfulness. But like many scientists, I'm interested in any result, including the possibility mindfulness trumps fun for pleasure.

Quote from Hiram

Sam Harris has ALWAYS ignored or been ignorant about Epicurus and is 100 % sold on secular Buddhism.

WHY? Sam Harris is obviously a very smart guy, and he has no doubt been exposed to a reasonable degree of fundamental material on Epicurus.

I would put Ayn Rand in the same category. Smart person, no doubt exposed to core Epicurean ideas (at the very least through Nietzsche and no doubt much further, and superficially in tune with "happiness" being the goal of life.

And yet SILENCE where there should be ringing endorsement. WHY? I cannot but tend to put people like this into the category of those who are not "mistaken" but fully and consciously help obscure the history because they disagree with Epicurus on a fundamental level.

This plays into several threads we are talking about -- we are not going to convert people like Sam Harris, or Ayn Rand (even if she were alive) but especially those who embrace some form of nihilism / nothingness like runs rampart through the "eastern" viewpoints. So I don't see the need or desirability of "engaging" them other than publishing our own analysis and trying to get it into the hands of people who need it. But I don't expect those affiliated with the Sam Harris type of establishment to help me do it, nor would I devote any more attention to their opposing views than what is necessary to dissect, lay out the error, and point out the correct to anyone who might have gone their way but still be open to reflection.

Ok Hiram, the first study on runners and meditators was small and methods are behind a paywall, but the purpose was to correlate mood changes with CRH, corticotropin releasing hormone, using the stimuli of running vs meditation, and they found no differences between the runners and the meditators. Both groups were highly skilled so self-selected for liking the activity. Would have interesting if they'd crossed it over, lol, and had the meditators run, etc. It's hard to generalize pleasure obtained by a group who already know they like an activity to a random person. But it goes with the idea that if an individual likes an activity, they'll get pleasure from doing it and there will be biochemical evidence of that.

I wouldn't advise citing that study as evidence for benefit of meditation-- that wasn't the study question.

The one on gray matter changes did have full access. It was also very small, 20 meditators and 15 controls, and they were testing a hypothesis that specific areas of the cortex would be thicker in meditators. Although more would need to be done to confirm, that wouldn't be surprising -- it would fit with other research showing brain changes with activity. There was not any overall thickening of the cortex. Just in specific regions.

But then they did what appears to be a post-hoc analysis (not in their original hypothesis) of age-related changes, looking for correlations by age group, and this made the comparison groups even smaller. Post-hoc analysis gets called the spaghetti method-- throw the data on the wall and see what sticks. It's considered bad form because what looks like a pattern is more often not there in attempts to replicate. So I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that part.

None of that really has anything to do with pleasure though. We'd need to ask the subjects about that, to know if cortex thickening correlates with pleasure. I've never seen that specific question asked but it's not my area, so maybe it has been.

I hate to say it, but the state of medical research is very very poor. People are publishing to get tenure and promotions. If you read Cochrane reviews on a question, generally they will say things like "we located 500 studies on x thing. 495 did not meet criteria for study design (not blinded, etc) and the 5 remaining were too small to draw any conclusions from." I'm exaggerating a little, but it is pretty pitiful.

Anytime you want my feedback on a study you want to cite in a paper or book in the future, I'm happy to look at it if not behind a paywall.