tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post4376799559920823766..comments2024-03-28T23:22:41.774-05:00Comments on TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee"): The dangers of meditationMinnesotastanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01382888179579245181noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-92087750256376271872021-12-21T16:15:31.592-06:002021-12-21T16:15:31.592-06:00This (paywalled) article says that
"Common a...This (paywalled) article says that<br /><br />"Common adverse events included affective difficulties, distorted senses of self, derealization, hallucinations, delusions, interpersonal challenges, and susceptibility to false memory..."<br /><br />https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2Maiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358618477570574559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-54166439118540108832021-12-08T12:17:10.008-06:002021-12-08T12:17:10.008-06:00I'll acknowledge not having done a deep-dive i...I'll acknowledge not having done a deep-dive into Britton's research, but I'll also point out that the discussion of it is highly suggestive of the "Texas sharpshooter fallacy" wherein a researcher looks for something of statistical significance which appears associated with a phenomenon - and when something is found, it's seen as causal. It's essentially targeting the error in otherwise solid research, and choosing data that's squarely outside of the confidence interval. Yes, each meditation center visited may have horror stories about people developing psychosis after participating in their program, but you could say the same thing about my local Taco Bell. That's not causation. I'm sure some people have first psychotic episodes following a game of golf, too.<br /><br />As a "those clinicians" (actually, a diagnostic crisis clinician) myself, I have to say that the behaviors that are described from the young woman at the center of the story are highly suggestive of a fairly straightforward, if tragic, case of schizophrenia, and she's pretty straight down the middle of the age group where this most often develops for females. It's also quite possible that her choice to seek services from that particular meditation program (with that BS marketing language) was actually a sign of emerging grandiose or spiritual delusion. While it's true that certain things can induce psychosis in otherwise healthy people, (especially drugs and sleep deprivation) I'm not aware of any that produce lasting psychosis in a manner that is distinguishable from an underlying psychotic disorder.<br /><br />I would absolutely encourage healthy people to avoid any meditation guidance that promises a "universal remedy" for anything, and I'd caution people to avoid any that is clearly founded in anecdotal/spiritually-based philosophy which is foreign to them and associates meditation with virtue. In certain states, we can all be highly susceptible to suggestion, and transmissible delusion is a very real phenomenon. There is nothing that I'm aware of and nothing noted in the article that suggests that focusing your thoughts on a matter of one's concern, or in service of taking control of those thoughts is a problem. Forcing things without clear evidence that it will help? Always a problem.<br /><br />My prescription? Don't join cults. Don't do lots of drugs. Avoid logical fallacies. Embrace science. Get help if things get weird.Benjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04888123975986178729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-88998489613384682162021-12-06T08:17:59.202-06:002021-12-06T08:17:59.202-06:00Posted this on Facebook. Here are two of the comm...Posted this on Facebook. Here are two of the comments (public): <br /> 1) "Pretty interesting. It matches what happens when people start having impaired vision. It's not uncommon to start seeing things that aren't there as the occipital lobe tries to hang on to its chunk of real estate. Apparently that's what dreaming is about as well. In the down time your brain imagines things to keep things firing. If I ever get disciplined enough to meditate, I'll keep it to 10 minutes!"<br /> <br /><br />2) "I used to do it for an hour, three times a day for years. It does actually change your brain patterns in not altogether desirable ways for a modern person who still has to work and deal with life. You do start not shutting off your brain at night and if anyone has experienced sleep deprivation psychosis, it can be similar. Your meditation, waking, and sleeping hours all start to bleed into each other and can be disorienting. That’s kinda the point though." <br /><br />I'm most interested in the moral implications: Meditation tends to be correlated with extra-goodness. Virtue. But, that's not been my observation. <br /><br />And, I suspect dedication to seeking enlightenment makes sense if there is such a thing as enlightenment. Much like seeking salvation. But, if there is no such thing, then what is it? A superstitious indulgence--or a way of developing discipline, but to what end? Discipline can be useful to anyone, doing anything. (I won't here mention a Nazi sniper, Gawwwdwin NO!) <br /><br />Daniel Quinn made the point that it wasn't until the many horrors of civilization were thrust upon us that humans began thinking in terms of escaping Earthly reality; then developing all manner of salvation-oriented belief systems. I concur. Crowboyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615681320852482003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-10397313216057973982021-12-05T20:24:10.743-06:002021-12-05T20:24:10.743-06:00I understand you are quite upset by the implicatio...I understand you are quite upset by the implications of this essay, but I think you've gone too far when you assert that there is "no reference to Britton's research." If you go to the source article rather than my excerpt, you would find "In 2017, Britton and her team published their findings in PLOS One, a prominent scientific journal."<br /><br />I copypasted that sentence into Google and with one click found the source -<br /><br />https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176239<br /><br />- which is not behind a paywall. Full data and methodology at the link.Minnesotastanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01382888179579245181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-29913216775572279942021-12-05T16:32:09.301-06:002021-12-05T16:32:09.301-06:00No references to 'Some Clinicians', no ref...No references to 'Some Clinicians', no reference to Britton's research, all the focus is on the one person, who may have, n fact, sought out the 10 day program because of emerging symptoms of psychosis.<br /><br />Correlation is not causation. <br /><br />Frankly this article offers no actual evidence that 'meditation is dangerous', and feels like a prime example of the horrible state of health and science reporting, even in respected magazines.<br /><br />No link to the sleepd study or how the patients were recruited, or the conditions under which sleep was obeserved or reported. It would not be unusual if meditationwas mimicking the physical effects of taking catnaps during the day which can cause disruptions in 'normal' sleep patterns.<br /><br />It is a far FAR cry going from this article to suggesting that meditation can induce psychotic breaks!Bruce.desertrathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10434042422376320562noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-33383703526153855542021-12-05T14:33:26.110-06:002021-12-05T14:33:26.110-06:00"a cumulative ten hours and forty-five minute..."a cumulative ten hours and forty-five minutes, she sat cross-legged on a rug, her spine erect, and tried to focus on her breath." That sounds pretty extreme for a first day.<br /><br />It mentions hunger pangs, but not how much she was eating except she was "eating regularly" again when she got home. I wonder how much she was allowed to eat. at first glance it almost sounds like cult indoctrination techniques. Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14544679914276602288noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-68829965053081903382021-12-05T13:03:37.728-06:002021-12-05T13:03:37.728-06:00Meh, typical case of "Some scientists think t...Meh, typical case of "Some scientists think that under some circumstances, things happen". This is always a true statement, especially because it completely glosses over the meaning of the two "some"s and the missing qualifier "rare". <br /><br />An enormous problem of scientific communication is that when communicating, you have to gloss over a lot of details while explaining results because it would took years of study to understand them. However, the simplified message then gets often taken for absolutely and unequivocally true and science-deniers love to then use anecdotes to disprove these scientific "facts". Invariably, this anecdote can be explained in terms of the glossed over details. However, since this makes the discussion to complicated, this is very hard to do in public.<br /><br />Another way of saying this is that by ignoring the 'asterix' that all scientific results come with, where the asterix points to the boundary conditions, nuance and complexities that have been ignored for the moment. <br /><br />And this is why we get stuck with climate change deniers, holocaust deniers, creationist and anti-vaxxers.<br /><br />A good example to illustrate this with is the gravitational constant. Long before Newton, people know gravity existed. They may even have measured the gravitational acceleration as about 10m/s^2 in whatever units they were using. But then more precise equipment was built, and we discovered that this value changes across the world, specifically from the poles to the equator. Weird. Then came Newton who realizes that there's actually a formula that described the graviational pull in terms of mass and distance of the objects involved, and we realize that the gravitational pull on the moon is much less than on earth. <br /><br />Were scientists at any point of this trajectory of discovery wrong? Were the first folks that measured a value of about 10 wrong to say the gravitational pull was a constant because they didn't understand that there were parameters they could not imagine involved? No, they just were limited in their knowledge, and subsequent tests showed that the locations where you measure gravitation matters. And not only on earth, but in the entire universe. <br /><br />This is all to say that scientists are rarely wrong. They are however, often limited by what they can measure at the time, and the knowledge of the time. But this is difficult to grasp for many people because science gets simplified so often. Nepkarelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4912713243046142041.post-68577372163637691622021-12-05T08:39:32.629-06:002021-12-05T08:39:32.629-06:00I have yet to read the article (I will), but this ...I have yet to read the article (I will), but this suggest that I've completely misunderstood what meditation is. I thought it involved thinking. I take breaks from doing stuff to sit and think several times a day, which is far from depriving the brain. Miss Cellaniahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16056319889765739429noreply@blogger.com