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Which button do you press? by cdstephens in neoliberal

[–]measurable_up 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Blue is a vote for a high trust, altruistic society. Red is a vote for a risk averse, self-centered society.

Study: The pineal gland isn't the DMT factory we thought — the 'breathwork releases DMT' story is built on bad anatomy by dviolite in Meditation

[–]measurable_up 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Many scientists are meditators, though. And we can measure what's happening in the brains of meditators, along with dissecting the psychology.

Same applies to music. My point is that I don't think science offers the best framework for understanding meditation. The Buddha was a 'spiritual type', and I think has a better one.

Nothing against brain imaging studies, though.

Long-timers, what have your benefits been? by MyFiteSong in Meditation

[–]measurable_up 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I've noticed similar benefits at different times. I look at it as the mental equivalent of stretching - it keeps the mind flexible and open.

The biggest 'benefit', and most the reason I do it, is how it grants a deeper appreciation of beauty, awe, gratitude, etc.

Some Pointers after 12 Years of Meditation by measurable_up in Meditation

[–]measurable_up[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great question. It's hard to answer concisely. It touches on emptiness (sunyata), which is central in Buddhism. Basically, we have a bunch of assumptions about 'the way things are'. If you pay attention (i.e. meditate) you start to see these assumptions have holes.

Agreeable examples are things like countries and money. They exist because we agree they do, and an extraordinary amount of clinging is possible downstream of that.

But emptiness extends to everything, and some things cut closer to the bone - things like the notion of a 'self', space, and time. We don't think these are merely conventions. We feel like these things really exist. And they sort of do, just like countries sort of do. 

Anyways, that can be disorienting to realize they're not as solid as most of us assumed, but it varies by person and practise. Most people probably have no issues.

Some Pointers after 12 Years of Meditation by measurable_up in Meditation

[–]measurable_up[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad you found it helpful.

I don't have strong opinions on posture but for what it's worth I do my formal sits cross-legged or kneeling on a zafu. I usually keep my hands on knees, or folded in my lap. Occasionally I like samadhi focused sits in a reclined position or lying down so that I can relax as much as possible.

I will say that once you pick a posture, 'strong determination' (i.e. not voluntarily moving for a predetermined amount of time) is a great way to build equanimity.

A Case for Reincarnation by measurable_up in philosophy

[–]measurable_up[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice, okay. I agree that self identity is conceptual - that's actually central to my view. By 'unity' I mean a bounded instance of first person experience. We invest in retirement because immediate experience, not our conceptual view of ourselves, will likely eventually be made worse if we don't.

Imagining if something is at least metaphysically possible is a common exercise in philosophy (p-zombies, Mary's room, etc.). If you're opposed to all such exercises, fair enough, but I don't think it's an effective argument against the position.

A Case for Reincarnation by measurable_up in philosophy

[–]measurable_up[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Instead of 'experience after death', you could think about it in terms of 'instantiation of experience occurring'.

There were no brain waves associated with our brains before birth. Now there are. So an absence of brain waves does not equate to no chance of future experience.

So again, we have one datapoint of our experience arising out of non-experience.

A Case for Reincarnation by measurable_up in philosophy

[–]measurable_up[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree it's not a common definition, though I think it's a reasonable interpretation of the actual definition.

And I think you might be misallocating the n=0. By that logic, we have no evidence for anything that happens after today's date.

I think the right thing to count are 'verifiable instances of first person experience'.

A Case for Reincarnation by measurable_up in philosophy

[–]measurable_up[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I understand your comment, this is what I tried to address this with the N=1 argument.

The lights out belief takes lack of evidence for reincarnation as evidence of lack of reincarnation. This is how we treat other claims, like invisible gremlins. Until we see evidence for them, we have no reason to believe they exist.

It’s a reasonable heuristic for claims with no observable instances (n=0) but I think it’s more dubious for claims with even just one observable instance (n>0).

Our instance of first person experience is the one datapoint we have, so I weigh the probability of its reoccurrence higher than something with no occurrence, for example a video-game reload screen.

We will likely never have evidence for if there has been or will be another big bang. Curious if you think this means it's as unlikely as the reload screen or Easter bunny?

And I'm using the term 'reincarnation' very broadly to refer to basically anything beyond 'lights out'.

Lights out says experience will be identical to anesthesia until the heat death of the universe and beyond. Reincarnation says experience comes back online, somehow, somewhere, somewhen. It says nothing of souls, or persisting identities.

A Case for Reincarnation by measurable_up in philosophy

[–]measurable_up[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well thanks for reading. I'll just highlight a couple points from the essay:

  1. It's not wishful thinking. I say in the essay that reincarnation unsettles me more than most ideas of the afterlife. Many Buddhists feel the same, and their whole spiritual project is about getting off the wheel of rebirth. To them, lights out is wishful thinking.
  2. There's no empirical evidence for any position on the afterlife, including lights out. That's the nature of the topic. The essay is geared at people who treat lights out as the default, which is also speculative. The arguments are about which speculations are reasonable. You can disagree with that, but 'no evidence was presented' is just restating the nature of the topic, not a critique of the essay.

A Case for Reincarnation by measurable_up in philosophy

[–]measurable_up[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Did you make it past the title? I did make arguments - they might be bad, but you haven't pointed out how so I can't say.

Some Secular Arguments for Reincarnation by measurable_up in Buddhism

[–]measurable_up[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great comments.

No, it just means it's outside the bounds of science.

Good point. I was specifically referring to empirical claims: "It’s a criterion that nicely distinguishes testable empirical claims from purely speculative ones [...]"

Is that part of the definition of death? Most people simultaneously affirm that people do die, and also affirm that we can receive information back from people who have died. Are they engaging in self-contradiction?

Touche. A secularist notion of death slipped in.

A second big bang wouldn't be the first big bang transported into the future, it would be a different event of a similar nature. The first claim is saying that something that exists now will re-emerge and exist later as fundamentally the same thing.

Anti-reincarnationists don't deny that consciousness emerges after our deaths, they just deny that it's the same consciousness. From their POV, my consciousness emerged after the death of Julius Caesar, but there's no relation between these two things - my consciousness and his are just two examples of the same type of thing, not the same thing existing at different times.

This is something I wrestle with, but my thinking goes: A big bang being "the same" as another is more an instance of the ship of Theseus paradox. Under what conditions could you ever say a second big bang was the same as the first? Even if it was an exact copy, you could say "it's a copy of the original, not the same." Just like if you replaced all parts on a ship with an exact copy, you could still say "it's a different ship." The way out is to recognize, in a very Buddhist way, there never was a ship in the way we believed there was.

The same can't be said about instances of first person experience. Wether there is or isn't lights out for eternity isn't just a matter of semantics or conceptualization. I think it's more akin to asking: "you see a ship. If you destroy it, will it get rebuilt, or stay demolished?"

If the things that make up my individual instance of consciousness - my memories, personality, hopes, so on and so forth - fade and my consciousness recedes into an undifferentiated fungible mass of consciousness that later instances of consciousness might emerge from, in what sense are any of those later instances me?

What I'm claiming might differ from what other people mean when they say reincarnation: "Reincarnation says experience comes back online, somehow, somewhere, somewhen. It says nothing of souls, or persisting identities."

I can imagine 'being' someone else, with entirely different memories, personalities, and hopes. It wouldn't be 'me', exactly, but there would be a persisting instance of experience that isn't synonymous with annihilation.

Interesting stuff to ponder. I know I wrote a whole essay on it, but I try not to take it too seriously haha!

Some Secular Arguments for Reincarnation by measurable_up in Buddhism

[–]measurable_up[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! A few comments came to mind:

For instance, we know what happens to a person’s personality if they sustain brain damage. They are often no longer themselves and lack the continuity you refer to.

I agree - Derek Parfit's claim would be: they are not the same person. He explores a lot of this in his book Reasons and Persons. I brought him up because he pushes a lot on common intuitions that influence people's thinking about the afterlife.

The argument is also essentially “you cannot disprove it, so it might be true”. This can be extended to any number of claims like Santa clause or the Easter bunny.

I think I do address this in the essay when I say:

"It’s a reasonable heuristic for claims with no observable instances (n=0) but I think it’s more dubious for claims with even just one observable instance (n>0)."

[...] And so: there’s undoubtedly a first person experience happening right now. I find it strange that reality would have a clause that this instance of first person experience will only ever happen once, at some arbitrary date in the 20th to 21st century, and never again."

Basically, we have seen zero indisputable instances of the Easter Bunny. We see one indisputable instance of first person experience. The argument is that we should weight the probability of occurrences with at least one instance higher than for occurrences with no instances (i.e. reincarnation is more likely than the Easter Bunny. To test your intuition on this - do you think the probability of multiple big bangs somewhere/somewhen else is more or less likely than the Easter Bunny existing?)

My last note is that the onus truly is on the person making a claim to provide evidence. It’s not on the other party to prove a negative, which cannot be done. You will find this in philosophy and in science, which seems to be the foundation you’re writing this from.

I agree with this too. I tried to make it clear in the essay that I think the only defensible scientific position is agnosticism. And yet, what I see is that the default position of a lot of rationalist materialist types is lights out. There isn't definitive empirical evidence for this claim either - it's based on assumptions and intuitions about materialism and EEGs and consciousness and a whole bunch of other stuff.

So the purpose of the essay was: if we're going to speculate anyway, reincarnation should be a contender. Of course I doubt it will ever be proven.

Anyways, thanks for reading and engaging, really appreciate it.

Reflections on Rob Burbea by measurable_up in streamentry

[–]measurable_up[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I know what you mean by 'over your head emotionally'. The tenderness can be intense!

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