[tedks]

>All this stuff draws contempt from curmudgeonly skeptics (of which I used to be the worst kind), but from painful experience I've found these techniques to be far more effective than any of the more conventional approaches I'd tried previously.

Yes, throwing away your critical eye towards the world in favor of starry-eyed credulity can certainly kick the placebo effect into overdrive. If you're constantly questioning whether something is working, it will probably not feel like it's working, whereas if you wholeheartedly believe, you will likely carry that through into your perceptions. This of course has nothing to do with the actual efficacy, it's just that you're selectively perceiving so as to confirm your pre-existing notions; when the object of all of this effort is your own mental state this can be confused with the technique itself being effective. In reality, people like being successful, and feeling like you are winning at one thing makes you more likely to think you can win at other things. Rinse repeat. Confirmation bias is lovely when you can weaponize it like this. The sad thing is you have to kill the most valuable part of your human self in the process. RIP.

[aaimnr]

"Curmudgeonly skeptics" love to think about themselves as realists. Skeptic is not a realist, however - when you think about yourself as a skeptic, you already set the limit to what you can experience and how your mind and skills can change and evolve. "Mindset" by Carol Dweck comes to mind.

[ephextom]

Most of what I would need to say in response to the allegation of "throwing away your critical eye towards the world in favor of starry-eyed credulity" can be read in this comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12873531.

The placebo effect is certainly relevant in this discussion, and unfortunately it partly comes down to definition. Some try to claim the placebo means there is no tangible improvement in physiology, just an imaginary feeling of wellbeing. If that's your definition, then I'm guarding against that with thorough lab testing of all accessible physiological indicators, as described below. If your definition of the placebo effect is that there is a real physiological improvement brought about by emotional processes, then I agree with you, and the techniques I've used are just tools for bringing about a more profound placebo effect, which is fine, as long as it leads to a physiological improvement, which seems to be happening for me.

> If you're constantly questioning whether something is working, it will probably not feel like it's working, whereas if you wholeheartedly believe, you will likely carry that through into your perceptions.

For me it's sometimes been the opposite; techniques that I hoped and deeply believed would be effective turned out to do little, and techniques that I had little expectation of effectiveness turned out to make a big difference. Not always though. There's not really much of a pattern. And there's no pattern to this that aligns with practices being "mainstream" or "alternative". I've had positive and negative experiences with treatments/practices from both sides.

But the core point – that employing effective techniques to change unhealthy subconscious beliefs can reduce unhealthy emotions (including anxiety/depression) in the short term and reduce stress-related illness in the long term – has rung true for me and many others. And it doesn't take much reading through scientific studies on the topic, or even just thinking about it from an evolutionary point of view, to realise that it's unsurprising and uncontroversial that this could be the case. The only question is, what techniques are effective. I've listed the ones that worked for me. Different ones work better for others.

> The sad thing is you have to kill the most valuable part of your human self in the process. RIP.

It'd be worth your while to contemplate what motivates you to say something so mean-spirited.

[origami777]

Interesting points. Can you expand on your last sentence? What part is being killed?

[tedks]

I would say Temporal is not far off in saying "commitment to the truth," but I would go further and say that the core of humanity, of being human, is striving towards bettering ourselves through the application of intelligence. Intelligence is the human superpower and when harnessed it can create incredible things.

Doing the reverse of empowering your intelligence, and empowering your confirmation bias (as comment parent), tribalism (as Donald Trump/neo-nationalists everywhere), or credulity (as meditationists/"everything is connected maaaaaan" types), is worse than suicide. You're using the power of your brain to enhance its flaws and create a perverted version of a human, progressing, but in the opposite direction; becoming stronger, but in a domain that should be avoided at all costs.

This is somewhat like the process of building a good military sniper by progressively dehumanizing them, stripping them of their empathy and agency in order to use them as an efficient killing machine. But worse, because you can think yourself out of that -- you can't think yourself out of a totally broken mind, and the more intelligent you are, the better you are at keeping yourself broken.

[lvlds]

What part is being killed?

[TeMPOraL]

Commitment to the truth. You have to successfully lie to yourself to pull off what GP described.

[lozf]

One could also say that many people who suffer with certain issues /only/ do so because they've already successfully lied to themselves, and believed these less healthy lies.

[gkya]

Sometimes there are no exits, the commitment you mention doesn't take you anywhere good, you find yourself at the edge of mental sanity. Out of experience I can say there are periods where commitment to truth is literally life-threateningly dangerous.

[ephextom]

You're welcome to suggest measures I should undertake to be more effective at getting to the truth in these matters.

Here's what I'm doing so far:

- Reading a wide variety of scientific sources across the spectrum of thought on these matters: Dr Bruce Lipton - pioneering stem cell biologist, now author and speaker; Rudy Tanzi - Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and researcher behind some of the biggest recent breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research; Lissa Rankin - mainstream physician and author; Bernardo Kastrup - PhD scientist, philosopher, author; Sir Roger Penrose - Physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science; Sam Harris - Neuroscientist/Atheist/Skeptic movement icon; Richard Dawkins - biologist & father of the modern Skeptic movement; Jerry Coyne of https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/; http://www.quackwatch.com/; https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/; Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. - Biologist and Author. Karl Popper - philosopher of science and leading contributor to The Scientific Method. Comparing points of view from all these sources with each other and with my own experiences and what I can establish from publicly available studies in science journals and papers published via NCBI.

- Conducting a variety of lab tests of physiological metrics over almost 10 years, including: blood pressure (was consistently high for a few months about 10 years ago, went low for an extended period around 5-6 years ago, and has been consistently optimal for the past 2 years); cholesterol (improving), blood sugar (normalising), iron & zinc (improving), hormones eg adrenaline, cortisol, thyroid (normalising), inflammation (reducing), white blood cell count (improving).

- Collaborating with acquaintances who have been afflicted with similar illnesses (chronic fatigue, auto-immune illness, depression, etc), particularly those who are strongly scientific/rational in their worldviews. Admittedly my own scientific background is merely limited to high-school chemistry/physics/advanced math, a career as a software developer (self-taught), several years working in the fields of agricultural science and secondary science education, and an upbringing by an electronics engineer father and a mainstream medical practitioner mother. But my most trusted fellow travellers in this journey are minimum Master's-degree qualified in science (one in biotech, one computer science), and are widely reputed as being among the best in their field.

But I sincerely want to be as effective as is humanly possible at avoiding delusion and finding truth; my qualify of life depends on it. Please be forthcoming with any suggestions.

By the way, your challenge is to refute anything I've said without succumbing to the "beg the question" fallacy. Ideally you'll avoid all the other fallacies too (particularly Ad Hominem), but "beg the question" is the trickiest and most important to avoid in this debate.

[tedks]

> You're welcome to suggest measures I should undertake to be more effective at getting to the truth in these matters.

I notice you don't mention double blinding any of these interventions. Have you tried that? How would you try that for something crypto-religious like meditation?