[bowsamic]

The nature of what you focus your thought on doesn't matter, the object can be anything.

> Makes sense that you can effectively train your consciousness by rote in much the same way that you can train your arms/hands to juggle.

It does, so why are you arguing against it? You claimed it only has an effect by some kind of vague suggestion.

Of course, strictly, it's also false that working out with weights will increase muscle mass. You are just being needlessly pedantic. Your claim has shifted from "I think all effects of meditation are just a kind of self-propaganda" to arguing some crap about the nature of consciousness.

Why do we even need to speak of consciousness? If it confuses you that focussing on a meditation object for 30 mins a day might do something, I dread to think of how the concept of learning or memorisation sends your head into a spin

[taeric]

I'm inherently a skeptical person. There are far too many arguments and lines of reasoning that make sense, but are wrong. :D To that end, I will often try and argue against things that make sense to me.

And don't take my claim too strong, here. I obviously don't /know/. I have some strong doubts, sure; but doubts are not themselves evidence against. Your very point on weights not absolutely working is essentially my point.

I bring in consciousness, as that is what it sounds like when you say that one needs to think on something. Consciously and deliberately. Otherwise, I can think a lot on a program I'm wanting to write, but make zero progress on it.

[bowsamic]

Your scepticism seems to have gone beyond scepticism and into some blind religiousity

[dang]

As I mentioned elsewhere, please do not cross into personal attack. It's not what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

[taeric]

I get the same statement from preachers and highly devout individuals. So... I'm not sure how to respond?

There is also the fact that this is a forum for discussing/debating ideas. Not just to affirm them with agreement, but to strengthen them through criticism.