A suspicion I had about the field during my bachelor that turned out to be a big deal

[Leo Gura]

That's because you're dealing with issues which are very complex and also poorly defined. What does "mindfulness" even mean? Ask 10 people and they will give you 10 different definitions.

The reason something like math works is because it's very strictly defined.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Bobby_2021]

What is mindfulness and how do you measure it? 

[Hello from Russia]

Mindfulness is like having a big dick

[UnbornTao]

On 12/9/2023 at 9:58 AM, Hello from Russia said:

Mindfulness is like having a big dick

That's the scientific definition but what about giving a grounded explanation for us normies?

Edited September 15, 2023 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

13 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

What is mindfulness and how do you measure it? 

If you were to do a psychological study of mindfulness, you start by finding someone's general definition of it. Most scientists seem to use Jon Kabat Zinn's definition: "Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally".

Then you need to find an operational definition, which is a little more specific. For mindfulness, it's most common to think of it as either a trait (relatively stable over time), a state (relatively transient) or a practice (e.g. meditation).

Then, you decide how you want to measure it (e.g. using a questionnaire). In the realm of questionnaires, there are many alternatives. The one I used and which is generally most used is the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), which measures trait mindfulness. Other common ones are the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI).

So you see that already before you've arrived at a measurement, there are many forking paths, which is a part of the problem. If studying human phenomena is already hard in itself, then studying some subtle and nebulous facet like mindfulness is probably even harder.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[gettoefl]

mindful is a measure of how aware i am right now

mindfulness is how to become more mindful namely to improve one's experience of the present moment

[Bobby_2021]

On 9/12/2023 at 5:18 PM, Carl-Richard said:

The one I used and which is generally most used is the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), which measures trait mindfulness.

Mindful-Attention-Awareness-Scale-MAAS.pdf

To be honest this questionnaire is fairly rigorous in what it's attempting to measure. Almost as rigorous as the questionnaire for assessing the big 5 personality traits. If you are serious you should get people to fill out all different form of questionnaires. That can indeed measure mindfulness satisfactorily.

But mindfulness is weekly related to sensitivity or even intelligence. I think Leo would score high on mindfulness. It's a genetic trait.

And people with high mindfulness do not have a proclivity for engaging in physical activity. But that will depend on the specific sample of people you have taken and what qualifies for "physical activity". Does it mean short term physical activity or life long physical activity or intense physical activity? Highly mindful people tend to sensitive that they cannot withstand a lot of stimuli which might come with intense physical activity. 

Overall it's an interesting topic if you can get people to answer the questionnaire with minimal subjectivity . 

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

But mindfulness is weekly related to sensitivity or even intelligence. 

[...]

It's a genetic trait.

[...]

And people with high mindfulness do not have a proclivity for engaging in physical activity.

[...]

Highly mindful people tend to sensitive that they cannot withstand a lot of stimuli which might come with intense physical activity.

Is this based on research or is it just your intuition? It's important to not get the two mixed in this discussion.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

I had an insight, that what you could call the crisis in the field, which goes by many names (e.g. "the replication crisis", "the theory crisis", "the generalizability crisis"), is essentially a crisis of construct awareness. We've become painfully aware of how we've chosen to construct our science and how it has not been working out so well. Before, we've taken our constructions for granted and let it shape our view of the world in an uncritical way. Construct awareness involves not just becoming aware of one's own constructions, but also taking responsibility for them. And that is what the future of the field will most likely look like, judging by how vigilant the establishment is about stuffing multiple dozens of papers on the issue down the throats of new master's students; the new generation of aspiring scientists who are the only hopes for saving the field.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[SeaMonster]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I had an insight, that what you could call the crisis in the field, which goes by many names (e.g. "the replication crisis", "the theory crisis", "the generalizability crisis"), is essentially a crisis of construct awareness. We've become painfully aware of how we've chosen to construct our science and how it has not been working out so well. Before, we've taken our constructions for granted and let it shape our view of the world in an uncritical way.

When you try to make philosophers out of scientists, you get neither good scientists nor good philosophers.  So I think, essentially, they are teaching you to suck more, not suck less.

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, SeaMonster said:

When you try to make philosophers out of scientists, you get neither good scientists nor good philosophers.  So I think, essentially, they are teaching you to suck more, not suck less.

So you're saying my philosophical observation sucks ?

[zurew]

8 hours ago, SeaMonster said:

When you try to make philosophers out of scientists, you get neither good scientists nor good philosophers.

Whats your take on teaching scientists at least philosophy of science? - Because I think thats very much relevant to the development of their field.

[Bobby_2021]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Is this based on research or is it just your intuition? It's important to not get the two mixed in this discussion.

Of course it's intuition.  Research won't get you far and it suffers from the problem of both intuition and research.

In Research™, when we don't get results we publish and manipulate results we like. I don't trust research. 

50% of the hardcore research couldn't even be replicated and this is a self admission. It's a failed game. And it's only going to get worse. 

-----

I don't know what your standards are for physical activity. But I can say that there is no such correlation between mindfulness and physical activity, regardless of whatever measurements and tools you use here. 

All research has to start from intuition. You feel like something is worth investigating and then you will find something worth publishing. In academia however, you simply make up interesting data when you can't find them.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Bobby_2021

[Carl-Richard]

14 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

I don't know what your standards are for physical activity. But I can say that there is no such correlation between mindfulness and physical activity, regardless of whatever measurements and tools you use here. 

What would it take to convince you that you're wrong?

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Bobby_2021 said:

All research has to start from intuition. You feel like something is worth investigating and then you will find something worth publishing. In academia however, you simply make up interesting data when you can't find them.

We have already had a convo about this in the past (I don't want to derail Carl's thread into making this whole thread about an epistemology debate) so I will just ask a few questions and I will let you have the last say in this and then we can potentially pick this debate up later in a different thread. 

1) Do you think relying purely on your own critical thinking and experience is more reliable in general than the current research on the given subject? So for example would you be willing to take a position like your own evaluation of psychology stuff (using your limited knowledge and given all you biases that you are not aware of) will be much more reliable compared to multiple institutions evaluating the same thing and providing evidence?  if your answer is yes, then my next question is how do you know that / how do you evaluate that?

Just for clarity sake, notice Im not asking whether they could be corrupt or whether they could be biased or not, Im asking - whether their evaluation is less reliable than yours in general (accounting for bias, incentive and knowledge), so not talking about being wrong a few times, but being consistently more wrong about a given subject compared to you.

Edited September 14, 2023 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

18 hours ago, zurew said:

Do you think relying purely on your own critical thinking and experience is more reliable in general than the current research on the given subject?

Depends entirely on the quality of your mind.

Quote

So for example would you be willing to take a position like your own evaluation of psychology stuff (using your limited knowledge and given all you biases that you are not aware of) will be much more reliable compared to multiple institutions evaluating the same thing and providing evidence?

Of course.

And the reason that is, is the insane level of group-think which is inherent to any social gathering of humans.

Quote

 if your answer is yes, then my next question is how do you know that / how do you evaluate that?

Just by realizing that not a single psychologist on this planet understands that science is imaginary.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Leo Gura

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Of course.

And that reason that is, is the insane level of group-think which is inherent to any social gathering of humans.

That kind of argument could be used to any field of science and I am skeptical that you would use this reason  in all cases. So for example,  in the  case  of vaccines, would you be  willing to say you know better which vaccine is bad or good compared to what the consensus says, just because the social gathering is not applied to you?

 You know this very well , because you have made a ton of different kind of videos on this topic , that your mind is subjected to a lot of distortions and biases as well and if no one holds you accountable then you won't really see whats the issue with your approach/method.

Now when it comes to institutions and psychologist they at least have the training and methods to keep each other accountable and to ground their things in stats and in numbers.

Now given that you probably don't have any training in psychology (how to contextualize stats and how to make sense of the research on this subject) why do you think that you have an upper hand on what the current research shows, given that you also have your own biases yourself and given that your knowledge about the subject is much more limited compared to the combination of people's knowledge in a given field?

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Depends entirely on the quality of your mind.

Disagree. I would be surprised if you would have the capability to use your consciousness in a way where you would  make some breakthrough in a given field, that you are only studying in a layman way (outside of philosophy) . especially because you would have to ground that insight in a tangible way and you would have to connect it to our current knowledge or at the very least you would have to be able to show the path how you get to the conclusion.

I would be surprised if you could ground any of your intuitions or insights about a subject anywhere near as rigorously as scientists can. Or worse - if you can't ground your insights in any way, then the next problem is that in those cases we arent talking about critical thinking anymore, we are only talking about big logical jumps or about jumping to and trusting your intuitions.

Now you could claim that logic is limited , but abandoning logic means abandoning critical thinking and I don't know if we would want to abandon critical thinking when it comes to science, but if you can make a case for it , go ahead.

Grounding is important ,because that is what makes it so that your claim or knowledge can be falsified. You could claim here that the very notion of falsification is limited - and thats fine - but in that case how would you know if the insight that you gathered is true or not (obviously in the context of science - so we are talking about the relative world)?

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Just by realizing that not a single psychologist on this planet understands that science is imaginary.

They are not making any metaphysical claim, they are making claims about the 'relative world' as you would say it.

How is the knowledge of you knowing that science is imaginary , would be relevant in any way making progress in the "relative world"? Can you give me an example that would demonstrate this?

Edited September 14, 2023 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

16 hours ago, zurew said:

That kind of argument could be used to any field of science and I am skeptical that you would use this reason  in all cases. So for example,  in the  case  of vaccines, would you be  willing to say you know better which vaccine is bad or good compared to what the consensus says, just because the social gathering is not applied to you?

 You know this very well , because you have made a ton of different kind of videos on this topic , that your mind is subjected to a lot of distortions and biases as well and if no one holds you accountable then you won't really see whats the issue with your approach/method.

Now when it comes to institutions and psychologist they at least have the training and methods to keep each other accountable and to ground their things in stats and in numbers.

Now given that you probably don't have any training in psychology (how to contextualize stats and how to make sense of the research on this subject) why do you think that you have an upper hand on what the current research shows, given that you also have your own biases yourself and given that your knowledge about the subject is much more limited compared to the combination of people's knowledge in a given field?

Of course it's a matter of trade-offs. The more "credible" and "authoritative" your sources become, the harder they will be to poke holes in, but also, the harder they will be to dislodge if they are wrong, and you will believe them without question.

Your point is that there is a certain wisdom-of-crowds effect within science. Yes. But that also comes with a certain stupidity-of-crowds effect. Two sides of the same coin.

In general it is safe to trust institutional science on non-cutting-edge topics. But bad to trust it on cutting-edge topics. For example, the reason I trusted the vaccines is because vaccine science is pretty well established now. Of course mRNA vaccines are pretty new, but not new enough that we should let a flu virus killed millions of people on its own. Vaccine science is good enough at this point that I trust that if a new vaccine was gonna kill over a million people via side-effects, the scientific protocols we already have in place will spot it early into testing. This much scientists are good at doing. What they are not good at doing is coming up with totally new solutions to subtle problems which are difficult to quantify. In short, science sucks most at all the problems which less and less material.

Quote

Disagree. I would be surprised if you would have the capability to use your consciousness in a way where you would  make some breakthrough in a given field, that you are only studying in a layman way (outside of philosophy) . especially because you would have to ground that insight in a tangible way and you would have to connect it to our current knowledge or at the very least you would have to be able to show the path how you get to the conclusion.

I never claimed that my conclusions would satisfy the existing methods and social norms. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. That doesn't make my discovery any less a discovery. It becomes a social game of how to convince others most effectively. Maybe I can win that game, maybe I can't. And maybe I don't give a damn. Convincing closedminded people is a hard game to win. But it can be won if you really devote yourself to it.

Quote

I would be surprised if you could ground any of your intuitions or insights about a subject anywhere near as rigorously as scientists can. Or worse - if you can't ground your insights in any way, then the next problem is that in those cases we arent talking about critical thinking anymore, we are only talking about big logical jumps or about jumping to and trusting your intuitions.

Now you could claim that logic is limited , but abandoning logic means abandoning critical thinking and I don't know if we would want to abandon critical thinking when it comes to science, but if you can make a case for it , go ahead.

No, it does not mean abandoning critical thinking. All my work is based on critical thinking. Neither science nor any institution has a monopoly on critical thinking. In fact, their problem is precisely a lack of critical thinking. Scientists do not know how to think.

The problem is that "critical thinking" and "logic" are much-loaded terms which are culturally defined by human institutions, so that even bad thinking gets called "good thinking", "critical thinking", "logical", "reasonable", and "scientific" via group-think. Group-think just IS a lack of critical thinking.

But there is an even deeper issue here. The desire to ground everything "rigorously" presents a subtle but significant bias which itself skews your ability to understand reality. The deepest levels of reality cannot be formalized in the ways that current science considered necessary and "proper". For example, if some geek at MIT expects a formalization of God then the proper response is not to bend over backwards to appease him but to tell him to fuck off. Current scientific method is like a claw machine that can only grasp crude objects but cannot grasp a needle. If you want to grasp a needle then you will need to change your mental machinery.

Quote

Grounding is important ,because that is what makes it so that your claim or knowledge can be falsified. You could claim here that the very notion of falsification is limited - and thats fine - but in that case how would you know if the insight that you gathered is true or not (obviously in the context of science - so we are talking about the relative world)?

Most of my claims are either falsifiable or verifiable, and I give my methods. So that's not the issue. The issue becomes one of initial incredulity and lack of motivation to actually follow the method and do the experiment. If I tell some Harvard psychology to snort 5-MeO-DMT for 30 days straight, he's simply not going to do it. Even though my method is fully scientific and valid, even under current scientific method.

Quote

They are not making any metaphysical claim, they are making claims about the 'relative world' as you would say it.

Well, this is where you have to think more holistically to see that in science everything is interconnected. Your metaphysics informs and biases your empirical work. With a bit of critical thinking you should be able to see that if the metaphysics of all the psychologists at Harvard is so wrong, that there will be much else wrong in their science. Because it all boils down to lack of good thinking. The reason their metaphysics is wrong is because at the root they are bad thinkers. And if they are bad thinkers then their empirical methods will also be lacking. It is not possible to design an empirical experiment and proper interpret its results without good critical thinking.

The reason that something like 50% of all social science studies fail to validate is because of lack of good critical thinking by those scientists who designed them.

Quote

How is the knowledge of you knowing that science is imaginary , would be relevant in any way making progress in the "relative world"? Can you give me an example that would demonstrate this?

So many ways. For example, enormous scientific advances could be made in understanding and helping people with mental illness and mental disorders like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia if the scientists working on these problems realized that these disorders constitute different non-ordinary, non-material realities within consciousness. Whereas right now scientists assume that there is a base, material reality and that these disorder are just some frivolous anomalies.

Another example: it is impossible for psychologists to explain religious experiences without understanding that science is imaginary. Stuff like NDEs, out of body, astral projection, remote viewing, clairvoyance, paranormal, derealization, depersonalization, mystical experience, healing, angels, demons, God, DMT elves, etc.

All of these fields are badly stagnating because the current metaphysical paradigm is deeply flawed.

Do you not understand why Einstein is considered the best scientist of all time? Because he realized that absolute time was imaginary. Which lead to a whole generation of new science which could not otherwise be possible.

DO NOT underestimate how much interpretation scientific experiment requires. It's way more than any scientist realizes.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Danioover9000]

@Carl-Richard  Proof that humanity is the bullshitting animal.

[Bobby_2021]

On 14/9/2023 at 5:38 PM, Carl-Richard said:

What would it take to convince you that you're wrong?

You can poke holes in my reasoning. I usually lay them out barely and simple to understand terms.

Here is my analysis:

One question that stroked me the most in the questionnaire is if you are able to do tasks while listening to music. This is the best test of mindfulness. If you can listen to music while studying, then you have low mindfulness. It's basically awareness of external stimuli. If there is multiple sources of stimuli streamed at you and let it pass through your senses without processing them, it's a tell-tale sign of low mindfulness.

Now you can take a look at athletes who have high physical activity. Take Mike Tyson or Hussain Bolt. They have to keep repeating the same set of tasks of over and over again for thousands of hours to be best at what they are doing to be good at it. So, they probably have low awareness, low IQ and low sensitivity. Messi on the other hand has high mindfulness. This is also obvious from the lifestyle he is leading. He also said it in an interview that he experiences the game at an intense level. I doubt if other football players have this trait. Probably not as high as Messi. Messi's high mindfulness has a huge part in why he is such an expert football player.

Mindfulness, Sensitivity and Intelligence are linked and probably eve n highly correlated. High mindfulness translates to high awareness of the external stimuli and process it to make distinctions about a field. Messi has mastered the game due to high intelligence and not his physical abilities which other players have more of. I have also seen some people who are extremely athletic and physically active but have poor mindfulness. But at the same time there are also physically inactive lazy people who also have low mindfulness.

And mindful people are as mindful from the time they are born. It's genetic. Just like Messi's "talent" as most people like to call them. You can probably think of Da Vinci who has great mindfulness and he even criticize people for walking around mindlessly. Usually, complex tasks need more mindfulness than simple task. So if the physical activity at hand is more complicated, then you need more mindfulness.

The fundamental problem is that you are trying to establish a relationship between physical activity which is so trivial and mundane with a rare genetic trait of geniuses like mindfulness. You are going to find a mixed bag.