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Luke_Grecki comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong
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Do you think he had pain asymbolia from birth or developed it over the course of his life? Also, what do you think is the importance of this?
I've been practicing vipassana meditation daily for about 3 years and over this time period I think I've developed pain asymbolia to some degree. I've felt pain asymbolia was just one aspect of a more extensive change in the nature of mental reactions to mental phenomena.
There is definitely room on LW for a top-level post on Vipassana.
I've practiced vipassana and can relate to the pain asymbolia thing, and do believe that more advanced vipassana practitioners develop a very high level of it.
Suffering seems to be the consequence of a conflict between two systems: one is trying to protect the map ("Oh!, no!, I don't want to have a worldview that includes a burn in my hand, I don't like that, please go away!") and the other, the territory (the body showing you that there's something wrong and you should pay attention). Consequence: suffering.
Possible solution: just observe the pain for what it is, without trying to conceptualize it. Having got your attention of it, the sensation stays, but there's no suffering.
Of course, you get better at this after the thousandth time you hear Goenka say: "It can be a tickling sensation. It can be a chicken flying sensation. It can be an 'I think I'm dying sensation'—just observe, just observe...". ;)
Hm, from the little knowledge I have it seems developing the asymbolia is plausible. Please write a post on your experiences? I come from a Buddhist humanist background and I think there are some instrumental rationality techniques in that tradition that would be great for people here.
I would love to hear more about this. I'm extremely skeptical that meditation or prayer can influence the mind to that extent, but I'm very curious.
I am too. On the other hand, monks have immolated themselves, withstood torture etc., over the ages without appearing to suffer anywhere near on the order of what such an experience seems to entail. This man for instance even maintained the lotus position for the duration of the event, and also allegedly remained silent and motionless as well. Counter-examples exist in which self-immolators either clearly died horribly or immediately sought to extinguish themselves, but still...
This appears to be a video of the incident, and he appears to be entirely silent and motionless. I'd say the grandparent poster's skepticism is pretty much shot here.
Not necessarily, we don't know when in the process he died. Also, he could have had extreme self-control even as he experienced pain, or he could be someone who naturally already had a very high amount of asymbolia. One might speculate that in a Buddhist culture people with already high levels of pain asymbolia or high pain tolerance might be more likely to become Buddhist monks or to become successful monks since it will seem to them (and to those around them) that they have progressed farther along the Eight-Fold path. All of that said, I agree that this evidence supports the notion that pain asymbolia can come from mental exercises.
I would think that someone with natural pain asymbolia could tell the difference, and notice that they had it even before they started meditation techniques. I wonder if Buddhist monasteries do some sort of test to screen out asymbolia, or check someone's starting level. This seems analogous to the problem of Christians confusing schizophrenia with talking to a god, and needing to screen out people with mental disorders from monasteries.
Except that natural pain asymbolia seems to be much rarer than schizophrenia. Hmm. It looks to me like artificial pain asymbolia might be, in practice if not in theory, an effective cure for natural schizophrenia. Destroy the motivations behind delusions and you won't have them even if you have an atypically strong propensity to.
I've heard that sitting meditation isn't safe for schizophrenics (details about risks of meditation), but yoga is.
Maybe I'm reading too much into the subtleties of your phrasing, but I read those sources as contradicting each other, not as allowing fine deduction.
I'm not sure what you mean. "Fine deduction"?
In any case, one problem with comparing the two articles is that much of the risk from meditation seems to be at extended retreats, while the pro-yoga article seems to be about ordinary amounts of practice.