I had a dim view of meditation because my only exposure to meditation prior was in mystic contexts. Here I saw people talk about it separate from that context. My assumption was that if you approached it using Bayes and other tools, you could start to figure out if it was bullshit or not. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that folks interested could explore it and see what turns up.

Would I choose to do so? No. I have plenty of other low hanging fruit and the amount of non-mystic guidance around meditation seems really minimal, so I'd be paying opportunity cost to cover unknown territory with unknown payoffs.

I don't feel oddly attached to any beliefs here. Maybe I'll go search for some research. Right now I feel if I found some good papers providing evidence for or against meditation I would shift appropriately.

I don't see myself updating my beliefs about meditation (which are weak) unduly because of an argument from authority. They changed because the arguments were reasoned from principles or with process I accept as sound. Reasoning like "fairly credible sources like Feynman claim they can learn to shift the perception of the center of self-awareness to the left. (Feynman was also a bullshitter, but let's take this as an example...) What do we think he meant? Is what we think he meant possible? What is possible? Is that reproducible? Would it be useful to be able to do that? Should we spend time trying to figure out if we can do that?" This would be what I consider to be a discussion in the space of meditation-like stuff that is non-mystical and enjoyable. It isn't going to turn me into a mystic any more than Curzi's anecdotes about his buddy's nootropics overdoses will turn me into a juicer.

I didn't take away the message 'meditation is super-useful.' I took away the message 'meditation is something some people are messing with to see what works.' I'm less worried about that than if someone said 'eating McDonalds every day for every meal is something some people are messing with to see what works.' because my priors tell me that is really harmful whereas my priors tell me meditating every day is probably just a waste of time. A possibly non-mystical waste of time.

Now I'm worried comment-readers will think I'm a blind supporter of meditation. It is more accurate to say I went from immediate dismissal of meditation to a position of seeing the act of meditating as separable from a mystic context.

Now my wife is telling me I should actually be MORE curious about meditation and go do some research.