Many people think of the jhanas as states of high energy absorption into an object of concentration, but I think of them in kind of the opposite way. I see the jhanas as the mental processes that make up conscious experience quieting down and settling into inactivity.
In the first jhana, the heavy sensations of stress and emotional burden relax into the lighter sensations of excitement and joy. (You can imagine rocks breaking up into pebbles, which then break up into sand.) The intensity of the first jhana varies depending on how heavy the emotional burden of ordinary consciousness is, sort of like how taking off a tight shoe is more of a... (read more)
Here’s my model of how meditation works:
This model is easy to understand, and it clarifies a lot of confusing philosophical stuff in other models.
For example, “non-self” is one of the Three Characteristics of experiential reality in Buddhism. What we call the “self” is just a pattern of sensations, including the sensations of intention, effort, attention, thinking, voluntary muscle movement, tension in the head and chest, etc. Those sensations are just like any other sensations, but we react to them more, and we call that increased reactivity "identification". In other words, by seeing non-self and ceasing to identify with sensations, we’re actually just decreasing reactivity.
Another... (read 1587 more words →)
My prediction is that if humanity survives, it will cling onto suffering in each context only until its meaning and profundity is sufficiently recreated by other means.
Intense pain will go first, then annoying and inconvenient pain, then distracting pain, and gradually people will adjust to higher valence landscapes until the whole spectrum is above our current default line.
In fact, it might not be that difficult a transition. Even today many people spend hours a day browsing social media, watching YouTube videos, playing video games, or meditating, all in the pursuit of higher valence. Legal prohibitions might turn out to be the main force slowing down the eradication of suffering from daily life.
Q: How to cope with the possibility of immense suffering?
I want to address the psychological aspect first, because at the start you say “I've been stuck on s-risks for over a month now. My life has been turned upside down since I first learned about this subject.”
The most helpful emotional state for thinking about this is calm, sober, lucid, and patient. If you rush to conclusions based on anxiety, you’ll probably get the wrong answer.
Although immense suffering is possible, your body is reacting to that possibility as if it were a physical threat in your immediate environment. Your heart rate increases, your breathing gets faster, and your muscles tense. This topic requires... (read 358 more words →)
Do you have any advice on how to avoid triggering a psychotic episode? My understanding is that long hours of meditation, drugs, and sleep deprivation all make psychosis more likely.
You're asking for flaws in the idea, but more often posts are downvoted for being confusing, boring, or just not particularly helpful for people who use this site.
If you go to “all posts” and sort by top weekly, you can see the kind of posts that get the most upvotes and the kind that get the most downvotes. It’s something you build up a sense for over time.
Also, I hope you won’t worry about it too much. People were downvoting the post, not you as a person. You can always analyze more top posts and try again.
Some feedback on this post:
I think the standard messages are actually more energy efficient. Bad things happen, usually people are fine, but sometimes they need support and these messages signal that support is available. If you’re fine, they’re slightly annoying, but if you’re not fine, they’re helpful.
Your suggested approach actually requires more effort from both people in a typical case. If I were fine, I would rather receive “If you need to talk to someone, I’m here for you” than “What’s that like?” because I could answer the first message with an easy cliche, but I would have to think to answer the second.
(This is assuming you don’t know the person well. For close friends you can customize to their personality, but not everyone is a stoic rationalist.)
In his method, I think the happiness of the first few Jhanas is not caused by prediction error directly, but rather indirectly through the activation of the reward circuitry. So while the method involves creating some amount of prediction error, the ultimate result is less overall prediction error, because the reward neurotransmitters bring the experiential world closer to the ideal.
After the first three Jhanas, the reward circuitry is less relevant and you start to reduce overall prediction error through other means, by allowing attention to let go of aspects of the world model. In the ninth Jhana / nirodha samapatti that he mentions, attention lets go of everything and there’s no prediction error.
By comparison with higher Jhanas that are less attention grabbing, you can see the subtle discomfort present in the first few Jhanas, and I think that’s the remaining prediction error.
I would say the warm shower causes less prediction error than the cold shower because it’s less shocking to the body, but there’s still a very subtle amount of discomfort which is hidden under all the positive feelings. The level of discomfort I’m talking about is very slight, but you would notice it if there was nothing else occupying your attention. I don’t mean to say it causes negative emotions. It’s more like the discomfort of imagining an unsatisfying shape, or watching a video at slightly lower resolution. If you compare any activity to deep sleep or unconsciousness, you can find sensations that grab your attention by being slightly irritating. As long... (read more)
Thank you for writing this! I’ve been curious about this exact intersection of topics, so I’m glad to see such a clear analysis.
My understanding of your framework is that Vipassana reduces suffering by training the mind to observe sensations without craving or aversion, which is to say it reduces unnecessary prediction error by training the mind not to compare reality to what is not the case. An accomplished meditator can therefore quickly dissipate stress by letting go of priors that would otherwise cause continued prediction error. I think this is a really valuable mapping of Vipassana to Active Inference.
At one point you write “suffering is fundamentally about experiencing prediction error” but then... (read more)
Cool! I’m going to add my thoughts here, but I’m no authority so feel free to ignore and do whatever feels best.
Waking up early is fine as long as you’re also going to bed early. Chronic sleep deprivation is bad.
If you’re studying CS, give special attention to machine learning and the current AI landscape. It’s hard to predict what AI will look like in five years, but it’s the most important thing to be tracking.
If learning Quenya is fun and intrinsically rewarding, then that’s great, but if you’re doing it for practical reasons there are probably more efficient options. I actually have a system for writing things I don’t want anyone to... (read more)