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> "As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed" Every single Vipassana practitioner I have met said something of this kind. I

> "As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed" Every single Vipassana practitioner I have met said something of this kind. I know this comes from one of Goenka's recording. But the analogy is bad, wrong, not even wrong, it does not mean anything. As rewarding and beneficial as meditation is to some, please leave quantum mechanics out of it.

pdimitar 10y ago
> please leave quantum mechanics out of it Would you explain why? Many things were considered magic and witchcraft in the past and people were burned alive for being slightly more intelligent and/or intuitive in their approaches to life or various objective problems of the age. A good part of these "witchcraft" practices are now commonly known "life hacks", or "tips and tricks", etc. Quantum mechanics is something nobody on this planet actually fully grasps. Isn't it our duty to be skeptical not only to the religious believers and meditation practitioners but to be skeptical about us being too skeptical as well, so to speak? For all we know, there might exist a soul, consciousness, or a "hollistic wave front" as Dan Simmons in Hyperion / Endymion calls it, and it might as well operate exactly on one of the quantum fields of reality. (It might be a very fine and huge collection of mega-complex algorithms that work on a quantum plane same way our machines' code works only on certain silicon-derived dies.) So again, why should we leave the quantum mechanics out of the spiritual/meditative/what-you-wanna-call-it experiences, exactly? The objective truth is, for now both sides don't know for sure if they are right or wrong. No?
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Gotta love the downvotes without explanation.
  - pierrepoutine 10y ago
    you're engaging in pseudoscience
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- Terr_ 10y ago
  You leave it out because it's unfalsifiable woo-woo flights of fancy.
- grzm 10y ago
  - We don't know about X. - We don't know about Y. Therefore X and Y might be related! We don't know! How can you say they're not? This isn't a very convincing argument. Perfectly understandable for people to not want to spend much time considering it seriously.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Suggested reading: the principle of parsimony. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
- SiVal 10y ago
  So again, why should we leave the quantum mechanics out of the spiritual/meditative/what-you-wanna-call-it experiences, exactly? I think you're asking a reasonable question if you genuinely don't know. It should be answered or ignored, not downvoted. Quantum mechanics is a sub-field of physics, which grows in the scientific way: you observe things, try to find "rules" that predict outcomes of experiments, perform experiments to distinguish between similar rules, follow whatever path seems to best predict outcomes and extend it by trying more experiments: "Yes, but what would happen if we did X?" If quantum mechanics ever finds "spiritual/meditative..." ideas by this incremental extension process that are repeatable by anyone like the rest of QM, then this spiritual stuff will gradually become part of physics and will be science. QM isn't close to achieving that at this point and no reason yet to assume it ever will. Alternatively, you could go at it from the other direction. Start with whatever spiritual/meditative practice rules you have and try to discover quantum mechanics by following those rules. Or use your spiritual tools to extend our current scientific knowledge of QM to something we don't already know from science but that can be tested and verified by anybody with the measurement gear, just like science. If your spiritual tools can't discover QM, but have to wait for science, and can't even improve on what science has already discovered about it in any way, then people who know about QM via science won't take your combining QM with some spiritual system seriously. Spiritual systems are vast in number and can have any rules they want, which should suggest a need to distinguish real from fake. If you have a real system, it should produce results you can't get from the fakes. Prove it. Demonstrate those results. If you want to include QM, then show results with that, too. But just plugging proven QM into an unproven spiritual system does not increase the value of either one.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    OFF-TOPIC: Thank you for your reasonable comment. It helped me because I honestly expected more of the general HN populace than to downvote instead of give a legit answer (whether or not it's obvious to them is irrelevant). I know this can bring me additional downvotes but to hell with this; I am not here for validation but to discuss and learn. ON-TOPIC: You are telling me if I claim things the burden of proof is on me. I realize that and I am thankful for your reminder. But thing is: (1) I never claimed anything. My comment was mostly "what if" and a possible thought-provoker. Definitely wasn't "engaging in pseudoscience" as some called it. It was a conversation-starter. (2) I stand by my claim that we don't know everything and as such, we should be skeptical about everything -- including our current approach. Is that really such an outrageous position? Apologies if my comment was seen as something deserving so much negativity, I honestly had no idea that a normal "what if" would be so triggering. Again, I thank you for your reasonable and calm answer. It's much appreciated.
Terr_ 10y ago
Relevant comic (punchline at end) http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
Buttons840 10y ago
Self observation does change the self, but you're right, quantum mechanics isn't the best explination as to why or how. It does have some use as an analogy though, despite its flaws.
- DougBTX 10y ago
  I wonder about how the analogy is being used though. On the face of it, it is just an analogy, saying that they work in the same sort of way. But usually analogies are made to something that the listener is already familiar with, to explain something new. Are people really that familiar quantum mechanics? I'm wary that actually the alalogy is that meditation is like this concept, which lots of smart people believe in, even though it is accepted that the details are very hard to understand; so you won't need to understand the details of meditation either.
- kakarot 10y ago
  It's best not to try and draw metaphysical analogies from s completely unrelated system of laws.
glibgil 10y ago
Listen to some talks by Neil Theise and Donald Hoffman. They each make a pretty good case that conscious agents like humans and ants have many quantum-like effects that are directly comparable to entanglement and observation effects. The argument is that it is conscious agents all the way down

pdimitar 10y ago

> please leave quantum mechanics out of it Would you explain why? Many things were considered magic and witchcraft in the past and people were burned alive for being slightly more intelligent and/or intuitive in their approaches to life or various objective problems of the age. A good part of these "witchcraft" practices are now commonly known "life hacks", or "tips and tricks", etc. Quantum mechanics is something nobody on this planet actually fully grasps. Isn't it our duty to be skeptical not only to the religious believers and meditation practitioners but to be skeptical about us being too skeptical as well, so to speak? For all we know, there might exist a soul, consciousness, or a "hollistic wave front" as Dan Simmons in Hyperion / Endymion calls it, and it might as well operate exactly on one of the quantum fields of reality. (It might be a very fine and huge collection of mega-complex algorithms that work on a quantum plane same way our machines' code works only on certain silicon-derived dies.) So again, why should we leave the quantum mechanics out of the spiritual/meditative/what-you-wanna-call-it experiences, exactly? The objective truth is, for now both sides don't know for sure if they are right or wrong. No?

pdimitar 10y ago
Gotta love the downvotes without explanation.
- pierrepoutine 10y ago
  you're engaging in pseudoscience
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
Terr_ 10y ago
You leave it out because it's unfalsifiable woo-woo flights of fancy.
grzm 10y ago
- We don't know about X. - We don't know about Y. Therefore X and Y might be related! We don't know! How can you say they're not? This isn't a very convincing argument. Perfectly understandable for people to not want to spend much time considering it seriously.
nitrogen 10y ago
Suggested reading: the principle of parsimony. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
SiVal 10y ago
So again, why should we leave the quantum mechanics out of the spiritual/meditative/what-you-wanna-call-it experiences, exactly? I think you're asking a reasonable question if you genuinely don't know. It should be answered or ignored, not downvoted. Quantum mechanics is a sub-field of physics, which grows in the scientific way: you observe things, try to find "rules" that predict outcomes of experiments, perform experiments to distinguish between similar rules, follow whatever path seems to best predict outcomes and extend it by trying more experiments: "Yes, but what would happen if we did X?" If quantum mechanics ever finds "spiritual/meditative..." ideas by this incremental extension process that are repeatable by anyone like the rest of QM, then this spiritual stuff will gradually become part of physics and will be science. QM isn't close to achieving that at this point and no reason yet to assume it ever will. Alternatively, you could go at it from the other direction. Start with whatever spiritual/meditative practice rules you have and try to discover quantum mechanics by following those rules. Or use your spiritual tools to extend our current scientific knowledge of QM to something we don't already know from science but that can be tested and verified by anybody with the measurement gear, just like science. If your spiritual tools can't discover QM, but have to wait for science, and can't even improve on what science has already discovered about it in any way, then people who know about QM via science won't take your combining QM with some spiritual system seriously. Spiritual systems are vast in number and can have any rules they want, which should suggest a need to distinguish real from fake. If you have a real system, it should produce results you can't get from the fakes. Prove it. Demonstrate those results. If you want to include QM, then show results with that, too. But just plugging proven QM into an unproven spiritual system does not increase the value of either one.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  OFF-TOPIC: Thank you for your reasonable comment. It helped me because I honestly expected more of the general HN populace than to downvote instead of give a legit answer (whether or not it's obvious to them is irrelevant). I know this can bring me additional downvotes but to hell with this; I am not here for validation but to discuss and learn. ON-TOPIC: You are telling me if I claim things the burden of proof is on me. I realize that and I am thankful for your reminder. But thing is: (1) I never claimed anything. My comment was mostly "what if" and a possible thought-provoker. Definitely wasn't "engaging in pseudoscience" as some called it. It was a conversation-starter. (2) I stand by my claim that we don't know everything and as such, we should be skeptical about everything -- including our current approach. Is that really such an outrageous position? Apologies if my comment was seen as something deserving so much negativity, I honestly had no idea that a normal "what if" would be so triggering. Again, I thank you for your reasonable and calm answer. It's much appreciated.

Terr_ 10y ago

Relevant comic (punchline at end) http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3

Buttons840 10y ago

Self observation does change the self, but you're right, quantum mechanics isn't the best explination as to why or how. It does have some use as an analogy though, despite its flaws.

DougBTX 10y ago
I wonder about how the analogy is being used though. On the face of it, it is just an analogy, saying that they work in the same sort of way. But usually analogies are made to something that the listener is already familiar with, to explain something new. Are people really that familiar quantum mechanics? I'm wary that actually the alalogy is that meditation is like this concept, which lots of smart people believe in, even though it is accepted that the details are very hard to understand; so you won't need to understand the details of meditation either.
kakarot 10y ago
It's best not to try and draw metaphysical analogies from s completely unrelated system of laws.

glibgil 10y ago

Listen to some talks by Neil Theise and Donald Hoffman. They each make a pretty good case that conscious agents like humans and ants have many quantum-like effects that are directly comparable to entanglement and observation effects. The argument is that it is conscious agents all the way down