Comment by graemep
1 year ago
I once told a CBT therapist that it sounded very similar to religious ideas an quoted something from the Bible that matched it. He agreed. Really the follow up to that is another Biblical quote: "there is nothing new under the sun".
> As for the quackery, that comes from attempts to discern objective truths. Traditional medicine is terrible for objective truths. But it shines in subjective experience.
If it works it should be testable. A lot of traditional medicine does work, but then it can be incorporated in to medicine. If alternative medicine (traditional or otherwise) works we call it "medicine". If it shines in subjective experience but is not testable, it just sounds like it provides a temporary feel good experience.
>it just sounds like it provides a temporary feel good experience.
I think you're missing the point of optimizing for subjective experience over objective knowledge. The feel good experience is the point. Subjectively, life is like playing a video game; you do what _works_ to have good mental health. Sure it's fun to wonder what the video game's code looks like, but that's not the point of playing the game.
You will never experience the BackEnd of your brain. We can affect it of course, with medication and surgery etc. I take medication for anxiety myself, but I also meditate, and it's the union of FrontEnd behaviors and BackEnd modification that gives you wellbeing.
Also, subjective experience is testable, it's just not testable by anyone but YOU. You try things out and you see how your subjective experience changes.
There are tests we've done (MRIs on meditators) that show the neural correlates of meditation etc, but again that's not the point: You are going to die and all your knowledge will be annihilated, so play the game to have the best life by optimizing your subjective experience of every moment of life.