With regards to the 3rd point above, most of these studies compare meditation, not enlightenment, to other mental health interventions. Their finding that meditation is no better than CBT is not a negative. Since there is no “one size fit all” psychotherapy, having more options should be a net positive for mental health. Also, if meditation practice can lead to something more, even if that thing is not the end of all suffering, and even if it is rare, that increases the value of meditation practice.
I agree that this finding is not a negative, and that including mindfulness should be a net positive for mental health interventions (especially since it’ll adapt well to a lot of cultural contexts). The reason I included this null-ish result was to indicate that Vipassana-style mindfulness is unlikely to produce measurable ‘enlightenment’ when scaled up as an intervention—otherwise, where is it hiding in these studies? The burden of proof is with mindfulness proponents to find evidence that their method produces the superior effects they claim it does (a) when scaled up and (b) within a time-frame that would make it cost-effective.
(FWIW I think that it probably produces non-inferior effects at scale on comparable timeframes, and for some small number of the population might achieve superiority after some time with the method, but this wouldn’t make it a superior candidate for a global health intervention)
With regards to the 3rd point above, most of these studies compare meditation, not enlightenment, to other mental health interventions. Their finding that meditation is no better than CBT is not a negative. Since there is no “one size fit all” psychotherapy, having more options should be a net positive for mental health. Also, if meditation practice can lead to something more, even if that thing is not the end of all suffering, and even if it is rare, that increases the value of meditation practice.
I agree that this finding is not a negative, and that including mindfulness should be a net positive for mental health interventions (especially since it’ll adapt well to a lot of cultural contexts). The reason I included this null-ish result was to indicate that Vipassana-style mindfulness is unlikely to produce measurable ‘enlightenment’ when scaled up as an intervention—otherwise, where is it hiding in these studies? The burden of proof is with mindfulness proponents to find evidence that their method produces the superior effects they claim it does (a) when scaled up and (b) within a time-frame that would make it cost-effective.
(FWIW I think that it probably produces non-inferior effects at scale on comparable timeframes, and for some small number of the population might achieve superiority after some time with the method, but this wouldn’t make it a superior candidate for a global health intervention)