https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/jhanas-and-the-dark-room-problem The Dark Room Problem in neuroscience goes something like this: suppose the brain is minimizing prediction error, or free energy, or whatever. You can minimize lots of things by sitting quietly in a dark room. Everything will be very, very predictable. So how come people do other things? The usual workaround is inbuilt biological drives, considered as "set points". You "predict" that you will be well-fed, so getting hungry registers as prediction error and brings you out of your dark room to eat. Et cetera. Andrés Gómez Emilsson recently shared a perspective I hadn't considered before, which is: actually, sitting quietly in a dark room is really great. The Buddha discussed states of extreme bliss attainable through meditation: Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion (Samyutta Nikaya) I had always figured that "sensual pleasures" here meant things like sex. But I think maybe he just means stimuli, full stop. The meditator cuts themselves from all sensory stimuli, eg by meditating really hard on a single object like the breath and ignoring everything else, and as a result gets "rapture and happiness born of seclusion".
Full Episode
Welcome to the Astral Codex X podcast for the 29th of October 2021. Title, Jharnas and the Darkroom Problem. This is an audio version of Scott Alexander's blog Astral Codex X. If you like the blog, consider supporting it on Substack, astralcodex10.substack.com. You can find the link in the podcast description. The dark room problem, Lincoln Post, in neuroscience, goes something like this.
Suppose the brain is minimizing prediction error or free energy or whatever. You can minimize lots of things by sitting quietly in a dark room. Everything will be very, very predictable. So how come people do other things? The usual workaround is inbuilt biological drives, considered as set points.
You predict that you will be well fed, so getting hungry registers as prediction error and brings you out of your dark room to eat, etc. Andres Gomez-Emilson recently shared a perspective I hadn't considered before, which is, actually, sitting quietly in a dark room is really great. The Buddha discussed states of extreme bliss attainable through meditation.
Quote, Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the first jhana, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion.
Samyutta Nikaya End quote. I had always figured that sensual pleasures here meant things like sex.
But I think, maybe, he just means stimuli full stop. The mediator cuts themselves from all sensory stimuli, for example by meditating really hard on a single object like the breath, and ignoring everything else, and as a result gets, quote, rapture and happiness born of seclusion.
The serious meditators I know say this is real, meaningful, and you could experience it after a few months of careful practice. You become really good at concentrating on one stimulus and ignoring all other stimuli, and eventually your brain kind of gets in tune with that stimulus and it's really blissful.
They say this seems to have something to do with the regularity or predictability of the stimulus. If you're concentrating really hard on something, regularity, predictability, symmetry is just viscerally really good.
Better than anything you've felt before. Andres takes this pretty literally.
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