"For this analysis I defined an artificial category “very mentally healthy”. Someone qualified as very mentally healthy if they said they had no personal or family history of depression, anxiety, or autism, rated their average mood and life satisfaction as 7/10 or higher, and rated their childhood at least 7/10 on a scale from very bad to very good. Of about 8000 respondents, only about 1000 qualified as “very mentally healthy”.
Of total respondents, 21% reported having a spiritual experience, plus an additional 18% giving the “unclear” answer.
Of the very mentally healthy, only 17% reported having a spiritual experience, plus 14% giving the “unclear” answer.
In a chi-square test, the difference was significant at p < 0.001.
So this tweet is false, unless you’re using some kind of hokey ad hoc definition of “the mind is healthy”."
never having depression doesn't mean you're currently more healthy than someone who has a history of depression previously, same with childhood
having a more expansive definition of "healthy" is not hokey -- missing out on spiritual experience broadly construed, a defining feature of human life, is a much better measure of the mind than average mood on a /10 scale
It seemed like some read past "mystical experiences occur naturally" and fixated on "something isn't right", and further personalized that into "something is wrong with me".
Which lured an irresistible attempt to disprove. The easiest route was to narrow an otherwise unrefined tweet and fit it against something narrower.
Vervaeke warns that science can uncover potent universals, but if we confuse those with the thing itself, it blinds us to the depths of the thing and inevitably to the depths of ourselves.
His tweet did claim a universal, but not a scientific one. If Scott had been more gracious, he might have caught that one fits inside the other, but not the other way around.
This is one of my favorite pieces you’ve written, it is thoughtful and perceptive. I suspect that being mentally healthy isn’t sufficient: there has to be a level of depth and openness in order to have the type of mystical experiences you’re describing
Have you read Scott's fact check of this using his SSC survey data? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/fact-check-do-all-healthy-people
"For this analysis I defined an artificial category “very mentally healthy”. Someone qualified as very mentally healthy if they said they had no personal or family history of depression, anxiety, or autism, rated their average mood and life satisfaction as 7/10 or higher, and rated their childhood at least 7/10 on a scale from very bad to very good. Of about 8000 respondents, only about 1000 qualified as “very mentally healthy”.
Of total respondents, 21% reported having a spiritual experience, plus an additional 18% giving the “unclear” answer.
Of the very mentally healthy, only 17% reported having a spiritual experience, plus 14% giving the “unclear” answer.
In a chi-square test, the difference was significant at p < 0.001.
So this tweet is false, unless you’re using some kind of hokey ad hoc definition of “the mind is healthy”."
i say this with the greatest respect for scott:
that post is pretty bad, in an out-of-character way; remarkably shoddy analysis
Could you say something about what you think is shoddy about it?
when i was pretty mentally unhealthy, i would've rated my average mood as 7/10, i accepted self-contempt as normal
rating mood/flourishing on a linear scale, at least with just one question like this, is a mug's game anyway, https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/10/logarithmic-scales-of-pleasure-and-pain-rating-ranking-and-comparing-peak-experiences-suggest-the-existence-of-long-tails-for-bliss-and-suffering/
never having depression doesn't mean you're currently more healthy than someone who has a history of depression previously, same with childhood
having a more expansive definition of "healthy" is not hokey -- missing out on spiritual experience broadly construed, a defining feature of human life, is a much better measure of the mind than average mood on a /10 scale
It seemed like some read past "mystical experiences occur naturally" and fixated on "something isn't right", and further personalized that into "something is wrong with me".
Which lured an irresistible attempt to disprove. The easiest route was to narrow an otherwise unrefined tweet and fit it against something narrower.
Vervaeke warns that science can uncover potent universals, but if we confuse those with the thing itself, it blinds us to the depths of the thing and inevitably to the depths of ourselves.
His tweet did claim a universal, but not a scientific one. If Scott had been more gracious, he might have caught that one fits inside the other, but not the other way around.
This is one of my favorite pieces you’ve written, it is thoughtful and perceptive. I suspect that being mentally healthy isn’t sufficient: there has to be a level of depth and openness in order to have the type of mystical experiences you’re describing
Are you still going to write about enneagram types?
Nice read! Thank you for writing this.