Worst scientific experiment ever?
Aim: to understand what makes for a good life.
Methods: The subject spent two weeks in Plum Village, a Zen Buddhist centre in southwest France. The weather was often sunny. Most of the day was spent outside, surrounded by forest, sometimes farming. The subject lived in a community of 250 people, include monastics, in communal housing. They were assigned to a small group that regularly sat in a circle together sharing from the heart, with occasional catchups in depth with an old friend. They meditated twice a day, walking everywhere at a snail's pace attempting to be mindful, while hearing a lot about bodhisattvas. They drank uncaffeinated tea, ate vegan meals three times a day, and mostly kept silent from late evening until after breakfast. Sources of entertainment included chatting in the tea house, journalling, reading (mostly books by Thich Nhat Hanh), going for a run, lying on the grass, with occasional naps, campfire singalong, and football game.
I’m not saying this is everyone’s cup of tea. And indeed, I often felt bored and restless.
Compare with the control condition: living with my partner in a two-person flat in London, working from home on a computer, and consuming a lot of meat, chocolate, coffee, Netflix, and podcasts.
Results: I came away feeling so much happier and more human than when I'd arrived - I am not exaggerating when I say that I felt like a different person. My partner definitely noticed it. And some of the new habits and behaviours stuck, to varying degrees. So let’s consider that to be a pretty enormous effect.
Discussion: But I couldn’t help but feel a little frustrated, as a scientist. I had changed almost every single variable you can think of in a human life. So how was I supposed to tell which was most causal, which was the active ingredient? We don’t even know whether we’re talking about one or two variables that matter a lot, or many small effects that add up, or even some kind of multiplicative interaction between them (e.g. perhaps something special happens when you combine meditation with veganism, and then bam!).
Worst scientific experiment ever?
Well, maybe, maybe not. I'll say three things about it.
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It replicated. I went back a year later and had a similar experience.
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It was an enormous effect. It’s much easier to work backwards from a large uncontrolled effect to figure out which variables are driving it, than to be stuck tweaking lots of things carefully that don’t make any difference.
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There is some information there. Above all, it was a very reassuring reminder that changing environmental factors can change my internal state, in under two weeks. And if I look back at other periods or experiences that have also felt really good, I can start to see which variables are common to them.
When I went back to Plum Village the second time, I knew that the immediate effects would be temporary. The winds of morale there had gusted me a little way up, so I wanted to grab hold where I could, before rolling back down. The quiet voice inside had been urging changes for a long time, even if it was hard to hear or act on them. For a moment, jolted into a higher, more self-aware energy state, I had extra affordances available to me. I tried to plant seeds that would take root and grow in my life - applying for jobs, signing up for voluntary activities, seeking out communities… We’ll see if it works.