Cyborg Buddha news of the week

Psychologist Carol Dweck argues that long-term changes in personality are possible.

Meditation can improve your potential for paying attention. Intensive training in Buddhist Vipassana meditation improved performance on an attention test. Published article here. A meta-analysis in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry suggests however that meditation does not improve depression and anxiety, suggesting it should be an adjunct to SSRIs and not as a replacement.

Douglas Hofstadter muses on the emptiness of the self and his new book I Am a Strange Loop.

Sometimes old aphorisms are true: treating oneself with kindess is key to maintaining psychological resilience and self-esteem. A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology broke self-compassion into three components: (a) self-kindness (being kind and understanding toward oneself rather than self-critical); (b) common humanity (viewing one’s negative experiences as a normal part of the human condition); and (c) mindful acceptance (having mindful equanimity rather than over-identifying with painful thoughts and feelings). People with self-compassion had less negative emotional reactions to real, remembered and imagined bad events, and had hiher self-esteem, although the latter correlation is dangeroulsy close to tautology.

In “Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism” Eric Pavlat muses on why Catholics need to open dialogue with transhumanists, and intervene more in bioethical debates, in Crisis Magazine.