Why do you seem them as a crutch/why do you see what they practice as "not meditation"?
For perspective, when trying meditation at first, I did it without the use of any technology- I read "Mindfulness in Plain English" and some other articles and books, and attempted meditating based on what I learned there (with mixed periods of success).
And then at some point later, I tried headspace to see what the hype was about. I found both paths helpful and effective- after all, the guided mediations in headspace largely just reflected the same things that the books had taught me. I don't have a headspace subscription and wouldn't get one, but I don't see it as significantly different than an audiobook version of some of the material I had read about in order to understand how to meditate. And maybe you could make the argument that people should just do that instead (listen to audiobooks, since the cost would be much lower). Do you see something fundamentally different?
I took that class (comp 116) a few years ago! Just had some fun finding and rereading my own final paper from the archives (the one you linked to makes mine seem way less interesting). Ming is a really awesome and unique lecturer.
Not related to the content of the article, but I'm impressed that Bloomberg managed to add another layer of dark patterns to the auto playing scrolling video- there's a full video overlay that you have to click through to unmute the audio before you can actually stop the video from playing.
Absolutely agree, but there are many situations where stress is not able to be reduced easily (relationship problems/breakups or other family problems, anxiety issues, athletic events, work issues which come up even in relatively healthy work environments). Having coping strategies ready when things doesn't go as expected is important, and something I'm still working toward myself.
To contradict this a little bit (and this is not 100% relevant because it involves exactly one participant, so who knows whether it would ever work for anyone else) this remains one of the most interesting weight loss related things I've read on the internet: http://edwardjedmonds.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Stewart...
The study participant went from 456 to 180lbs through the course of a year, and when they checked on him five years later, he weighed 196lbs. Obviously this is an extreme case, but it is one tiny and yet super interesting datapoint on the subject.
I use Keep, and it's become a pretty central part of my life over the last year or so. I never stuck with any other to-do apps- either they were way too extensive (Evernote) or not flexible enough (Wanderlist, Google tasks, Any.do, etc). I like Keep because it lets me store random notes that I need access to during the year (books I want to read, workout lists), to do lists that are transient (a shopping list, recipes), and to do lists that need to stick around for a while (Personal Goals for September). Something about having all that just displayed on one scrollable screen works really well with my mindset where other apps feel tedious and unhelpful.
For perspective, when trying meditation at first, I did it without the use of any technology- I read "Mindfulness in Plain English" and some other articles and books, and attempted meditating based on what I learned there (with mixed periods of success).
And then at some point later, I tried headspace to see what the hype was about. I found both paths helpful and effective- after all, the guided mediations in headspace largely just reflected the same things that the books had taught me. I don't have a headspace subscription and wouldn't get one, but I don't see it as significantly different than an audiobook version of some of the material I had read about in order to understand how to meditate. And maybe you could make the argument that people should just do that instead (listen to audiobooks, since the cost would be much lower). Do you see something fundamentally different?