Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#251

Post by jlokier » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

M2Ys4U wrote: post #121

raverbashing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think researchers get too hung up on the a) "folclorical explanations" and b) specific measurable attributes (depression scales, anxiety scales, etc) I have no doubt that the Reiki or Acupunture traditional explanations make no scientific sense. But I'm also long on the idea that sticking needles at a shallow depth might have a certain analgesic effect (also see: tattoos). Yeah it seems you can't do a "fake acupunt…

>Yeah it seems you can't do a "fake acupunture" study, but that's not its fault. Actually you can. More specifically, you can place needles randomly/arbitrarily rather than looking at "energy lines" or "chi" or whatever utter bollocks proponents of acupuncture spout. Turns out, it performs at the same level as placebo. Just like "real" acupuncture.

Therepautic or medical effects are not the only thing worth noticing.

There is basic sensory experience as well, which might lead to nothing particularly medical.

Being poked at some points feels distinctly different than being poked elsewhere.

One feels like electrical currents along paths in the body, the other does not. Like, as in what a gentle electric shock feels like.

There are other sensations available too. What feels like heat or cold, as well as in some places a strangely magnetic-like effect where it feels like the flesh is being pulled or pushed from a metallic object nearby, and other sensations I'd find difficult to describe such as "a sudden urge to breathe" or "empty feeling in the tummy", or "an uncomfortable jarring sensation" or "awash with light and relief", but they are still quite distinctive and feel undismissable once noticed.

They feel "half imaginary", as they are versions of what's always around but not always so clearly noticed and obvious. Yet definite, very distinct from imagined or visualised feelings. Like the difference between imagining a pinch, versus feeling a real one. (That's not so different from objectively measurable optical and acoustic phenoma - we don't tend to notice subtle variations in data from our environment until we recognise them.)

At least to me.

It is known in acupuncture circles that people feel different things. Even acupuncturists themselves have very different experiences. Some do it by feel in their fingertips or elsewhere; others don't feel anything but do it from knowledge/training.

It may be that "sensitivity" for want of a better term is widely variable. And it may be circumstantial as well, adding reasons to doubt our own subjective sensory data.

But should we declare that the subjective sensation, which seems to make itself strong and obvious to some people, is an entirely meaningless "imaginary" experience?

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#252

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #240

ganzuul wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reiki focuses specifically on this aspect in emphasizing the focus, intent and emotional commitment of the practitioner. Replace "energy" with "emotion" and it begins to look legitimate.

Which is interesting because emotion is directly proportional to level of energy in brain cells.

What form of energy? Electrical activity? If we apply just the term "Energy", we're now in undefined territory.

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#253

Post by conjectures » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

hosh wrote: post #222

conjectures wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extraordinary in the sense that there is no known mechanism for it to work. E.g. soap kills viruses by dissolving them, some painkillers work by blocking transmission of signals along nerves, radiotherapy kills cells in the blast zone. Other than through establishing a psychological effect around 'someone cares', there's simply no known way of positive thoughts in one person's head being transmitted down through…

There are known mechanisms, but they are recorded and discussed among the mystics and esotericists. There are long, though obscure, documentation on these different phenomena. They are outside what is accepted by the mainstream consensus, so I can see why you would consider those mechanisms as being "unknown". I probably should have explained this part better. I wrote in a different comment, but let me make this clea…

> What I mean about "subtle energy" is not the same as the "energy" of physicists.

There you go. This is why the idea is extraordinary. There is the energy of physicists which explains the motions of the planets, the vibrations of crystals ;), and the mechanics of your computer. In fact, it is the theory we have for everything in the universe except the phenomenon of someone touching someone else while thinking a special kind of happy thought.

> Subtle energy carries information

Regular energy carries information too. How do you think radio works? Or how cosmic background radiation yields knowledge about what happened just after the big bang?

> The problem is that, what we experience as consciousness, is in turn influenced and agitated by subtle energy.

How? What does the subtle mechanism look like? What are the corresponding subtle equations, subtle algorithms or subtle models?

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#254

Post by mikegioia » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

fooblat wrote: post #236

mcv wrote: post #213

It's not so strange that Reiki works; it's a form of placebo effect. Placebos work, despite there provably being no active ingredient at work, and there being no reason at all for them to work except for the belief of the recipient . There's a good reason why new medicine needs to be proven to be better than a placebo in a double-blind study, and not merely better than no treatment at all with patients who know what…

No, placebos don't work. That is not what is meant by "the placebo effect" by doctors. There is no active ingredient in a placebo. That's why it has no effect on broken bones or cancer. A placebo doesn't have an effect on anything. However, patients that receive treatment that include a placebo medication and/or procedure (instead of the active version) often report improvement in their perception of their condition.…

It sounds like your contradicting yourself. You say placebos don't work and don't have an effect on anything, but in that example the kiss is the placebo. And then you say the kiss lowers their pain, which implies it does work.

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#255

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

hosh wrote: post #211

wpietri wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two components here. One is people reporting their experience. We should definitely honor that. But the other is people making claims of fact based on their experience. That's something people need to be responsible about, because it imposes a burden on the rest of us, and can be actively harmful. So if somebody sees funny lights in the skies, great! I would like to hear about their experience. But…

What if there are some things where scientific objectivity and scientific method breaks down, and is incapable of exploring? It's ok if you feel that what I said was irresponsible. I know that is the mainstream view of things, and I expected a lot of backlash for posting a comment on this. I usually hang out with the crowd where the experience and reality of subtle energy is not in doubt. Among them are the people fo…

You're basically describing emotions as though they are somehow more than just emotions. We understand them, they effect things, but they are just emotions. We know that mood can effect someone's physical responses, but we don't assume that's in any way special, unless you can show evidence of those "subtle energy" experiences affecting the world in a different way than regular emotions or placebos.

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#256

Post by wpietri » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

hosh wrote: post #211

wpietri wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two components here. One is people reporting their experience. We should definitely honor that. But the other is people making claims of fact based on their experience. That's something people need to be responsible about, because it imposes a burden on the rest of us, and can be actively harmful. So if somebody sees funny lights in the skies, great! I would like to hear about their experience. But…

What if there are some things where scientific objectivity and scientific method breaks down, and is incapable of exploring? It's ok if you feel that what I said was irresponsible. I know that is the mainstream view of things, and I expected a lot of backlash for posting a comment on this. I usually hang out with the crowd where the experience and reality of subtle energy is not in doubt. Among them are the people fo…

Just as background, I've been doing yoga and meditation for decades. I think the phenomena that people experience as "subtle energy" are interesting and are worth investigating. But my best guess is that these are purely internal phenomena. As eusocial primates with poor internal perception, it's easy for us to mistake internal phenomena as objective. For example, people who think they know what God wants -- who are great in number! -- turn out to be perceiving aspects of their own minds: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-i...

With that, to your question:

> What if there are some things where scientific objectivity and scientific method breaks down, and is incapable of exploring?

Then that's a thing you can demonstrate. People are quite regularly proving that existing methods break down. Look at relativity, for example. The Michelson–Morley experiments started in the 1880s. Einstein didn't publish key work until 1905, and the revolution he started took a long time to play out.

You can find similar things happening with germ theory, which forced a revolution in medical practice. Or more recently, with figuring out the true cause of ulcers. Sure, there were a lot of nominally objective jerks who pushed back against these things, defending a failed orthodoxy. That approach does break down. But that's not the only thing going on. If it were, Einstein and the ulcer guy wouldn't have ended up with Nobel prizes.

Science isn't some incomprehensible activity. It's just a formalization of what we do every day, which is come up with ideas about how the world works and then put those ideas to the test.

In fact, you're doing it now. If you want to propose a framework that makes sense of phenomena, as you're doing here, then you don't get to stop half way. "Subtle energy" is one way to explain it. It's clearly useful to people in certain contexts. But there are all sorts of things like that. For example, people naively expect light things to fall slower than heavy things. Feathers fall slower than bowling balls, for example. There are all sorts of principles in naive physics [1] that are honestly not that bad. The same is true for folk medicine. An apple a day doesn't keep all doctors away, but it isn't a bad place to start.

So my issue with what you said isn't that you talk about "subtle energy". It's that you are casting a locally useful approximation as a universal truth. And you're doing that without acknowledging the gap or being willing to do the work. Our understanding of, say, thermal energy is the result of many lifetimes of dedicated, thoughtful work. If you want the power of objective fact, you have to earn it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_physics

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#257

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #220

tsimionescu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all mumbo jumbo is equivalent to 'it has been proven not to work'. That is a strong position to take, not a default one. The second is too hand-wavy to even really call a position. Note that it's generally important to separate the possible effectiveness of a technique from the beliefs about why it may be effective that practitioners hold. Willowbark is an effective remedy for some ailments, not because of some…

There is already quite a bit of literature on the placebo effect. I think the effectiveness of Reiki is just another form of the placebo effect. It appears something is being done, and sometimes that's enough to make the patient feel better and help their recovery. More research is absolutely warranted, though. The hows and whys of the placebo effect are still largely unknown.

[deleted]

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#258

Post by jlokier » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #109

ghthor wrote: post #27

It can possibly work, if you open your mind to more then what's possible in the materialist scientific viewpoint.

I don't know what a "materialist scientific viewpoint" is, but I'm not sure how one would seek to understand the world from other than a scientific viewpoint. You'd just be guessing based on intuition. If there's something that's real, it should be possible to investigate it in a scientific manner. For example, you could imagine a study comparing the effects of a real Reiki session to a fake one performed by an actor…

I agree with you (and upvoted).

However wish to point out that, if the study gave a clear result, great you have something to work with, but if it gave a negative result, that wouldn't prove Reiki per se doesn't work.

Instead it would prove that Reiki training is not necessary to obtain the same outcome in this setting. Which would also be great as something to work with.

But because of logical possibilities like "actors perfoming the actions they are told to do automatically draw on natural Reiki ability that we all have" (among others), it would be incorrect to rule out Reiki itself from a result like that without a much tighter definition of what is being ruled out.

(And people would likely argue over such definitions and talk past one another while doing so.)

Generally: Proving negatives is hard, and requires us to describe carefully what we're really proving, which is invariably narrower than we would like (non-generalisability of negatives).

That's one of the difficulties with studying this sort of thing in a genuinely scientific way.

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#259

Post by wpietri » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

zarmin wrote: post #233

hosh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there are some things where scientific objectivity and scientific method breaks down, and is incapable of exploring? It's ok if you feel that what I said was irresponsible. I know that is the mainstream view of things, and I expected a lot of backlash for posting a comment on this. I usually hang out with the crowd where the experience and reality of subtle energy is not in doubt. Among them are the people fo…

>"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence." - Nikola Tesla Material reductionism has really done a number on Western civilization. The notion that existence is limited to what can be measured, and all claims to the contrary get painted with the brush of pseudoscience, to me, embodies the hubris that is holding…

This strikes me as deeply ahistorical in two ways.

One is that there are always Dean Radins. In the 1970s we had a wave of interest in ESP and other paranormal phenomena. In the 1920s it was spiritualism and seances. And there are many other, smaller excitements. We're always at the start of a wave of discovery around the mystical. Somehow it never comes! Anybody suggesting it will be different this time really needs to grapple with the other waves.

The other is that overliteral reductionism, definitely a force in science [1], has quite regularly been beaten back. When that happens, it comes through data. Look at the rise of quantum mechanics, which seemed so weird that Einstein talked about "spooky action at a distance". Eventually everybody was like, "Yes, turns out reality is just that weird," and now we're building things with it.

Like any force, reductionism can be harmful when overapplied. But it's a useful balance to other forces. The human mind is an extremely fertile place, where ideas rapidly grow and branch and flower. But all gardens need pruning, so we must assiduously apply Occam's razor lest we be overwhelmed with nonsense.

[1] To the point where it's a joke: https://xkcd.com/793/

Re: Reiki can’t possibly work, so why does it?

#260

Post by dominotw » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #250

dominotw wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not doctor's job to tell her patients to manage anxiety. Doctors job is not to play a guru. Her job is dispose medically proven solutions. Why would a doctor be in better position to give this personal advice to her patients ?

Why not? The mayo clinic defines anxiety as a medical disorder: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anxiety/sympt... . Why shouldn't doctors help patients manage it?

sure if the patient is sufferring from anxiety

Feeling nervous, restless or tense

Having an increased heart rate

Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)

Thats not what the article is talking about though. GP is talking about promoting some sort of "well being" thorough anxiety reduction. Has nothing to do if the person is sweating or breathing rapidly.