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

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

#261

Post by crankylinuxuser » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #239

tonyarkles wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s the rub though: what you’re proposing isn’t measuring “subtle energy” at all. It’s measuring whether or not there’s some phenomenon (possibly psychological) that brings pain relief. Your proposed test is only measuring the effect (which is a valuable test!), but not providing any insight into the mechanism of action.

Technically, that is also true when studying energy in physics. You can't ever measure it directly. Only indirect effects. From that we build models. And one of those models contains a quantity called "energy [physics/chemistry/etc]" which is in fact a highly abstract concept that doesn't correspond to any actual object in the world. Technically it doesn't even have a definite value in any real system. But we take it…

For me, this is par for the course. When I propose in measuring things like Reiki, or other forms of occult energy (notedly not: em, weak, strong, gravity), I get told that there's no way to measure directly. When I propose a way to test and potentially refine, I get told it's woo-woo and ignored.

I'm also a reiki master.... And the CTO of a 2 person Signals Intelligence startup. I'd like to think I'm not conflating EM with "energy"(occult). Btw I hate that word - there's a definite meaning and the occult way it's used doesn't replicate known science. Maybe we should use Mana until we can define what it is.

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

#262

Post by andrepd » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #180

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country ... ...because it's very inefficient

You have the causality reversed. The US spends money on marginal improvements in healthcare that other countries judge not worthwhile. The US is so rich that they focus on quality and convenience when other countries are trying to cut costs. The US system really is very inefficient. All that excess capacity makes it relatively robust to surges in demand, like for ICU beds now due to COVID. IIRC the US has 70% average…

Well that's complete bullshit, I'm sorry to say. The health care system in the US is by nearly any conceivable metric worse than most developed countries, some of them with a fraction of its healthcare spending. Such indicators include life expectancy, infant mortality, cost for the same procedures, number of bankruptcies due to medical costs per year, number of uninsured people, availability of expensive/experimental treatment...

Healthcare in the US is expensive because of reasons such as: identical medicine/equipment/procedures costing many times more in the US than to e.g. the NHS, because administrative costs made up 34% of total healthcare (pause a minute to consider how ludicrous this situation is), absolutely not because it is higher quality.

The idea that "the US is so rich that they focus on quality and convenience when other countries are trying to cut costs" is so ludicrous that to believe so requires a real detachment from the daily issues people face. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, tens of millions more are one broken leg away from having their savings wiped. How can anybody then say "they are so good they can afford to splurge"?

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

#263

Post by crankylinuxuser » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #241

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... That sounds testable. Use 10 people who have chronic pain who report pain relief with hands-on reiki. As for the test: Hands-off reiki vs hands-off no reiki (person who isn't trained in reiki present) vs nothing We should see significant reporting of gains with the hands-off reiki, and should see no gains with #2 or #3... Just because we can't see this assumed energy doesn't mean we can't measure it somehow.

Place a log-periodic tooth antenna on the patient. Hook it up to a wide-band signal analyzer. Perform reiki. If no signal is read, electromagnetic energy in the frequency range of the antenna is likely ruled out. Repeat the measurement with identical touch that is non-reiki. No difference means that reiki does not use that energy band. Repeat with photovoltaic cells, microphones, night-vision sensors, capacitative se…

Problems I see with that... You'd need to cover from ELF up to FIR.

I would make the statement that NIR up through gamma/xrays is not being generated by the human body.

With that, we're looking at around 10THz of bandwidth for a full spectrum. At 8bit IQ acquisition, we're looking at 20TB/s... And if that's assuming you have ideal transmitters and receivers for the whole set of bands.

You want to also transmit to simulate if you find an area that seems to have a response. The test subject should feel something if that's the case.

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

#264

Post by andrepd » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

PaulAJ wrote: post #141

barry-cotter wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Whatever criticisms one might make of the US healthcare system not enough money is far down the list.

The US also spends more as a proportion of GDP than anywhere else, by a considerable margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of course its not clear how much of this expenditure goes to various middlemen and how much actually gets spent on the patients. Even phrasing the question in a meaningful way is non-trivial, never mind getting a clear answer.

34% of all healthcare expenditure in the US is "administrative costs".

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

#265

Post by zarmin » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #256

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…

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…

I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of Dean Radin's work. For example, these studies on the sense of being stared at. Here's one of the conclusions:

>We conclude that for both data sets that there is a small, but significant effect. This result corresponds to the recent findings of studies on distant healing and the ‘feeling of being stared at’. Therefore, the existence of some anomaly related to distant intentions cannot be ruled out. The lack of methodological rigour in the existing database prohibits final conclusions and calls for further research, especially for independent replications on larger data sets. There is no specific theoretical conception we know of that can incorporate this phenomenon into the current body of scientific knowledge. Thus, theoretical research allowing for and describing plausible mechanisms for such effects is necessary.

http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Schmidt_DMILS_BJP.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228455060_The_feeli...

Radin has many similarly compelling studies with "small, but significant effects" that suggest the conventional understanding of reality needs to be expanded.

In a material reductionist paradigm, this makes zero sense; people simply cannot "feel" other people watching them, especially from different locations, and if they think they do then there must be some trick at play.

This paradigm's emergence hierarchy looks like this: (from) Physics (emerges) -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology -> Consciousness

Radin suggests that the true order of emergence is: Consciousness -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology -> Mind

Consciousness is fundamental and pervasive, like a quantum field. This offers, in my opinion, a satisfactory explanation for all nonmaterial/nonlocal phenomena, including intuition, reiki, transcendence, remote viewing, psychedelics, etc.

That some people incorrectly think they are channeling God's will is not evidence against these ideas.

edit: oops, just saw your reply to my other comment. sorry to split the threads apart.

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

#266

Post by ativzzz » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #260

ativzzz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about the other symptoms you didn't list?

> Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety

> Feeling weak or tired

> Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry

> Having trouble sleeping

Those are exactly the issues GP is talking about, article even mentioned anectodes of improved sleep.

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

#267

Post by wpietri » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

zarmin wrote: post #265

wpietri wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of Dean Radin's work. For example, these studies on the sense of being stared at. Here's one of the conclusions: >We conclude that for both data sets that there is a small, but significant effect. This result corresponds to the recent findings of studies on distant healing and the ‘feeling of being stared at’. Therefore, the existence of some anomaly related to distant intention…

Thanks for saying so. My response there stands.

Neurotypical humans anthropomorphize things excessively. So much so that whole societies get built around perception of pervasive mind, from the Greek gods and the Hindu pantheon to Christian and Muslim single pervasive intelligences to Mesmer's magnetism and the Jedi force. A lot of minds just like the idea that minds are fundamental

The obvious explanation for Radin's work is what's behind a lot of other fringe science: people looking for the thing they want until they find it. Over time any particular fad fades away due to lack of corroborating evidence and results. And then we get a new one, and another new one.

So personally, having spent a bunch of time digging into previous waves, I'm not going to invest a lot of time in this one. That a lot of minds like to think that mind is fundamental isn't surprising. But at this point neither do I think it's very interesting.

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

#268

Post by pas » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #238

pas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, clinical studies work by showing statistically significantly greater efficacy than the placebo (sham treatment) group. Placebo can be anything. Just as the treatment. But it turns out that placebo is basically the measure of how much the patient believes in the treatment. And that correlates with price, attention of staff, length of treatment, etc.

That's exactly the point: new medicines are tested against a placebo rather than against no treatment at all, because the placebo does have an effect: the placebo effect. It is an effect, and it can be leveraged to make people feel better. Is that quackery? Or is that making people feel better?

The placebo effect is already exploited day by day in every hospital, clinic and small primary care physician office.

The problem is the whole marketing narrative of Big Pharma is bad makes people less susceptible to that placebo effect, because they want more. But instead of paying for simply more time with a real doctor they want something special.

People want magic so bad. They already want just one more test to make sure, just a pill to fix it, make it better, to make it go away, to manage it.

And sure, who could blame people we know all of this about DNA and virus spike proteins and MRSA and so on, but our treatment options are not fundamentally available at that level. We are still far from being able to whip up a vaccine just from a drop of covalescent blood. Or from just the RNA of a virus.

And people are very easy to fool into the narrative that there is something fundamentally different that actually works. Ancient Tibetian knowledge. Energy, chakra healing, whatever.

And nobody stops anyone from going to the FDA and showing how better their treatment is than a pill. Or how their treatment plus a pill works wonders.

Yet "alternative medicine" doesn't do this. Why? Because they don't want to spend money on that. They like it in the shadows.

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

#269

Post by zarmin » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #267

zarmin wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of Dean Radin's work. For example, these studies on the sense of being stared at. Here's one of the conclusions: >We conclude that for both data sets that there is a small, but significant effect. This result corresponds to the recent findings of studies on distant healing and the ‘feeling of being stared at’. Therefore, the existence of some anomaly related to distant intention…

Thanks for saying so. My response there stands. Neurotypical humans anthropomorphize things excessively. So much so that whole societies get built around perception of pervasive mind, from the Greek gods and the Hindu pantheon to Christian and Muslim single pervasive intelligences to Mesmer's magnetism and the Jedi force. A lot of minds just like the idea that minds are fundamental The obvious explanation for Radin's…

I disagree that these "fads" fade away due to lack of corroborating evidence and results. Has anything in the nonmaterial realm been conclusively disproved that you connect to the decline in popular interest? Academia has a built-in "knowledge filter" (confirmation bias, if you will), and ideas that run contrary to existing mainstream beliefs don't get funding, and indeed get labeled as pseudoscience or explained away (as you have done here, respectfully), until there is a smoking gun. Which, of course, is difficult to find without funding.

For example, the Chicxulub hypothesis was ridiculed until they found the crater. A more modern example is the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, which is even starting to sway previously-outspoken "skeptics" like Michael Shermer. These are geology examples, but the principle applies to all fields.

I don't think we have found the nonmaterial crater yet. But I do think that Radin and those before him have found something that warrants taking a serious look at. Not to mention that in the past, we didn't have access to the technology that powers the potential and scale of these studies. Scientific progress is nonlinear, and I think it's worth shaking the snowglobe even if (especially if?) positive results would constitute a paradigm shift.

It's clear you've thought about this a lot too. If you feel so inclined, I'd urge you to check out a Dean Radin talk. Here are a couple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sc0vlDmris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-9BxI0zk-M

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

#270

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #228

dotancohen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead > of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and > powerful hide their extreme selfishness. So did Gene Roddenberry. Most of his work is based on that premise.

I've heard this before .. in his books so the senior officers get luxurious quarters as they did in the TV series? That seems to be a contrast with basic egalitarianism?

Not sure about TOS as I didn't watch much of it, but from TNG onwards, everyone has luxury quarters on Starfleet starships, of roughly equivalent size. I remember watching some youtuber calculating how much space of Enterprise-D is used for various purposes; from there I've learned that a typical quarter would be ~35 sqm if you were single, 45 sqm if you were a family.

(With the exception of the Defiant, TNG-era Starfleet ships tended to be luxury liners.)