Bookman

Skepticism means not accepting magical explanations for things that supercede your understanding. Accepting the bogus assertion that "mystic energy" assists you with a particular judo throw with no evidence other than personal incredulity is not the hallmark of a skeptic.

A skeptic would not say "Chi has been proven."; a skeptic would say "I don't understand how that works."

Bookman

Corwin

The skeptic's answer here is 'it has been proven to work and I don't entirely understand how.'

Francois Tremblay

No, it has not been proven to work. You need to provide OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE. Do you know what that is ? Or are you just going to repeat the same idiocy over and over and hope some people believe you ?

Since you seem to have some misapprehensions, let me explain to you a bit what kind of evidence is objective and what isn't :


NOT OBJECTIVE
"I did it and it worked !"
Partisan studies without any empirical evidence

OBJECTIVE
Logic based on what we know of the human body
Unbiaised, double-blind experiments (preferably made on large numbers)

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Corwin

And I've provided you with the location of that evidence. What would you like me to do? Take an aikidoka, scan him into the computer, and post him on this site?

Some things have to be observed in the real world.

Francois Tremblay

I guess you didn't read the "NOT OBJECTIVE" category above. Realize that your sole study is in that category, and try again.

Corwin

Yet any aikido practitioner can tell you the same thing. I'm not aware of any scientific studies done on this. If there are any, I'll be happy to look at them. For now, for me, it's enough that it works. I've been given a mystical explanation of how it works. I'm not entirely sure if I believe this explanation or not. It seems to work for the people who are doing the explaining, so for now, due to lack of evidence, I'll reserve judgement. (While continuing to look for more information one way or the other.) However, the fact that 'I don't know how it works exactly' does not alter the fact that 'it works.'

Corwin

Let me put this another way.

I come along and tell you that there's this mystical force that attracts all objects together. It's invisible and undetectable, but it's there. Now, since you have no objective way to detect the nature of this force, you can't objectively prove it. However, you can drop something and it falls.

Since you can't objectively prove that this force exists as claimed, you should be safe jumping out a 30 story building, no?

Francois Tremblay

It's not mystical, it's called "gravity" and we observe it AND measure it all the time. Do you seriously think we cannot measure the acceleration at which an object falls ?

No, it does not work. You keep repeating this lie in order to make us believe it, and yet you have no evidence that it does work.

I have tried to make this very clear to you, but you still sprout the same nonsense. Are you literate at all ? Do you understand what I am saying ? You - have - no - objective - evidence.

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Viti

How does one go about objectivly proving that any pain killer works? The only way is to ask the subject if they still feel pain. So the test would be "are you in pain"..."Yes" (give treatment) "are you still in pain?"

Is there some way I don't know of to effectivly and objectivly measure pain and pain relief? Have they come up with a painometer?

Francois Tremblay

An objective way to show pain relief would be to have a serious, unbiaised, double-blind study on the pain relief effect of the treatment in question vs a placebo administrated with a similar method. That is how objective and conscientious scientists work.

"It worked for me !" is not evidence - it is merely an excuse for one's laziness to not look up evidence. It is magical thinking on the scale of the Christian who claims personal experience as evidence for God.

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>