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Critical thinking in Vancouver
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Emmanuel Bistas on
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Christopher A. Moyer said
You know, it really doesn't matter if Brian is angry.
I disagree. Rational thought and anger/bullying/name calling don't go together.
Further, he has never said he is angry.
He did. Even if he didn't, it was obvious on this post and other posts.
All this stuff about what a poster's mood or motivations might be, and what really matters in life, are diversions from the current topic (or what was the current topic), which is roughly this:
-DC gave a talk;
-a group of skeptics showed up to disseminate some information that they felt was a logical antidote to what DC would have to say;
-DC said his usual bunch of poorly-defined, scientifically unsupported nonsense (an assumption, I admit; I wasn't there), having to do with a postmodern outlook on everything, and living to be 120+ years old by willing it, and that every cell in your body knows what every other cell is up to, etc.
Motivations and agendas are very important. With the well-being of the clients and the future of our profession at stake, we all need to sit around a table and trust each other. It is hard to do it this way.
If it seems that stuff like this makes people like Brian and myself angry... well, sometimes it DOES. Brian pointed out a lot of reasons why this is the case; nonsense costs health and lives, DC misleads people into thinking he is a scientist and an expert on topics that he actually knows little about (he proves this when he speaks about them), and, more germane to the present readership, this pollutes a genuinely beneficial practice (massage therapy) from being optimally advanced by means of an accurate understanding of what it is, how it works, and what it can do.
Sometimes this makes me a little angry. More often it makes me feel frustrated. Sometimes I am confused why people struggle to see that he is saying nonsense. But as I said before, how it makes me or Brian or whomever feel really isn't all that important. Ultimately, it comes down to comparing the evidence for DC's (or whomever's) position, versus the evidence against it. And in this case, all of the evidence is on one side.
There is enough nonsense to go around on all sides. Check this out.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Lynchehaun on
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Because it is called massageprofessionals and it says right on the main page 'a community of practitioners'. 'Anyone' can sign up at the "anyonecansignup" site.
When I asked I was a massage therapist during the signup process, I selected the 'no' option.
The people who created the site clearly decided to allow non-masseuses to join. If it makes you feel any better, your aggressive and belligerent territorialism is quite off-putting.
Further, if this really is a site for professionals, then shouldn't those professionals be more accustomed to working with evidence and substantiating their claims? What evidence has been presented in this thread?
Zip.
Some 2nd-hand anecdotes have been mentioned, but nothing that would count for any meaningful definition of 'evidence'.
I disagree. Rational thought and anger/bullying/name calling don't go together.
I agree. That's why I haven't responded to most of your posts (including the one where you attempted to intimidate me by posting links to other sites that I'm part of).
He did. Even if he didn't, it was obvious on this post and other posts.
I have never once said that I am angry.
I have never once been angry when responding to any of these posts.
You, and others, have repeated claimed that I am angry, and declared that I'm 'obviously' angry time and time again. I'm not angry. I'm direct, abrupt, and to the point. I can see how that might be confusing to someone who prefers to obfuscate and constantly attack the speaker, rather than paying attention to their arguments.
But I'm still not angry. No matter how belligerent you get, nor what intimidation tactics you use: I'm not going to post a response while angry. That would be counter-productive.
(and yes, obviously, I get angry and annoyed by belligerence and intentional obfuscation: I'm human. I have emotions. They, however, don't control me, especially when I'm posting on fairly public forums where trolls will cease on any opportunity to claim they've ended a discussion)
There is enough nonsense to go around on all sides.
I agree, including your posting of that link.
Where have I said that doctors are blameless? Or perfect? Or without fault in any way?
Here's my stance: anyone who commits fraud should be removed from any position whereby they can commit it.
This includes doctors.
And yes, absolutely: there are definitely people out there with MD after their name who are committing fraud (even after we exclude Chopra). All of those people should be tracked down, have their licence to perform medicine removed, and enjoy some time in a state penitentiary.
But here's the difference: Some doctors are committing fraud, and some of those doctors go to jail.
On the strength of the available evidence: all energy workers are committing fraud, and almost none (to the best of my knowledge) have gone to jail for it. Reiki is still widely practice. Hell ear candling is illegal in Canada, yet some woo-purveyors still sell this crap.
But I have to admit, this 'angry' thing is a very handy out: make it clear that you won't discuss anything with anyone who is 'angry', and then simply declare those who disagree with you as 'angry', even if you don't have any evidence to the contrary.
It's a neat way to control the conversation, and to attempt to seize the "look at me! I'm the reasonable one!" ground.
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Permalink Reply by Jenny Lancey-Flammia on
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Hi. So i misunderstood when you stated this angers you and with your name calling it appeared that you were angry.
I can see your feelings from your post, however studies to show or "prove" my side are easily found just as easy as the studies against. I am unable to get my computer online and replying from my phone so i cant show links to any of these studies. (I also want tosay sorry, im tring my hardest not to type in txt :)
However, I beleive not only because of experiance but also because I have studied in this feild and energy work is not a fraud and nither am I.
Barbra Brennan is amazing and has amazing studies that are in her books feel free to look them up. I am not saying there are not frauds out thier but not all are frauds. Sadly not everyone can tell whos who in this world.
When a person beleives in thier work how are they lying. Further more those who say they were hurt by energy work, were mistaken they didnt utilize it properly and they caused there damage. Energy workers beleive in harming none and we simply help the person recive the energy within and around them. Reiki is unervisal life energy. The energy within and around you. On top of this an energy worker also must infom the person coming to them ways to help them selves because if it be by massage, chro care, or energy work the person them self must take proper steps to better thier situation. If they dont they will not get better. Energy workers are not the healers they are like helpers.
You disagree that is fine. However name calling is not.
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Permalink Reply by Christopher A. Moyer on
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But I have to admit, this 'angry' thing is a very handy out: make it clear that you won't discuss anything with anyone who is 'angry', and then simply declare those who disagree with you as 'angry', even if you don't have any evidence to the contrary.
It's a neat way to control the conversation, and to attempt to seize the "look at me! I'm the reasonable one!" ground.
Exactly. Well said.
There is something else that you said that I disagree with. I disagree that all "energy workers" are committing fraud. The vast majority of these folks genuinely believe in what they are doing and that, in my mind, distinguishes it from fraud. I could agree that the well-intentioned practice of "energy medicine" could be an example of incompetence or malpractice, but fraud would require active deception.
I see fraud as a much more severe condemnation than incompetence or malpractice.
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Permalink Reply by ABMP on
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Hey Christopher, a real question (just for the record, not bait ;->): Do you think there is such a thing as "placebo affect" and "psychosomatic illness"? This genre would also have to include "psychomsomatic wellness." Do you think that intention has an effect? I'm not suggesting homeopathy or hot stone massage for a gun shot wound, but I am considering Larry Dossey's work: http://www.dosseydossey.com/larry/default.html.
Once again, thanks for a lively discussion!
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Hi Lara. Yes, the placebo effect, and psychosomatic illnesses, undoubtedly exist. They are well-documented phenomena. And yes, the notion of psychosomatic wellness, though I haven't encountered that term before, is logical. But none of those things would justify the practice of "energy medicine," unless you are suggesting that it is really "placebo medicine," in which case that is what it should be called.
You ask if intention has an effect. Yes, of course it can, but we must specify what we mean, and specify the way in which intention gets communicated, when we say that. If, for example, you are my massage therapist, and you do a good job in a particular session with focusing your attentional resources on the work you are doing, I will probably get greater benefit from that session than one in which you are mentally distracted or wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else. Why would this be so? Because your intention, a mental process, likely has an effect on the pace, rhythm, and pressure of your strokes, on your posture and body language, and on your tone of voice. All of these might be relatively subtle differences, but human beings are surprisingly good at noticing such differences and reacting to them, often without even being directly aware of it.
Note that, in principle, any of all of those things could be measured. In practice that could be very difficult to do, but there is nothing metaphysical in the example that I gave. The mental state and focus of the therapist, which we are calling intention, will have real world effects that the recipient can perceive through ordinary sensory channels. This is quite extraordinary, actually, but it isn't supernatural.
What doesn't happen is for intention to act all by itself by supernatural means. If I have no way of sensing your intention, I have no way of being affected by it.
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Barbra Brennan is amazing and has amazing studies that are in her books feel free to look them up.
I'll check that out.
Further more those who say they were hurt by energy work, were mistaken they didnt utilize it properly and they caused there damage.
This is one of the biggest problems with everything in the 'alternate nonsense' category: if it works, the practitioner takes the credit; if it fails, the patient takes the blame. This is reprehensible.
Furthermore, it's irresponsible: part of any skilled profession is the acknowledgement that they are not infallible, that they practitioner makes mistakes, and that there is room for improvement. This is not typically the case in the alt-nonsense stuff.
Reiki is unervisal life energy. The energy within and around you.
I realise that you disagree, but this just isn't true. It's just made-up nonsense.
Just go with me for a moment...
Let's say that there was a 'force' or 'energy' that was doing all this. How do you know? What senses are noticing it?
All of the five senses pick up physical things, movement in the air, or pressure on the skin. These all involve physical changes in a room or area, and machines can be created that replicate these feelings to a greater level of sensitivity that humans have. Furthermore, machines can be created to see energy that lies outside the usual range of human sense (i.e. ultraviolet light, radio waves, etc).
So let's say that you want to posit an additional sense. That is connected to a 'spirit' that we all have, and that this new 'energy' is completely non-physical, and thus incapable of being detected by physical things (such as machines).
Fair enough. Let's say that I accept all that for the moment (for the sake of the argument).
How does the spirit tell the body what's going on?
At some point the spirit (non-physical) must interact with the body (physical), in order to pass the information to the body. That interaction can be detected by a machine.
Let's say that no, the spirit doesn't pass any information to the body: how, then, do we act on the information that the spirit has? It necessarily has to communicate with the body to tell it to 'move hands left a bit'. Again, that interaction right there is a non-physical with physical interaction.
If you claim that this interaction never takes place, then your body can never act on what your spirit knows.
If you claim that this interaction does take place, then this interaction can be detected by a machine. Given the level of scrutiny many people involved in the sciences have placed on this area, some explanation needs to be provided for why they have failed to find anything.
Incidentally, this whole 'dualist' idea isn't new. Rene Descartes put this idea forward in the 1600s (see his Meditations). It was shot down as incoherent shortly thereafter.
Energy workers are not the healers they are like helpers.
If a person is asking for money for a service (even if it's merely a 'donation'), they had better well-define what exactly they are providing. It's the basic 'due diligence' of any profession.
I realise this was aimed at Chris, but how-and-ever...
"placebo affect"
The placebo effect is well known in medicine, if not well understood.
Do you understand that the placebo effect is present in every medical treatment? If I charge people $100 to yell at them and hit them with a stick, some of them will get better. I'm quite serious.
So if the placebo effect is present in everything (including actual, real medicine), then given the choice between a treatment that provides the placebo effect plus something else, or something that is merely the placebo effect, the rational money is on the first one. No?
psychosomatic
I'd offer that this particular word gets abused far too often. Ulcers used to be considered 'psychosomatic' until fairly recently. Stress definitely does diminish the efficacy of the immune system, and this can lead it to be compromised and illness to occur. That said, you can't merely 'will' or 'wish' yourself to be always healthy. No matter how much positive thinking you have, if you are exposed to HIV or Malaria, you're in trouble.
In terms of how your environment affects your mental state (which, in turn, can affect your health), there's an area called Health Psychology which focuses on what they call the 'Psychosocial model'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosocial (the stuff in italics at the top is not what I'm referring to).
There's a link on that page (http://www.psychosocialnetwork.net/) which I haven't read through, but scanned briefly, and it seems to have some pretty good information.
I could agree that the well-intentioned practice of "energy medicine" could be an example of incompetence or malpractice, but fraud would require active deception.
Fair enough so. I'll admit that my use of 'fraud' here is contentious. However, I feel that neither 'incompetence' nor 'malpractice' sufficiently describe the situation. (I don't feel that 'active' deception is necessary for fraud. I would contend that if the thing you are doing cannot work, and you haven't done the due diligence (for whatever reason) prior to your selling of the service (and some basic due diligence would quickly reveal that the service cannot work), then you are committing fraud)
Someone is incompetent when they attempt to do something (that can work), but they lack the skill to succeed.
Someone commits malpractice when they misapply medicine, or break the ethical rules surrounding it.
Neither of these apply to energy work, or acupuncture, or that sort of thing, as they have zero possibility of working. Incompetence may apply, but it's a higher order of incompetence.
For the sake of the discussion, however, I'll drop the use of 'fraud'.
Here's a thought experiment (it may strike you as a little weird, but... it's what we do in Philosophy ;) ):
Imagine a street in a city. There’s a guy there, with a table, and some cards. He’s running a Three Card Monte. He’s saying that anyone can win $20 if they guess the card right. In fact (he claims), 1 in 3 people do win. I mean, they’d have to, right? But as you watch, no-one wins. 10 people play. 20 people. No-one wins.
So you ask the guy “so… I just watched 50 people play today, and not a single one won. How can this be? I mean… the game works, right?”. The guy looks shocked. “Look, buddy, I don’t guarantee that any individual person will benefit. I can’t promise specific results, but playing this game can complement any other form of income someone is currently pursuing”. Upon being pressed “sure, maybe everyone today didn’t win. But yesterday, yesterday many people won. Come back tomorrow, you’ll see.”
If pressed further, he might say something like “I know you think this is a scam. But I don’t ask that others believe in it, just that they respect the fact that I do.”
Do we accept this argument? Absolutely not.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the guy running the game is unaware that he’s palming the card. He is completely oblivious to the fact that he removes the red card and replaces it with a black card everytime. So he’s not intentionally scamming people.
Do we accept his argument now? It is, after all, a genuinely held belief that the people can win.
No, we don’t. It’s still an empirical fact that he’s scamming people, whether or not the person running the game knows that it’s a scam or not. We might find them less morally responsible because they don’t know, but that doesn’t mean that the scam isn’t occuring.
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Im thinking that this is a complete waist. You are misunderstanding everything. You know not about my work only the misguided readings you have found. i teach energy therapy and yes there are ppl who misrepresent energy therapys, however not all do. I could show and tell you what studys I have and so on but like I said eairlier I am replying with my pone and it would b impossiable.
Also, like I said I get you dont beleive in the same things as I. However there is no need for name calling.
May you have a blessed day.
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I would like to add I do not take credit for any healings that happen. True energy works dont they know they helped but dont take credit it is the person who came for help and the life force around them resppnsible for thier healing. Just as a peron who is to take a pill to get better, if they dont they dont heal and so on.
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Im thinking that this is a complete waist. You are misunderstanding everything. You know not about my work only the misguided readings you have found.
You know how EB insisted that we skeptics are angry? Well, this kind of response, while it doesn't make me furious, does irritate.
Brian offered numerous clearly stated reasons why his position on this so-called energy is correct, to which the stock "energy worker" position is 'you just don't get it, you don't know what I do.' In essence, he provided you with a challenge - here are some things that we know contradict the tenets of energy work; can you refute any of them? And to this, you said "you're wrong, cause you don't get it."
I think we all know you're not going to reply by saying 'you know what, you're right, I'm going to alter my career so that it is no longer grounded in superstitious nonsense,' though it would be great if you had. But at least I could respect your reply if it had said:
-maybe I'm wrong, but I like what I'm doing so I'm going to carry on; or
-I don't know much about the science and philosophy you are presenting, so I can't really respond; or
-I can't support my position scientifically, but I think there might be something to dualism; it makes intuitive sense to me.
None of those responses, or the positions they represent, would be logically defensible, but at least they would be honest. They would be examples of good faith.
But to say 'you're wrong, you don't get it, and I'm not going to even attempt to substantiate what I'm saying because I'm writing from my pone' (sic) is lame. And if that's being harsh, so be it.
I would like to add I do not take credit for any healings that happen.
This is nonsense. We could say this about any intervention whatsoever, including surgery. Every health intervention relies upon the body's potential to return to optimal functioning.
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I did reply to this yet i dont see my responce?? But I simply stated the statments u quoted were well put and better than what i tossed out. Thank you.
However ho is it nonsence that i dont take credit. I dont.
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However, I beleive in my practice, dont think I am wrong. I beleive that some people do play on innocent people. At the smae time there are people who do not. In all races, fields of work, etc there is truth and there are lies.
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