Comment by geon
2 days ago
> the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven" by western science
What does “western” have to do with anything? There is plenty of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical thinking in the west. I’d wish people were much more skeptical of anything not scientifically proven.
Or do you imply there is a racist component to it? That could certainly be true.
> There is plenty of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical thinking in the west
This is it exaclty. These folks always forget that it's not the only idea we've heard today. It's basic cost/benefit. This takes 45 minutes to an hour to try out. If it works you "feel better" where "better" is hard to define. Cost = 45 minutes. Benefit = Meh.
Since there are about 1 billion things in the world that claim to make me "feel better" at a cost of 45 minutes each I have to really narrow my focus. I can't spend 45 billion minutes for "Meh."
In my case this made enough sense that I tried it when I was young and liked it. A lot of folks spent those 45 minutes on something else that seemed more likely to succeed. It's perfectly rational.
Things that don’t get concrete results for people tend not to survive 2000+ years, like meditation, taichi/qigong/whatever; so i don’t think some things really need scientific proof. Even then, how do you scientifically prove if something makes you feel better who really cares if it’s x or y receptor or brainwave pattern or whatever?
This is simply an "Appeal to Tradition" fallacy. People do lots of things for thousands of years that are worthless, wrong, or pointless. However, this also doesn't mean that just because we've done these things for a long time that they are in fact pointless.
There are methods to prove subjective things like "feeling better." There is in fact a lot of research that shows that meditation and exercise like Taichi is good for you.
Astrology is more than 4000 years old, what concrete results did it provide?
It gives people some comfort and motivation, same as religions do. I’m not saying everything that lasted so long has scientifically verifiable benefits, but they clear have some societal or mental benefits otherwise people wouldn’t do em
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One could claim it is a self reflection tool where the point is not the claims at face value, but the value lies in the activity itself of focusing, of directing your mind to look at and feel your existence from a different/wide perspective. Which is true about many pedagogical tools.
The concrete results would thus be highly specific to the subject and their learning process on what they themselves deem relevant.
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Forgot the ground rhino horn to make your dick hard. What's the thing shark fins are supposed to do? I can never remember.
Prayer has been around a lot longer than that, and no objective blind tests have ever been able to prove any verifiable results.
Longevity of ideas is not correlated with usefulness. Our belief systems are not optimized; they are, like genetic evolution, just 'good enough' to allow survival.
Like, praying? Or maybe one feels good after sincere prayers, perhaps…
I’ve heard too many stories of people stopping the scientific backed medicines because they’ve thought that prayer was enough.
Humans will not be able to evolve until we eradicate religion from the earth.