637. The Mentally Hazardous Gray Zone Between Woo-woo And Science

637.   The Mentally Hazardous Gray Zone Between Woo-woo And Science

One important task of science is to draw a clear line between irrational beliefs and rational knowledge derived from evidence.   Responsible scientists accentuate this line.  

People being disappointed with modern scientific medicine often turn to so called alternative medicine.   While some of it is outright quackery, some parts of traditional non-western medicine are an unfortunate mixture of absurd beliefs with methods, which sometimes and under specific circumstances seem to be beneficial.    These benefits deserve scientific research.  

Researching the claims of alternative medicine is important.  But it can only lead to curative progress, when beneficial effects are thoroughly cleansed of the contamination by woo-woo beliefs.   

The line between science and quackery needs to be sharpened and emphasized.    Accidentally appearing to validate woo-woo beliefs, while in fact only validating their collateral benefits blurs this line instead,  It is a fallacy, which contributes to the persistence of all quackery.    


The following study presenting beneficial effects of QiGong on cancer patients is an example of scientists having irresponsibly blurred the line by attributing unwarranted value to an irrational belief:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130125142244.htm 

Presenting the lump method and entire package of what is called QiGong as beneficial is a dangerous and irresponsible fallacy.   

"qigong is traditionally viewed as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (chi) or what has been translated as "intrinsic life energy"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qigong

The existence of such a qi is a typical woo-woo belief in the alleged existence of something too vague and elusive to allow finding evidence of its existence by experiments or observations.   QiGong is centered around this woo-woo belief.    Without the belief in this qi, QiGong would not be QiGong.   Therefore there cannot ever be a scientific QiGong.    QiGong is woo-woo or it is not QiGong.  

The fallacy of the study is the misrepresentation of appearing to validate a woo-woo belief, while it in reality only validates the outcome of specific behaviors.    Nothing in the study validates QiGong as a belief based method.   

Responsible science needs to refrain from ascribing benefits to woo-woo beliefs.    Studying methods like QiGong scientifically requires a very careful separation between rationally describable physiological effects of behaviors and obsolete irrational woo-woo beliefs. 

Once there is evidence for real benefits of any method, as was found in the study, a responsible scientific approach cannot end there.  Its task includes to also attribute the curative effects to evident causes and replace wrong ascriptions to woo-woo beliefs. 

Step 1 requires the evaluation of all claims like the existence of a qi.    Unless evidence for the existence of qi can be found, the concept of QiGong as a package has to be discarded.    Whatever has an effect, it is not QiGong.   It makes no sense to believe, that specific exercises influence an imaginary qi, which then does the cure, as long as there is no evidence for the existence of that qi.

Step 2 requires to distinguish between the specific woo-woo belief and general placebo effects.  

Step 3 requires to find those behaviors, gymnastics, practices and/or exercises, which are the real and direct cause of the observed benefits.   Whenever behaviors lead to beneficial results, research is important, but with the focus on the behaviors themselves.

The result of such research can lead to the definition of an independent curing method, which only coincides with the woo-woo method by the application of some same behaviors.   Such a method therefore needs a clear distinction by being given a different, non-woo-woo name.    It could be 'xyz'-exercises, where xyz can be any name.  

379. Thoughts About Disrespect

Thoughts About Disrespect

In entry 377, I mentioned that when there is disrespect, the best way to handle it is mutual avoidance.  

But disrespect should be looked at a bit more closely.  

There is disrespect due to a specific, defined reason and there is diffuse disrespect.  
In the case of a specific reason, the disrespectee knows, why he is disrespected, no matter, if he agrees with it or not.  

Some criminals have the insight to have earned to be disrespected.
When an atheist disrespects a religious person due to stupidity, the religious person knows why but disagrees.

When disrespect is diffuse, there are several constellations.

• The disrespectee perceives to be treated with disrespect, but without any acceptable reason.
  Example:  A narcissist disrespects a person and attempts to press that person into the role of a narcissistic extension.
• The disrespectee does not perceive the hidden disrespect.  
  Examples:  A manipulator uses a gullible person for his purposes.  A man promises a woman a long term relationship by pretending commitment, but only wants to use her.  

Both cases are reasons for the disrespectees to avoid the disrespector, because they have no chance to ever be respected.

But there is a different situation, when the disrespectee perceives non-existent disrespect.      

• There is misunderstanding, misinterpretations, misperception.
• The person feeling disrespected has personal problems.  
• The person perceived as disrespectful is not aware of how his behavior is received by others.  

In these cases, people have a chance to overcome the difficulties by communicating, until they reach an agreement of reestablished mutual respect.  


If couples are at all concerned about the importance of respect and not just driven by instincts, they get involved by reciprocally respecting and feeling respected.    They have the impression of sharing all the values and attitudes, that are the fundament of disrespect and therefore for a committed relationship.
Disrespect is the result of either getting aware, that the respect had never been justified but had been an error all along, or of losing respect due to experiencing behavior indicating it as an error.  

An example is the pseudo-non-believer described in entry 305.   When I got in contact with him on an atheist dating site, I wrongly interpreted this as him being an atheist worthy to be respected.    When I discovered on his website his praise of the bible as a book of wisdom, and when he admitted to be a cultist of tai-chi and to chant to a Japaneses scroll, I rapidly lost respect.   He did not pretend to be an atheist, he was convinced to really be one in spite of all his irrational religious behaviors.           

348. Gullibility and Spirituality

Gullibility and Spirituality

Over the years I have been reading many descriptions and definition of what spirituality is supposed to mean or what it means to those, who are attracted to it.   But as much as I ponder over it, it remains an alien and incomprehensible concept to me, when attempting to imagine, how it feels like.  

While being myself entirely void thereof, I am aware, how it obviously has a very real and strong emotional appeal to and power over many people.   In entry 315 I described the encounter with a religious woman, who appeared to me like drugged by her religious zeal.   Something powerful is going on in the brain of these people.

During my own christian upbringing as a child, my belief was void of any emotion (entry 11).  I never had any emotional need for the deity, whom I was temporarily believing in.  Taking the existence of a deity for granted was a child's gullibility as a part of generally never doubting what I was told.    Gullibility during my childhood was an ephemeral and skin deep state, until the maturation of my brain had enabled me to become aware of the irrationality and absurdity of the belief.   

I will never know, what being spiritual means to those, who experience this.   They cannot explain it, because it is so much a self-evident part of their personality, that they lack the imagination of how it is for me to be without.  

But I do not want to be misunderstood.   I do not miss to be spiritual at all.  I do not feel to lack anything that I would prefer to have, if this were an option.    I am a deep thinker, I can feel strong emotions in connection with real people and real life experiences, and being rational and logic is a reason to feel good about myself.   The mental and intellectual freedom from believes and spirituality is certainly the preferable way of coping with life.

Spirituality is like alcohol.   The double meaning of the word spirit is no coincidence.   Alcohol gives temporary relief from the full awareness of a painful reality, while the effect of the intoxication lasts, but as a side effects it also inhibits the motivation to solve the problems.  Spirituality does the same more permanently.   

Therefore neither spirituality nor alcohol are in anyway appealing to me as a means to cope with life.   But to better understand other people's experiences, it is good to know them myself first hand, as long as exposing myself is no hazard.  
There is nothing desirable in being an alcoholic or regularly drunk, and I rarely drink alcohol.  But I do consider it helpful to have experienced myself, how it feels to be drunk and to have a hangover.   
There is nothing desirable in being spiritual, as this means being detached from the awareness for reality and having a delusion instead.   But I am curious and I would like to know, how that feels.  

Getting oneself temporarily drunk is a simple act of one's own volition.  Unfortunately, there is no method in my power to ever elicit temporarily in my rational brain the emotions caused by the spiritual delusions.   
Maybe brain stimulation with Persinger's helmet would help.   But his laboratory is in Canada, if he would even accept me as a test subject, and similar helmets sold on the Internet are very expensive.  

Spiritual people practice their chosen creed by rituals, and there is a wide variety.  As a few examples, they chant in front of a shrine, they kiss statues, they meditate, they follow routines of elaborated body movements, they fast by schedule or live on a very selective diet, they paint or mutilate their bodies.   
Some claim or belief, that those rituals create spirituality.   But it is the other way around.    The presence or absence of a need for spirituality, for believing, for being delusional makes the difference, how the ritualistic behaviors are experienced, perceived and interpreted.  The belief installs sense into arbitrary behaviors.  The rituals only enhance experiencing, what has first been there as the motivation to perform the rituals.

Unaffiliated and unafflicted observers perceive those ritualistic behaviors as weird, preposterous and absurd hocus-pocus.   Imitating these rituals does not supply a temporary delusion leading to spiritual emotions, when such emotions are alien to the personality.  

Tai chi is an example.   For the spiritual, it creates the delusion of having or learning how to gain control over some alleged life force called chi, of which the existence has so far eluded any scientific evidence. 
Watching people performing tai chi is as hilarious as watching apes in the zoo.   It remotely looks like dancing without the music.      
Once I was obliged by circumstances to participate in a tai chi lesson.   I was bored and in a state of cognitive dissonance.   It just made no sense to make ritualistic movements to honor same non-existent chi.    I asked myself, why I should imitate dancing without music, as music is the trigger to dance.   Just as I cannot see a reason to write without paper, as wanting notes on the paper is the reason to write.    I felt as if I had joined the apes by what is called participant observation in social science.  


While I am ignorant of what people do experience, when they claim to be spiritual, I have a speculative explanation for the causes of their affliction.

Gullibility is reactive.   A gullible person it the passive target responding positively and often strongly to external influences proffered or forced upon him without his initiative.   
Spirituality takes it one step further, it is proactive gullibility.   A spiritual person is an active target feeling a strong need to be influenced and therefore searching for influences.  
In entry 345 I gave a few examples, how people choose the specific believes fitting their particular needs.   But choosing a belief means, that it is already available as an option.  It is presented as the claim of it being the solution to a specific trouble.   Spirituality is the process of first feeling and perceiving some vague, unspecified, undefined, immaterial and strong need, and then searching for some way to fulfill it.   If nothing suitable is found in the scope of known quackeries and deities, then the choice is for the delusion of the existence of some unspecified entity or power.    

All standard religions are specific instances of spirituality, but those, who do not like the rules and restrictions of standard religions, enlarge their search to other forms of spirituality.    In their search to fulfill their spiritual need, some people test several creeds, until they find the one, that suits them best.  Whatever effect is experienced due to the particular ritual is not recognized as a  personal preference, taste or inclination, instead it is attributed to the connected belief system.   

They participate in the creed's specific rituals.  By trial and error they discover, to which they react with the strongest emotions.  There they remain, tied by the delusion causing the emotions.  The absence of rationality makes them susceptible to be delusional, but they can easily replace one delusion by another.    

 
I have speculated before, that the strength or absence of unconscious instinctive urges determines the conscious basic values and the identity of a person, and that breeders have a different identity than non-breeders.    Non-breeders consider the baseline of correct behavior as the fair exchange between themselves and their social environment focusing on individual people living now.   
Breeders are driven to make huge sacrifices for the survival of their genes and the species.    When they are exhausted and stressed, when they are disappointed by their children, when child rearing is a burden beyond denial, they have to deal with the unavoidable question, why they have deliberately brought this upon themselves.   There is no rational answer from the non-breeder's point of view.  
Spirituality serves to supply a satisfactory answer to soothe the breeders.    The unconscious representation of the eternal chain of genes never dieing in contrast to the individual bearer can be modified into the belief in the vague entity or power beyond the individual particle.   Breeders perceive a connection with their spiritual power, but unconsciously it is the connection with their eternally living genes.   This cause of spirituality is not restricted to actual breeders, it appeals to all, who by their implicit identify perceive themselves as less important than the species and the genes.  


I am void of both, of the instinct to breed and of any spirituality, and I think that both are connected.   
Some people call themselves spiritual but not religious.   To me, this distinction makes no sense.   Someone, who is spiritual can never be a real atheist, because the real difference is between either being being rational or being afflicted with any belief immune to rationality.  

The insurmountable ditch is between brains like mine, guided and determined by rationality, logic, consequencity, skepticism and brains afflicted by gullibility and spirituality in any variation.   

Therefore my mindmate is not only an atheist and skeptic, but also as void of spirituality as I am myself.   

345. Gullibility and the Choice of a Belief

Gullibility and the Choice of a Belief

As already mentioned in entry 344, belief serves to convert something worthless into a pseudo-remedy for troubles, and it often replaces or impedes any real improvement, sometimes the trouble even gets worse.

A gullible's belief is another person's claim taken as true without doubt.    In this context, it makes no difference, if the belief is in the existence of an entity or in a contingency.   It also makes not difference, if it contradicts science, has never been scientifically evaluated or just cannot be proven or disproved.  

Gullible people choose their preferred belief depending on the kind of trouble and their personality.   The following are a few combinations of a belief chosen to fit a need.  

1.  Begging or buying help from imaginary beings

The gullibles in this group feel helpless to solve their problem.  They choose a powerful deity, whom they believe to be able to be the life stuntman or proxy to solve their problems for them.  They believe, that while the deity is able to supply the fulfillment of all needs, he only does this after being explicitly motivated to do so.  

• Those who believe, that an appeal is sufficient to bring the trouble to the attention of a deity,  just waste their time in prayers.  

• Others believe, that it is not enough to simply bring the trouble to the attention of a powerful deity.   They hope to get better results by bribing the deity.   This can be as simple as buying candles or paying money to some full time intermediate pastor to pray on their behalf.     

• Another approach to more fierce and unfriendly deities is earning favors by undergoing hardships of any kind.   Fasting or even sacrificing a close relative are examples.    Gullibles of this kind jump deliberately from the frying pan into the fire.   To get relief from one pain, they deliberately inflict another pain upon themselves, in the end they have added more pain to the previous.

The same methods as above for existing trouble can also be used for prevention and sometimes the effects are paradoxical.  Someone feeling protected by a deity is prone to recklessness and risky behavior.    Soldiers sometimes are encouraged by the religious benediction of weapons.

2.  Buying help from crooks and delusionals

The more pragmatic gullibles buy quackeries from real people.   They want an easy way out.  They hand over the money and then it is the quack's job to remove their emotional or physical ailments or prevent them.  
The skeptic's dictionary ( http://www.skepdic.com ) and quackwatch ( http://www.quackwatch.com ) have long lists of such quackeries.    Homeopathy, aromatherapy, Bach's flowers, magnet therapy, therapeutic touch, faith healing, feng shui are just a few examples.   There is a quackery for every imaginable discomfort.

There are three kinds of quacks.  

• The crooks, who know, that what they sell is fake and a fraud.
• The over altruistic gullibles, who believe to help others by selling the quackery, in which they believe themselves.    
• The delusionals, who are not only gullible to claims from others but create the claims by believing in their own ability to heal or help.        

3.  Buying information from crooks and gurus

The curious gullibles and those, for whom uncertainty and ignorance are difficult to bear buy bogus informations from crooks and gurus.  Bogus information can relief anxieties.  Here again, there are the crooks aware of frauding, the over altruistic gurus, who believe so much in their methods, that they want to share the source of their bogus information, and the delusional gurus, who believe to have gained special competency in a specific method.  
Again, there is a long list.  Graphology, astrology, numerology, biorhythm are examples of bogus psycho diagnostics for the wish to gain better knowledge about oneself and others, while clairvoyance, dowsing, ESP are a bogus access to unobtainable information.  

4.  Justification instead of changing

Some gullible people choose a belief system, when they feel bad, insufficient, a failure, in cognitive dissonance.   Something in themselves is in discord with their previous belief or that of their social environment.   Instead of changing themselves, they choose a new belief, which justifies their weakness, selfishness, irresponsibility and other behavior, that they experience as unwanted.  If it does not really justify their behavior and attitudes, it does at least so in their interpretation and perception.  The newly chosen belief makes them feel better about themselves. 

• A male cheater can convert to islam, where cheating does not exist, because the coran allows him not only 4 wives, but an unspecified number of concubines.   
• In entry 56 I already outlined, how zen-buddhism focuses on the present and can serve as an excuse to refuse responsibility for past transgressions.  
• Someone having damaged another chooses a religion, in which it is the deity's job to forgive sins by application.   When believing to have acquired the forgiveness of the deity, then he never makes amends to the victim of his transgression.

4.  Buying power by direct or indirect methods

The gullibles, whose main trouble is their lack of social success, buy methods from crooks and gurus to enable them to gain power over people.   

• Voodoo and witchcraft are paid for as the delegation of the use of their power on one's behalf. 
• Others want to gain power themselves.   NLP is an example.  In entry 177, I described, how jerks are attracted to NLP, because they believe to gain seductive power over women by applying NLP.

5.  Acquiring power by climbing up in a hierarchy

Cults are an especially interesting phenomenon, because of the hierarchy principle.    Gullibles enter at a low position of the hierarchy having two believes:  

• One or several masters or gurus at the top have some attractive special powers, knowledge or skills.
• By investing enough money and effort, they can become like the masters and acquire the same powers.  

Another example is the Chinese cult around the chi belief.  It includes martial art, which is some weird mixture of gymnastics and fighting techniques, not based on physical strength but on mental overpowering.   This has some interesting effects. 

• Those at the bottom of the hierarchy overestimate the power and ability of those above, because the more attractive the goal of becoming like them, the more they feel justified in their attempts to climb the hierarchy even at a high cost.  
• They react to the overestimated and alleged powers as if they were real.
• The masters get the wrong feedback and overestimate their own power.  

There is an interesting video on 

http://www.skepdic.com/chi.html

It shows, how the combined belief of a disciple and a master result in a weird double delusion, called the "no punch knockout".   It looks impressive, how one guy falls backwards, stiff like a board, doomed to hurting himself if not caught by others standing behind him.   He falls, just because another puts his hand close to his face.  
Then the video shows, how the master fails completely, as soon as he tries the same procedure with a skeptic, who stays unmovably rooted to the spot in spite of the master's efforts.  

The first presentation was enabled by a disciple believing in it to fall, and a master believing in it, else he would not have dared to do this in front of a camera.     
I wonder, how many of those martial arts masters have been beaten up by criminals, while they felt invincible.

150. A Woo-Woo Experience

A Woo-Woo Experience

Many years ago, I was in the situation, that I was obliged to attend a Tai Chi lesson, and the circumstances were such, that I had to keep a straight face and control myself from laughing out loud.  
The instructor, or guru, stood in front of the group and made weird movements with his hands and arms, and we had to imitate him.   This by itself was just boring.   But with every of those movements, we were supposed to imagine something.   I have forgotten, what it was, but it was just absurd.   The whole thing was ludicrous, but it was also creepy to see, with how much earnest the others participated.  
I can hold my hands in some way in front of my belly, and I can imagine something.   But both have nothing to do with each other.    It made no sense.   Reality is much better than imagination.   It is much more joy to go on a hike, where is it beautiful.

I had forgotten about that woo-woo session, until I watched this show of Penn & Teller:
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=L4PVVNK3.
They show a woman presenting Tai Chi, and it brought my memories back.    She and her disciple were just as hilarious as what I had experienced.   Had I not known, that this is Tai Chi, I would have thought that someone had filmed two patients in a mental institute.  

It seems that once in a while the line between spirituality and mental illness gets blurred.   

In some dating-sites, people indicate to be 'spiritual but not religious'.    I just read the definition of spirituality in Wikipedia.   It sounds as absurd as religion, it seems to me to be a different label for the same wacko irrationality as religion, I cannot see the difference.  

It is important to know oneself and to be aware of one's own values, it is important to use a lot of introspection and then logically analyze it.   But this is based upon psychology and it needs no spirit, but brains and rationality.

All those weird claims of feeling connected with the cosmos and whatever else those spirituals report to experience, is beyond me.   I cannot even imagine, what that would feel like.   I feel what happens in my brain like joy or sadness, I feel bodily sensations like hunger or thirst, I feel sensation from the surroundings like the warm sun on my skin or a cool breeze on a hot day.    
But how would I feel the cosmos?   What strange feelings do those Tai Chi people have, when they make odd movements with their hands?  

Those same spiritual wackos attempt to stop thinking, and they call this meditation.   I prefer to enjoy thinking.   Thinking is fun, thinking makes me feel good.   Why on earth would people want to stop thinking?   

So any man, who identifies with being spiritual, who wants to stop thinking in favor of any woo-woo and new-age wacko thing, no matter how he calls it, is not compatible with me.    I am looking for someone, who is skeptical, logical and rational, and who enjoys thinking, someone who finds religion as ludicrous and hilarious as meditation and Tai Chi or any other spiritual exercises.