It was martial arts stuff. See http://www.jukokai.com/main.html for who ran the place (Goju Ryu rings a bell as some sort of affiliated art or something, maybe?). It was the standard breathing techniques and getting the snot pounded out of you stuff. Ask me about getting kicked so hard in the groin I left the ground. And asked for another. Repeatedly.
Was there technique involved? Of course. Some was to minimize the danger if things went wrong. Some was to help at things ki wasn’t good at (like protecting bones). And some just helped getting over the fear.
Was there wishful thinking involved? Sure. Especially in the beginning stages, ki work involved a lot of psyching up. The things you were supposed to do seemed incredible and a lot of students just gutted things out for a while. After enough training one found out that getting psyched up actually got in the way of the ki flow. Staying relaxed was more effective.
So what was “ki”? We were practical. If you wanted to believe it was a set of tricks, go ahead. If you wanted to believe it was some sort of snake in your spine, go ahead. But do what worked. And ki did work. You could feel it in yourself, and in others. It made the impossible possible, the painful painless. Hell, I didn’t bruise for several years while practicing.
Is it all just self-delusion? Could be. I’d bet we’ll find a better theory than “the unexplained powers of the mind” which will incorporate the parts of ki that work, and dump the parts that don’t.
It sounds like the Sanchin kata, which is common to several Okinawan karate styles. Basically, we practice deep breathing, heavy concentration, and muscle tension.
The kick to the groin you described isn’t actually hitting the testicles or anything else soft. If you are in a proper sanchin stance, and have your leg muscles tensed up properly, the kicking foot will be trapped between the legs by the muscles before it ever gets to the naughty bits. There’s no ‘ki’ in the world that will protect your boys from a kick if it lands on them.
Sanchin does emphasise focus and concentration, and deep, powerful, controlled breathing. This is thought to enhance ‘ki’ or ‘chi’, but in fact the main thing you get out of Sanchin practice is focus. And that means not forgetting to tense up the muscles on your back, legs, calves, arms, neck, shoulder, etc. Basically, you’re trying to put your entire body in a state of tension.
At the lower belt levels, our sensei would test our focus by hitting us with medium power on various areas that should be tense. If they aren’t, you’ll either buckle and fall or stumble, or it will just hurt somewhat. At the higher belt levels, our focus was tested by breaking 2x2 boards over various parts of our body while we go through the Sanchin kata. But the sensei would never hit you with a board unless he already knew you were capable of taking it without damage.
By the time you get to the higher belt levels, you’ve also spent an enormous amount of time doing conditioning exercises that toughen the skin and build calluses over the weakest areas like knuckles, toe joints, etc. My Sensei’s hands looked like two sledgehammers because his entire knuckle area was covered over by one huge callus. That was one area of training I held back on, because I was scared of losing flexibility in my hands and I rely on them for my living.
That reminds me of a “technique” I learned when I was 15.
When you tell most people to “contract your bicep,” they will also contract their tricep. They will lock their arm rigidly in position. So, if you tell somebody, “hold your arm stiff and try to keep me from pulling it down” (by “pulling it down,” I mean pulling the forearm from a vertical position to an out-straight position), they’ll have a devil of a time resisting you. This is because their own tricep is working against them by staying tensed.
When you tell them to try to pull your arm down, there’s your chance to wow them. Don’t concentrate on holding your forearm rigid, concentrate on pulling against them. In other words, use only your bicep. You will be able to resist their pull much better than they were able to resist yours. They will then bow down and acknowledge that you are Superman and that you have superior ki power. Or something.
True. Proper technique involved a straight-legged (as opposed to field-goal) style kick where the toes ended safely behind the pelvis and the thighs took some of the impact. The idea was to minimize the chance that one of the boys would get caught between the kicker’s shin and your pelvis. There was still plenty of force going on - enough to give quite the jostling. The force applied was calibrated to the level of the kickee. See http://www.jukokai.com/html/ripleys/Pictures/Kirby_Roy.JPG.html for an alternate method by somebody who really knows what he’s doing.
The style I was in, at advanced levels, emphasized relaxation. Students were expected to meet blows while in a relaxed state. Sanchin sounds neat (especially the rib-breaking part), if a little different.
To get back to the point, ki and other mental/physical interfaces seem like exactly the sort of thing that scientists could investigate. The effects of ki are repeatble (or at least some seem to be) and they lie at the frontiers of what we know about how brain and body interact.
It’s pretty obvious to me that the inability to reconcile quantum theory with relativity means that a new, unifying theory needs to be developed. Superstrings seem to make good sense to a layman like me, but I think that whatever theory we eventually decide works, and works best, will likely have already been proposed in some form. Even if it hasn’t, the team that hits upon the “correct” answer will have to overcome a lot of inertia just to be fully accepted.
I can think of one recent discovery that was very controversial for a while. It was that Aussie M.D. who was running around proclaiming that most ulcers were caused by bacterial infection. The medical community blew him off for quite a while until the fellow (or someone else) finally got to work and provided proof. That’s what’s in the pudding for fringe science theories.
Anoter non-mainstream theories that met with considerable resistance initialy but have now been accepted as the mainstream view:
[li]Mitochondria and chloroplasts are now considered to have evolved from independent species of bacteria that entered into symbiotic relationships with early eukaryotic cells and eventually “moved in”.[/li]
Similarly, the theory of “prions” – self-replicating protein molecules – was published in 1965 by a mathematics specialist, and was pretty much poo-pooed by the biology community. It is now considered by many biologists to be the mechanism behind Mad Cow Disease. Unlike the mitochondrial symbiosis theory, however, prions as the agents of Mad Cow Disease are still controversial.
Wevets says: Just for the record, I think they (Skeptics) have made some tentative statements that lean toward acceptance of kinesis by touch, magnetism and gravity.
It’s hard to know sometimes whether questions have, in fact, been asked. How much does it matter anyway? If I was sure these questions were new then I would ask them but I suspect they are not:
What percentage of the population do NOT have drug connections?
Was there really room for women’s bustles on the sailing ships that took emigrants to the new world - America, Australia etc? I once saw a replica of such a ship - it was surprisingly small.
P.S. Yes, I’m back. I’m looking for Homer but I can see it’s another Homerless day around here. He owes me something and if I don’t get it he’ll be barbecued like the little piece of Missouri beefsteak that he is.
I have seen Randi’s self promotional videos. This is not a man who is in it for the “good of science.” This is a man who has made a career, and a very very well paying career, out of his own little psudoscience. He works like this. He will get someone to agree to be tested then after the fact he will devise a test that the individual never claimed to be able to do in the first place. His “subject” is then faced with either backing out, which of course would show that they are “fakes”, or trying to do something they never claimed to be able to do in the first place, and failing showing again that they are “fakes.”
I have no great love of con artists but I rank Randi among them.
BTW in your earlier post you dwelt almost exclusively on Uri Geller as an example. I have no idea why you did so since in my eariler post I openly admitted that I have seen proof that Geller is a fraud. He was proven a fraud years before Randi entered the picture. It is not Randi’s work in “exposing” Geller that I was commenting on but Randi’s unscientific behavior in general.
Yes, Randi does devise experiments that the claimants didn’t originally propose. This is because, nearly every time, the experiments the claimants do propose are lacking in sufficient controls. Randi insists on the tightest controls possible, to eliminate any doubt of a “mundane” means by which the test results could be achieved. It does not surprise me that when Randi insists on tighter controls, many claimants balk and cry, “That’s not the test I wanted to do!”, and then take their ball and go home.
So your claim is that using scientific method means to design a test in such a way that any results are meaningless.
Fine I want to see you measure gravity with a Geiger counter.
Bad results?
Must be you’re just imagining that whole gravity thing.
What you don’t like the way I designed the experiment?
Crybaby!
BTW I am not a paranormalist. I value scientific research. Randi is not and cannot be considered a scientist. He is a scam artist with an agenda just like the people he claims to be “debunking”. To see people championing his behavior on a board supposedly dedicated to enlightenment is quite frankly disgusting.
Hmmm, I have seen Randi’s work as well, and my conclusions are diametrically opposed to yours. Randi always makes clear the testing method and the success criteria. Every subject knows the rules before the test. To date, every subject has failed.
You, apparently, find fault with Randi for insisting on controlled experiments. I applaud him for it.
Quite the opposite. Randi’s designs are very meaningful. They test the specific paranormal ability claimed by each subject.
:rolleyes:
Perhaps you would like to give a specific example of a test of Randi’s which uses a methodology this flawed.
He is not a scientist. I have never seen him claim to be a scientist. He has an agenda. That does not make him a scam artist. You seem very willing to sling accusations against the man, perhaps you will prove equally anxious to provide support for those accusations.
I imagine that most people here will be able to live with your disgust. I am certain that it will not bother me.
I’ll grant that Randi is a showman, but I’m not aware of any indication that he is not honest and sincere. Degrance, do you have some evidence that Randi is not adhering to his own “primary, basic, and most important” rule?
I can’t name the video but yes I have seen his work and the entire room was laughing on the floor when we saw the “experiment” Randi had devised to test the claimant. The video in question was one where Randi set out to “debunk” dowsing. The person being tested had worked for years as a dowser. His claim was that using his dowsing rod he was able to walk around on a plot of ground and map out the course of underground waterways. He agreed to whatever test of this ability Randi was able to come up with.
The test the Randi came up with was to build a wooden bridge over a parking lot and then place barrels under the bridge and have the dowser walk over the bridge and identify which barrels held stagnant water and which held some other substance, something the dowser never even suggested he was able to do.
Huh!?!
Yea that’s science.
Before he even attempted the test the dowser said he had no idea if he would succeed or not because he had never even tried anything remotely like this before. Well he failed and Randi got a nice little self promotional video.
This was part of a compilation of such tricks. This one sticks out in my mind but there wasn’t a single example in this whole series where the task was designed to test what the claimant said they could do. Watching the video my one thought was that the tests were designed not to be fair and exact but to test something other than what was claimed. I don’t know what advertising Randi is putting out now as was quoted above but at the time this video was made several of the participants said on the video as a condition of using their footage that the “experiments” were designed in such a way that they didn’t even test for what the claimants said they could do.
But hey Randi got a lot of air time and I guess that’s what counts.
People disbelieving in something based on bad science is not any better than people believing in something based on bad science. If you want science then take the showbiz dollars out and run well thought out tests in a controlled environment not shoddy trick on a sensationalized video.
The dowser didn’t suggest that he was able to detect the presence of water?
I notice you used the adjective “stagnant”, did the dowser claim his talent was only sensitive to running water? If so, then he should not have agreed to the testing procedure. Alternative tests for dowsers have used water running through pipes, but the idea in most scientific experiments is to limit the free variables as much as possible. If the dowser claimed he could sense the presence of water, then the barrel test seems apropriate.
It’s a shame you cannot supply the name of the video. I will offer you my own challenge: if you think of the name of the video, and it is available for purcase I will buy one. If you are correct that not one single test was designed to examine the paranormal claim made by the subject, then I will reimburse you whatever cost you paid for it originally. If you are incorrect, the you will reimburse me the cost I pay.
In either case, the doper who pays will also issue a public acknowledgement. I suggest a panel of 5 dopers, to be agreed upon by each of us, to evaluate whether or not each test was well designed to test teh paranormal claim. Since the issue is one of scientific methodology, I suggest that the panel be drawn from dopers with advanced scientific training.
That’s just the kind of argument I would expect from a Randi supporter.
Yes the guy finds water.
The fact that he usually finds water by walking around on the ground instead of walking 8 feet over the ground on a wooden bridge, the fact that he usually finds water that is actually in the ground, the fact the he usually finds moving water, the fact that he usually does not work on asphalt, all would lead me to develop a test where the guy could walk on the ground, NOT a parking lot, and find water that is underground and find water that is moving.
Instead Randi hears the word dowser and says to himself as you did, “Ah, this guy finds water.” Then he proceeds to construct a test as dissimilar to the conditions where this guy usually operates as possible. Why? The only answer I can come up with that makes any sense is that Randi WANTS him to fail. Not expects him to fail, not assumes he will fail, but WANTS him to fail and is designing the test to decrease the odds of success as much as possible. Changing every variable he can and still be able to say, “But he’s still looking for water.”
That is bad science.
For the same reason you don’t put chlorine in a petri dish when trying to culture microbes you don’t stack the deck in any experiment. The experimenter should never WANT one outcome over another and slant the odds of the outcome in that direction. That is exactly what Randi does.
I want to add again that I have no use for people claiming special powers. My argument is with the tactics of the debunkers not the validity of the claims of the debunked.
Bad science by the claimants + bad science by Randi <> good science.
You see, this is the crux. Does the guy claim: I can find water but ONLY if I am walking at ground level AND ONLY if the water is surrounded by nothing but “ground” AND ONLY if it is moving AND ONLY if I am not on asphalt.
If so, then all of those conditions should be present in the test. Of course, that represents a serious restriction to the “abilities” demonstrated, and I suspect that most people claiming paranormal abilities do not make usch limited claims. If a guy claims that he can sense the presence of water, it is certainly valid to test his ability to sense the presence of water. Now, if after the fact he wants to claim that the asphalt (or the barrels, or the 8 feet of insulating air or the relative lack of motion between himself and the water, etc.) prevented his extraordinary ability from functioning, then he has the right to do so.
And I have the right to laugh at him.
Good science includes deciding what you are looking for. It is an important part of experimental design. Randi’s experiment looked for “ability to sense water”. It did not find it. The only question is whether the subject claimed to have it.
What kind of test would you propose for the dowser? Placing pipes of fresh running water several feet under the ground in an outdoor area without disturbing the ground on top in any way (to avoid giving clues to where the pipes are buried)? Kind of impractical.
Or you could just have the dowser walk some area he has never been before, choose a place to drill for water, and then check…but in such a test you don’t rule out the possibility that the dowser is determining where the water is from cues in the terrain - the contours of the ground, the growth patterns of plants, the local geology…I think Randi’s test was a valid one - if someone can detect water under tons of earth, why can they not detect water in barrels under a wood bridge? Because they aren’t really detecting water.
I was imagining a simple maze of PVC pipes, or maybe a pattern like a star (unknown to the dowser), constructed in a field, covered with 2-3 feet of compact earth. Have the dowser indicate the pattern in which the pipes are laid out, or at least a fraction of it.
No, because this is one of the things about dowsing that Randi finds really suspect.
Dowsers claim to have great accuracy when it comes to determining when they’re “standing over” water, but no ability to tell how deep below them that water is. Why? Because if you dig down far enough over any one spot, even in a dry area, you will almost always find water.
In order to make such a test “fair,” you’d have to limit your drilling depth (to, say, 20 feet), and the dowser would also have to be able to accurately predict several places where there isn’t any water below him within your drilling depth. Needless to say, no dowser has ever agreed to such a test of their abilities.
