on feeling better about the world

[gambol]

So the indian guy was amazing - no just good, but mind blowingly amazing.

Comments

[basal_surge]

A good cold reader can appear as you just described -I've seen it done regularly. Particularly if they've already had their secretary or other support staff chat with you during the setup for the meeting, and pass on info. You'd also be amazed what can be done with google :-). - the point is that _Everybody_ has several of the things he mentioned, or thinks they do, particularly open ended problems like 'stress' or 'back problem', and then he gets the more detailed stuff like the depression in your answers to the general stuff, and it snowballs from there.

Not that I'm dissing more wholistic approaches to medicine, which western medical care often can't do these days due to being under funded and over worked, but that there's several things listed on that website that I know are at best completely placebo, and at worst actively harmful.

(Yes, card carrying skeptic, armed with statistics...) However, if the guy has a western medical degree, backed up by eastern massage, meditation and health techniques, minus the pseudoscience (I mean, 'pulsatron'...), there can be something in it.

[aleph_naught]

No. Taking a skeptical attitude to a therapy, the effectiveness of which there is little to no empirical evidence for, is perfectly sensible and healthy. The fact that the principles on which the therapy is based derive from 'divine revelation' should also raise alarm bells in anyone who has their critical faculties switched on.

And are you seriously suggesting that charging somebody several hundred dollars for a placebo effect is justifiable?

And just to clarify, I'm not saying that it doesn't work - I like to research things before forming an opinion, and I haven't - but aspects of it certainly look dubious and swallowing the whole thing hook line and sinker would be an unwise move, no matter how much it might 'feel different' or whatever. Personal experience is not a good gauge.

[gambol]

personal experience is not a good gauge - WHAT FUCKING CRAZY PLANET ARE YOU FROM!?!?! Personal experience is the best gauge there can be, on a case by case basis.

It doesn't actually matter what it's based on, what the website says or how many other crack pot theories this person may employ, this particular one is working for me.

Shall I say it again? IT IS WORKING FOR ME. As far as I am concerned - Western medicine has yet to work and I'm done trying it after all the fucked up shit my body has been through. So you can take your critical faculties and shove them up your tu'cus.*

*partly because I didn't read that bit about the 'divine revelation' on the website...

[aleph_naught]

Personal experience is the best gauge there can be, on a case by case basis.

Personal experience is subject to a whole range of personal biases that can sway our judgement. This is why we have double-blind trials.

It doesn't actually matter what it's based on

In the absence of more information (double-blind trial results, etc) I would venture that the plausibility of the explanation behind the workings of a treatment is a perfect reasonable thing to consider.

If I told you that I'd cured my cold by dyeing my hair purple, because the evil cold-bearing pixies hate purple, you'd be pretty skeptical. Let's say you get a cold, I dye your hair purple, and the cold goes away the next day. You're still going to be pretty skeptical (I would hope) that my hair dyeing was the cause of your recovery. Why? Because the plausibility of that explanation is a hell of a lot lower than the plausibility of it being coincidence.

On the other hand, if I grabbed a couple of groups of people with colds, dyed one group's hair, and left the other group's hair alone, and then found that people in the dyed group recovered from their colds more quickly, then you might start thinking that there's something to it.

Shall I say it again? IT IS WORKING FOR ME.
You can say it as many times as you like, but without anything to support it besides 'it just feels... different' it doesn't carry a whole lot of weight - especially after just one session.

partly because I didn't read that bit about the 'divine revelation' on the website...
It's on the wikipedia article. Though the more I look at the website you link to, the more this smacks of quackery. Pulse diagnosis? Western medicine used to rely on that as well, followed by a good healthy course of leeches. Magnetic-field therapy? Categorical bullshit (see here, here, and

[aleph_naught]

I'm probably sounding like an insensitive prick here, too - and I'm sorry if I come across that way, I'm sure I have no idea what you've been through and for me to suddenly come along out of the blue and try to discredit your hopes probably seems rather callous.

Understand that I'm very happy that you're continuing to try different things, continuing to stay positive and maintain hope. But the last thing I'd want to see is you (or anybody) wasting that hope, as well as an awful lot of time and money, on snake oil merchants - and there are a hell of a lot of them out there these days; you have to be really careful. If you don't want your hope to be in vain, do the research first, and consider the points I've made, before you invest your hope/time/money/health in it.

And if you do that and are still satisfied that it's worth the investment, then great!

[gambol]

aha!! your redeeming comment :)

RE the purple hair dye - I might believe that it had some properties that leant itself to getting rid of the common cold, but I would totally leave the pixies out of it. ;)

As for wasting time and money on snake-oil merchants... I've been wasting time (2 years) and money (probably several thousand dollars) on western medicine which not only didn't work, but has probably fucked me more in the process. I gotta keep trying, and this time i'm trying something that may seem like Quackery to YOU, but is making ME feel better, EVEN after only one session. :)

[aleph_naught]

I might believe that it had some properties that leant itself to getting rid of the common cold, but I would totally leave the pixies out of it. ;)

Nice application of Occam's Razor. :) Still, if you drew that conclusion from a single instance, that'd be erroneous, because you'd have no way of knowing whether it would have fixed itself up without the hair dye treatment.

As regards Western medicine, I could get into a pretty long debate about that, but I think this sums it up pretty well. I suggest reading points 1 through 11 in particular.

[gambol]

interesting indeed - My point still stands.
I (me) tried western medicine first and it has consistently failed to produce any results on my non-life threatening issues*. Short of having to become a vegan who eats raw food only (as did one woman, as noted on the 'net about 5 years ago) I have tried and will continue to try a range of options to get well as I feel Western medicine has been exhausted at this point. But by all means, if you know of a normal dr who is good and you think they would help - Give me a name.

(*Note: were they life threatening, such as aggressive cancer, I would most certainly go where the money for research was and trust western medicine first).

[gambol]

this is true - except the only words his secretary said to me were "would you like some herbal tea?". And the difference between "have you ever had a head trauma" and "tell me about the head trauma in your past" is quite startling, no?

As I said, it was just different. And for whatever it's worth, I feel a lot more positive about this than any western doctor I've ever been too (who really didn't know what the fuck was wrong with me).

Thanks for the discussion :)