The meaning of "Energy"

[pozorvlak]

Last night a friend of mine retweeted this:
.@marzillk What energy!? Some completely unobservable thing? Energy is simply the ability to do work. Nothing more, nothing less.
-- rhysmorgan
It turned out that this was in response to the following:@AlabasterC My sister recommends homeopathic aconite and tapping various energy points. It is helping a

Comments

[ext_300285]

I'm surprised by the credibility given to martial arts in an otherwise fairly rational post.
Martial arts has to be one of the largest mines of spurious mystical nonsense that I'm aware of. The vast majority is explainable by conventional physiology, and the stuff that seems extraordinary can invariably be shown to be fakirism, trickery or just plain lies.

A martial artist babbling about "qi" would make me MORE suspicious.

Regarding the acupuncture study, what's interesting is that it doesn't matter where you stick the needles - providing compelling falsification of the "meridian" hypothesis (at least insofar as it applies to acupuncture).

[pozorvlak]

Martial arts has to be one of the largest mines of spurious mystical nonsense that I'm aware of.

Agreed. To be a bit clearer, I give zero credence to the "iron shirt" stuff and the like. But when someone who can do impressive things says "I think about it in terms of X" then that suggests to me, not that X necessarily has any physical reality, but that X may well be a useful approximation to or metaphor for what's really going on. Does that make any sense?

Regarding the acupuncture study, what's interesting is that it doesn't matter where you stick the needles - providing compelling falsification of the "meridian" hypothesis (at least insofar as it applies to acupuncture).

Agreed. Elegant, isn't it?

[ext_300285]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Sorry if I misunderstood.

[pozorvlak]

Thinking about it a bit further:

The question is not "does qi exist?", it's "does thinking about your actions and training in terms of qi improve your performance of those actions?" And in the crucible that is modern international athletic competition, we overwhelmingly find athletes whose training is shaped by the scientific understanding of physiology, suggesting that a qi-based training regime is outperformed by a scientific one. But a qi-based regime might still outperform a "make it up as you go along" regime.

[atreic]

Replace qi with God... ;-)

[michiexile]

…and you arrive at my rationale for being an atheist: it brings me no added value to think of things in religious terms, so I don't. And I don't particularly mind religious people as long as they're not obnoxious or abusive.

Then again, there's a whole other worm's nest in discussing what, exactly, should count as abuse from believing parents - and raising your child to believe in the same potholes you do could well qualify.

[pozorvlak]

Interesting thought!

[ext_300285]

I'm a massive sceptic, yet I've felt chi/qi myself in several martial arts. Doesn't make it "real". Does mean I can leverage it as a self-control metaphor though. It's a low-level trance state, which is exactly where you want to be for that kind of thing

[pozorvlak]

I'm sure you've felt that kind of feeling when a climb is really going well and you're just hitting everything and it's like you're flowing up the face -when you're in the zone.

I've encountered that feeling more often when juggling or playing video games, but yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.