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Originally Posted by VeggieLover
Western science ignores skads of things, things that eastern science has incorperated for centuries. While im no expert, my step-dad was a polarity therapist, and experienced first hand things that "modern medicine" often writes off as witchcraft or nonsense.
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The placebo effect says that any medicine (sugar pills, fake surgery, magic etc), even if inherently ineffective, may work if the reciever believes it will work and has expectations. It gives credibility to many types of healing that you can otherwise prove have no significant effect beyond the placebo effect. The norm for any treatment which is not too harmful is that it will have a net beneficial effect. It takes testing to find out if this effect is real (from the treatment) or if it's simply produced by the patients themselves.
When they've tested polarity treatment, so far they haven't found any significant effect beyond placebo. That's why the treatment is not supported by evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkest Hour
if all the stuff that we experience and see everyday is not really there, then what is? That is more of the main point. I don't see how electrical signals to our brain can determine what is really there in front of us. It just doesn't make sense, unless of course, we were programmed like a computer by some higher intelligence to experience what we do.
It all seems to good to be true to me.
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First, I think you have to organise your thoughts a bit. Saying electrical signals determine what the world is sounds a bit weird and perhaps a bit simple. Such signals run along our nervous cells (neurons' axons) to send signals to other cells, but it's not just electricity. These signals cause the release of neurotransmitters by cells and the electrical potential difference (or whatever you call it in english) outside and inside any cell serve as a gradient over which different ions either want to travel in or out of the cell. The point being there's a lot of complex chemistry involved not to mention evolution which explains by natural cause and consequence how something like us might develop over time. I think the reason you find it so
incredible is because you lack a theoretical background that gives credibility to such theories.
It becomes more understandable with understanding evolution because evolution says by, almost like a law, that if you have something which replicates, can change to become more or less effective at replicating and can pass on those changes to it's copies/offspring, then you have something which can evolve. If you put such things in an environment where they compete for resources, they will improve over time. This doesn't only apply to what we think of as "life", but we assume that when certain molecules of old went through this process, they gained complexity over time until they transitioned into what we think of as something which is living - and then kept going.
The point is, if you can accept that there is a process that orders and builds complexity in things like replicative molecules over time, then it should become appearant that after billions of years, that complexity can become rather considerable.
However, you don't necessarily get belief in evolution or any science for free. Even though this particular process is testable and can be proven, unlike religions and hypotheses like this solipsism idea, evolution won't be immediately understandable. You have to study it before you know what it is and most people haven't, including yourself. The point I'm trying to make is that it's fully understandable if it doesn't make sense to you, but maybe it would with with more knowledge/understanding.