TED Community » Noah Sanderson

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• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 16 2013: But you still haven't answered my question, which had to do with validating your assertion that "Energy is what animates our physical matter. The mind is a form of pure energy; the physical organs are matter, material. Thus, it is our mind which gives the life energy to the physical body". This has nothing to do with any kind of scientific definition of what energy is, nor what I was talking about, which is string theory.
  
  "Science is wonderful ... because science is about knowing something. Not simply having an unchallenged hypothesis, but true KNOWLEDGE."
  
  I agree, which is why I'm trying to challenge you on all these unchallenged hypothesis you expect me to believe.

• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 16 2013: The placebo effect is when a person's health improves just by them thinking it will. That's why when they do drug testing, they give the control group a placebo (a pill that does nothing) so that they can rule out the possibility of the placebo being the reason the drug works. The placebo has been studied extensively, and effects are great, especially when all it needs to do is make a patient feel better (particularly in energy healing, homeopathic medicine, or other alternatives.)

• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 16 2013: By testing everything for yourself? Everything? How?

• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 16 2013: The problem is that the reply button disappears after a few comments.

• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 15 2013: I think you're aware of the placebo, which is exactly why we have "tons of personal experiences". And the effect disappears when we take the placebo away. You say "I think science is unable to handle the whole idea of healing, let alone energy healing", but if the only way we are going to get an effect is to not study it, something is wrong.

• A comment on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 15 2013: Chris, how exactly do you know all this?

• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 15 2013: The way this comment section works is annoying. Chris, the way I see it, there is no such thing as "materialistic" science. What exactly does "material" mean? If something like spirit energy or ghosts or something could be documented by science as a legitimate phenomenon, it would become the material world, not much different from magnetic fields, dark energy, or whatever. Also, according to string theory, all matter is just a manifestation of energy. So maybe what the universe essentially boils down to is just laws.

• A reply on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 15 2013: I think you know what I mean. If not, I'll say it again in a different way: You can't claim something and provide a source that does not back up the claim.
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  A comment on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 15 2013: I wish reply chains could go on longer than they do. Pabitra, I think there are several problems that I have with this article and ones like it. First, a lot of the references cited came from something called "subtle energies", which seems highly suspicious to me, and I still don't know what it is. Second, the mechanisms they talk about constantly mix science and pseudoscience (for example, the talk about practitioners adopting a "sincere caring attitude, and thus introducing increased coherence into their cardiac field.") Furthermore, "If we define energy as the capacity to produce an effect, these experiments suggest that an exchange of energy has occurred. It has also been demonstrated that many of these therapeutic effects occur without physical touch, indicating that energy of some kind is radiated or broadcast between practitioner and patient". This is incredibly vague, and doesn't give me any good idea of the mechanisms even adding all the Electromagnetic field stuff into the equation.
  
  Mainstream science journals hold the position that the the evidence for any kind of "energy healing" is lacking, and the studies that do see evidence have been criticized for using bad methodology and "selection bias".
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  A comment on Conversation: Is the heart overlooked when it comes to intelligence?

  Apr 14 2013: I have. I read the article you posted, and I looked up different uses for magnetic fields in medical practice, some of which have a real basis and some of which are pseudoscientific. What I can dismiss are claims by people that jump to illogical conclusions, citing sources that don't prove what those people are claiming.