Tl;dr Biology is applied chemistry, chemistry is applied quantum physics and in some cases chemistry is a leaky abstraction and does not perfectly explain what is going on in organisms. Three examples - photosynthesis being more efficient than expected, birds sensing Earth's magnetic field by an unknown mechanism and a lack of understanding how olfaction works in detail - are presented but besides that there are no new revolutionary ideas in the article.
All of (theoretical) science is a leaky abstraction. When an area is new, people are doing the spherical-cow-approximation willy nilly. After it gets established, corner cases start to surface.
Incidentally, theoretical physicists are the masters of creating spherical-cow-approximations and leaky-abstractions. They're always going for the next big unexplored territory. E.g., once QM got established as a theory, they moved on to high-energy, while there is about 1000x more work to be done picking up the pieces of QM in the areas of solid-state-physics and molecular-chemistry. (largely speaking that is; not everyone is like that).
That sounds like a pretty solid method for making progress. First outline something with spherical cows and refine the theory as data that doesn't quite fit keeps accumulating.
> The natural sciences investigate the physical universe but mathematics does not,
> so mathematics is not really a natural science. This leaves open the subtler
> question of whether mathematics is essentially similar in method to the natural
> sciences in spite of the difference in subject matter. I do not think it is.
I'm not even including that famous Einstein quote about math.
Example: When you are doing math in economics you are not doing something that is even more foundational than physics.
what if the nature of the physical universe has no other reason to be as it is other than mathematical consequences of harmonies, resonances, balances, etc? In other words: if all that exists follows mathematical law, doesnt that make math part of the existential?
As a thought experiment, try the opposite direction: Math mirrors reality, not reality mirrors math. I don't see electrons solving quantum equations - equations describe an electron. The cannonball follows a trajectory that we can describe using math - but it doesn't do math. Sure, you can say that it does, implicitly, but IMHO that's stretching it a bit, I don't see the value in such a metaphor.
From a certain level such questions become completely arbitrary and useless: Remember, it's your brain that interprets everything and you can just say whatever you want when there are no consequences.
> As a thought experiment, try the opposite direction: Math mirrors reality, not reality mirrors math.
If this was true, it would severely limit the usefulness of math. We'd see our predictability break down much sooner than we do actually. Read up on it here:
I said - and I have no idea why I have to paraphrase my one sentence - to try a thought experiment, to see what happens when you reverse the direction.
Not to mention that you didn't really say anything? I have no idea what your point even is.
We don't have to make this thought experiment since we already know that it isn't the case - reality is a subset of what's mathematically possible. Finding that subset is what physics is concerned with.
Were you replying to me? I actually upvoted you, if it's meant to be a contradiction than I don't see it. I only just realized you may have been answering me since you used my words, but other than that I have no idea if that's true.
In any case, I should have read more carefully, because
> reality is a subset of what's mathematically possible
does not mean anything. It's a grammatically correct sentence, sure, and that's all. The number of (grammatically) correct sentences is definitely larger than the number of useful ones though :)
let's just say it was a bit late in my timezone ;-).
I probably replied to the wrong post, but I wanted to say that math is in fact a tool for science - instead of being the most fundamental science itself. I've met some people, including mathematicians, who think that because everything can be described with math, it means that math is all that's needed to find the truth about reality. My point is that the process of appying math to find the model that best fits our own world is something that's outside of math itself.
I was under the assumption that the working theory is birds share a similar feature as fruit flies and possibly foxes. The cones that allow us to see blue light actually work as compasses when suspended in a fluid, and they are not attached to the retina of a fruit fly but are suspended in their eye and thus shape incoming visual patterns around magnetic fields
That is essentially the proposed mechanism discussed in the article but the article gives the impression - at least to me - that it is not yet confirmed that this indeed how it works in birds.
EDIT: After skimming the Wikipedia article, both articles agree that it is a possible but not yet confirmed mechanism.
The cryptochrome hypothesis doesn't require detachment from the retina as it's a protein that has directional excitatory preference, not the whole cell.
That's fascinating, but birds do have their rods and cones attached to the retina. IIRC birds are though to be in some way detecting either directly, or through secondary effect, polarization of light.
Good summary. Classical physics is not good enough for chemistry. So why are we surprised that without a quantum foundation, biology cannot function at all?
OTOH, we have a theory that classical computation adequately accounts for intelligence. Finding an unavoidable quantum route that nature has picked would certainly be interesting, despite that quantum Turing machines are also classically computable (I think).
>OTOH, we have a theory that classical computation adequately accounts for intelligence. Finding an unavoidable quantum route that nature has picked would certainly be interesting, despite that quantum Turing machines are also classically computable (I think).
I don't think we have a foundation for classical computation without thermodynamics, which is a classical theory whose ultimate foundations probably require quantum information theory.
Can you provide an example of how this rather facile assertion leads to any insight into biology? For example, how does it follow in a coherent fashion that the chemical properties of DNA lead to Mozart, or a lady bug? In short, how does chemistry explain either the origin, function or future trajectories of any of the utterly amazing biological entities that exist today?
I mean... evolution explains the complexity of things, and evolution certainly has a foundation in the chemistry of DNA. Or are you asking why we have the particular configuration of biological entities we have instead of a different one?
Well what does it mean to say that Biology is applied Chemistry? To me it says 2 things. 1 - That there is no 'new' knowledge in biology. 2 - The important aspects of biology can be reduced easily to applied chemistry.
Evolution contradicts this, because it is a genuinely new idea. Some may say it is the ONLY new idea in biology, but that's good enough.
It's often quoted here that "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." You could extend this to "Biological science is no more about chemistry..."
There has never been "classical" theory for chemistry like there has been classical mechanics that works reasonably well within limits, just weird heuristic rules. Chemistry is quantum chemistry is quantum electrodynamics.
In Kim Stanley Robinson's fictional series on Mars (Red, Blue, Green Mars), researches discover that memory is actually based on quantum physics.
It's a really good series I highly recommend, and it's won awards because Robinson put a lot of research into make the book believable. The descriptions and time scales used in the book make it very accessible to engineers while also containing incredible character development.
Anyway, memory could be very well related to the quantum world. There's a lot we do not understand about the brain, and what we do know raises a bunch of questions about how does our brain store information when it seems to have such limited potential capacity?
We dont have a good understanding of the brain because our techniques of observation are very limited. No need to call for quantum physics at this stage.
Only somewhat related: I'm currently reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson. I'm nearing the end of the book, and the concept that human brains might use quantum processes in the decision-making process is a very important and prevalent idea in the novel. [Although he takes some artistic license --- it is only a novel, afterall]. So I've been thinking, at least passively, about organisms being quantum machines quite a bit for the last week or so.
While it's certainly possible that neural networks involve some non-trivial quantum-mechanical effects, it's also much more likely that (in the context of the brain), this notion arose from people expecting the brain and consciousness to be mysterious and inscrutable, hence "maybe consciousness is quantum!". In the absence of a concrete theory and testable experiment, that sentence has about as much meaning as "maybe consciousness is emergent!" or "maybe consciousness is supernatural!".
(Here, I'm talking about vague statements like those, or sci-fi theories like those in a Stephenson novel, as opposed to actual analysis like that of photosynthesis in the linked article.)
Wouldn't the presence of quantum effects be the default assumption, and there would have to be some compelling reason for their absence? It's not like nature started from Newtonian physics. Natural selection uses whatever it can get its sticky mitts on. Quantum effects are perfect for information processing.
To me, it's not the inscrutability of the brain that makes this seem likely... it's the bare knuckled win-at-all-costs no-holds-barred nature of natural selection.
One disambiguation: everything involves the presence of quantum mechanics, insofar as Newtonian physics isn't how the universe actually works. It's not entirely obvious where to draw the line here in calling an effect "quantum" or "not quantum"; Newtonian physics alone doesn't explain the majority of chemistry or electricity, for instance, and the body wouldn't function without a wide variety of chemical and electrical reactions. The brain (and absolutely everything else) runs on the actual physics of the universe, not on a model we might have of it.
The default assumption would be our current model of how the brain works; any model proposing effects (quantum or otherwise) not yet accounted for would require an appropriate amount of additional proof. When I suggested which seemed more likely, I was taking priors into account.
More generally, though, I wasn't referring to concrete models that make specific claims about how the brain works; I was referring to the rather frequently stated vague claims that use "quantum" in a way that would have no more or less meaning with the word "magic" substituted. A specific concrete model would be amenable to prediction and experiment.
Whether any particular such concrete model seems probable or not would depend on what it claims. For instance, a claim that the brain depends on macroscopic quantum effects at a far larger scale than observed elsewhere seems improbable; a claim that the brain depends on properties of chemical or electrical interactions that quantum mechanics explains better than other physics models seems relatively less improbable by comparison, depending on the details. Whether any particular claims seem probable or improbable would depend on our current understandings of quantum mechanics, the brain, evolutionary search processes, and so on.
Yes, look into Stuart Hameroff,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff
who thought of quantum effects through neural microtubules independently of Roger Penrose in 1987 whose work from 1989 inspired Neal Stephenson. Neal wrote on his website in the Acknowledgements section:
"1. Penrose posits, in The Emperor's New Mind (ISBN 978-0192861986) and Shadows of the Mind (ISBN 978-0195106466), that the human brain takes advantage of quantum effects to do what it does. This has been so controversial that I have found it impossible to have a dispassionate conversation about it with any learned person. The dispute can be broken apart into a number of different sub-controversies, some of which are more interesting than others. The science-fictional premise of Anathem is based on the relatively weak and modest assumption that natural selection has found some way to construct brains that, despite being warm and wet, are capable of exploiting the benefits of quantum computation. Readers who are uncomfortable with the specific mechanism posited by Penrose might also wish to read Henry Stapp's Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics (ISBN 978-3540407614) which posits a quantum brain mechanism that is completely incompatible with Penrose's."
Also read this, I was lucky enough to do an academic level course on parapsychology long ago with Dick Bierman for 4 study points:
Perception in humans seems capable of grasping data sets with billions of pieces of information each second, and distilling it all down to intuition.
All this information is serialized onto pretty much 5 channels (excluding things like one's sense of balance, or the awareness of how your body is posed), all streamed concurrently.
Sounds like a recipe for high bandwidth consumption. Many cycles per second.
Based on this, I'd wager we (and our perception of self) only exist in the ether between our body's neurons.
> All this information is serialized onto pretty much 5 channels
Says who? Just because you can invent categories doesn't mean you've identified channels. That would be like walking up to a computer, say "pictures, sounds, storage", and assume that the computer must contain 3 enormous channels dedicated to each type of information.
Tha's what Roger Penrose argued in "Shadows of the Mind" where he theorizes about quantum effects in the human brain and how they might give rise to conciousness [1]. There's some criticism about it, because the brain is pretty warm and decoherence should disturb all quantum states so much taht they become unusable, but it is still a research topic if "warm" quantum states can exist.
It's an excellent book that takes you on a trip through a couple millennia of development of thought in philosophy and physics, all presented in an accessible and entertaining way. Highly recommended.
quite interesting, but its a bit confused... and its not exactly a revelation that processes involving molecules or particles are best explained by quantum effects. this is precisely where quantum physics came from - trying to explain these things.
"The wet, warm, bustling environment of living cells is the last place you might expect to see quantum events."
stuff like this is misleading imo. its exactly the sort of place you expect to see quantum effects - because its in the universe and at the appropriate scale.
>stuff like this is misleading imo. its exactly the sort of place you expect to see quantum effects - because its in the universe and at the appropriate scale.
Isn't this a few orders of magnitude above where you'd expect to see quantum effects?
> Isn't this a few orders of magnitude above where you'd expect to see quantum effects?
No. Chemistry itself is fundamentally dependent on quantum effects; quantum effects determine the structure of atoms and molecules, how they combine, and how much energy is involved in those processes. That's true whether the processes are taking place in living bodies or not. My reaction to this article is basically the same as jheriko's: this is news?
I thought chemistry operated at a higher level, as in it doesn't care how or why a atoms are structured they way they are, they just deal with the results at a higher level of abstraction. Is this incorrect?
"Chemistry" as you're using the term here is a name for a set of models made by humans, not something in actual atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules don't know that they're supposed to be doing "chemistry" instead of "quantum stuff".
When I say chemistry is fundamentally dependent on quantum effects, I mean the things atoms and molecules actually do would be impossible without quantum effects. The very existence of atoms depends on quantum effects; in a purely classical world atoms would be impossible. The chemical properties of atoms--their valences, for example--require quantum mechanics to explain.
Often in human models of chemistry, the details of how things like valences of atoms are produced from quantum effects are left out. But that doesn't mean quantum effects aren't being seen when we observe atoms with particular valences, for example. It just means the details aren't explicitly present in those models.
Take a course like "MITx: Introduction to Solid state Chemistry" [0] and while you won't be doing quantum physics except a very basic introduction you'll brush against it all the time.
Depends on what exactly you do in chemistry. Understanding structures like molecules and chemical bonds takes you deep. I
f you only care about macro effects, like how to turn this input into that output in an industrial process than you move away from the low-level basics.
The same as in any field, you get to choose if you want to invent new algorithms or if you care about software architecture - both valid jobs for a CS person but it's different worlds.
It's quite a few below for some effects. Have you heard of the double slit experiment?
But actually the scale of cells and their structures is macro-molecule scale... a lot of the behaviour of those things (DNA, proteins etc..) is very quantum mechanical.. there are also structures working with ions and even protons (hydrogen ion) in there.
- 15th century: the brain is the creation of a divine being
- 17th century: the brain is a clockwork
- 20th century: the brain is an electrical computer
- 21th century: the brain is a quantum device
- 22th century: the brain is a ??
It's an interesting thought though, and I especially like Neil Stephenson's idea that the brain is a quantum device that 'leaks out' into parallel universes and uses 'brain capacity' from those overlapping universes, but it's just that: a neat idea, and science fiction. What's different this time? :)
Do note that this article doesn't claim or mention that the brain is a quantum device. We have evidence that the mechanism of photosynthesis and possibly the magnetic-sensing cells of some animals are not explainable classical mechanics, and that's no big deal, we know that the classical mechanics is a rough approximation and QM is also required to explain why a bunch of chemistry works that particular way.
However, we don't have any reason to suppose that quantum computation is involved or relevant in any of the processes mentioned in the article, and we don't really have any evidence or reason to suppose that the brain is a quantum device. It might be one, but for all that we've seen until now it might as well be an electrochemical computer, that is sufficient to explain all observed phenomena.
The brain, at least, plays a (somewhat local) observer role towards the Universe. The brain trying to understand the Universe is a nice byproduct of that role.
Every agent tries to understand (or perhaps "dualize") its environment.
I both like and dislike theories of mind that describe the brain in terms of n-veiled solipsism. But I generally like them because of the specific (decision-theoretic) statements they make about how an agent is defining its environment.
What's striking to me about life on earth -- mostly humanity, but also the larger notions of noo-/biosphere -- is that, so far, it doesn't match up to our larger-scale evidence about how <things in general> define <their environments>.
We have managed to define our environment in a fashion which is scale-agnostic, at least with respect to the measurement of physical accumulations of stuff. We readily form metaphors between:
(a) things in our locale,
(b) things in the huge,
(c) things in the tiny, and
(d) things in the meta (read: math/pattern).
I think the worst thing we can do -- as engineers or scientists or mathematicians or even metaphysicians -- is to presume that any of |a-d| generate the others "in reality". (I just did a bit of that when I implicitly defined "larger-scale evidence" as "most legitimate evidence".)
In the categorical sense of arrow-reversal-without-structural-change[0], models of |a-d| are dual to any notion of 'environment' we can imagine. That doesn't suggest determinism, but it does offload every variation on the question of free will into a(n empty) simulationist argument whose limit is some computational infinity, like an omni-* deity or an extremely general structure like an ∞-topos[1].
An interesting partial exception is complexity theory. When we map out statements like PostBQP==PP[2], we're doing something fundamental, that bridges the gaps in |a-d| without adding something too weird as |e|. The actual notion of 'complexity-wise truth' that's being generated[3] is a measure of inferential distance that doesn't seem to care about pesky details but is somehow still attuned to specific problems.
There are caveats -- you could imagine each distinct problem/distance class as the dual of a scope (our syntactic presentation of such scope anyway[4]). The segregation of our environment into such scopes is only the first half of the problem. Less trivial is the act of mapping out our environment as a structured space of such scopes, so that we dissolve all questions of type ['what is', 'what should be', 'what was', etc.] into a singular question of type ['what direction to go now'].
To me, this sounds quite dangerous. And yet some variation on that is what many of us in the greater "self-directed tech" milieu are working on. There's an embedded urgency to the framework. Call it "the market" or "the simulation" or "the basilisk" or "bringing about the singularity" or "humans vs. ai" or "geopolitics" or whatever you want, but what's difficult to ignore is how effectively |bcd| equivalences eat up |a|, for any definition of |a| that invites historical norms.
Interpret this how you will.[5] For me it causes a sharp recoil from generalizations like "we are just the universe observing itself." The recoil is followed by a question, "okay what should I observe so that I might identify with it?" To which the answer is usually, "whatever makes me a better engineer, so that I can worry about this later, when I have a better understanding of what I'm asking." (i.e., I fail to prevent |bcd|>|a|, and each iteration on the theme speeds up the process a little bit.)
[1] I should say I feel pretty awful making this analogy, as it performs a |bc| equivalence at the expense of most of |a| and everything important in |d|. It's no better than "what if atoms are tiny universes?"-type questions, and it should be treated as illegitimate as evidence for anything more detailed than the notion of existence itself.
Science works via repeatable experiments and inductive reasoning where hypothesis are tested against observational evidence. Until they have that in-hand, it is but interesting conjecture whose plausibility remains untested.
"Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology," by Johnjoe McFadden is a great book for history and details on these topics. The author does a very good job explaining alien theories to curious layfolk.
Why would anyone ever assume that biology obeys an entirely artificial distinction between classical and quantum mechanics devised from human ignorance billions of years after evolution began?
The same way you assume you can compute how a ball flies through the air without using quantum field theory. Turns out, the ball isn't noticeably influenced by its atomic structure. But then it turns out, some of biology might be.
The best description is the simplest one being able to describe all related phenomena. So unless you have a very good reason, it wouldn't be helpful to start from the standard model of particle physics.
That's silly. "Simple" in this context is an entirely human construct. Matter and energy just are. They have no sense of their own complexity. If quantum effects exist, they are equally as accessible as macro-classical effects to biology even if not human understanding.
Of course you're right but we're talking about two different things. I was telling you about how humans cope with complexity in science. You wouldn't get anywhere in science if you would always start from the most detailed theory. Instead, you try simpler models first and if they accurately describe the phenomenon, there's no need to involve quantum mechanics (which often renders problems almost impossible to solve).
On the other hand, if you tried the classical theories and notice that there are things unaccounted for, then you go and look for more detailed theories to apply to your problem. That's the normal way you do research and that's what happened here.
I am familiar with the concept of plants to growing towards the sun and following the sun throughout the day. I'm curious if a similar mechanism is occurring at the atomic level, causes new cell growth to converge onto a shape that maximizes electron transmission.
Interesting insight on olfaction. Quantum involvement (e.g. selective wave-form collapse) is about the only viable possibility I can see for escaping determinism and allowing free will (and even then we're pushing current physics firmly into pop-sci fiction).
The concept of "escaping determinism" or "rescuing free will" seems weird to me. For any of the very different definitions of free will there a bunch of arguments about whether they are true or not in our reality - but "I don't like the consequences" is not one of them.
Free will is not something that needs to be saved. We can't save it, we can't change it, we can't create it if it's not there, we can't remove it from the universe if it's there. It exists (or not) in some particular way, and that's it. It would be interesting to find out definitely, but that wouldn't really change anything; and I don't believe if there's anything in our behaviour that should change upon finding it out.
You're right that it doesn't necessarily rescue free will. That's why I said, selective pop-sci wave-collapse (as in some imaginary mechanism for free will that leverages a quantum avenue).
Determinism (in most accounts) precludes free will. Therefore randomness is necessary but not sufficient for free will. Quantum mechanics is the only avenue we have for randomness/non-determinism, so if free will does exist, it's going to have to involve some sort of quantum "magic".
It's certainly possible to imagine consciousness based on quantum mechanics (ala Penrose) that facilitates some level of choice by selectively collapsing wave-forms (not just randomly collapsing them) and is still compatible with a macro-deterministic universe.
Yeah but there seems to be some kind of belief that quantum is somehow "less lawful" in a way that would rescue it from the conflict with determinism. Which simply doesn't work - either it's random, in which case it's not Will, or it's determined by something else, such as consciousness, in which case it's not any more Free than classical physics.
(Personally, Compatibilism offers the only satisfactory way out.)
While I'm a fan of torins hypothesis in general, the specific molecule highlighted in the article (borane) has a much simpler, traditional reason for smelling like rotten eggs due to disulfide bond reduction reaction.
I'm convinced that this is also how consciousness works yet I've never seen this published. Consciousness can't spontaneously appear so the only way it's possible is through quantum phenomena.
And i would add that homeopathic drugs are not required to prove their effect in blinded trials to be registered. Thanks to Boiron and their powerful sugar-coated pills lobby.
Do you have a reliable source for that? I omitted adding a source because if you look for scientific research on homeopathy you find essentially only studies stating that it does not work, Wikipedia has plenty of references.
I too would be interested in a source. I don't think that homeopathy works, but I am willing to admit I can be wrong. Doubt is essential to make progress:
Also, the placebo effect shouldn't be used dismissively. If you convince someone they should be feeling pain (tell them they're next to a low frequency transmitter that causes pain when they're really next to an empty speaker box), that pain is real in the sense their nervous system can have a physical reaction to it. It is in their heads, but perceptions can generate physical responses.
You have to be very, very when discussing the placebo effect to distinguish between reporting differences and actual differences. That gets very complicated when you only have self-reporting of a subjective state to evaluate things on.
The classic study was on asthma treatments. Patients would subjectively report feeling better when on the placebo treatment, but the objective measurements of lung function showed no difference.
If people report being in less pain or less depressed when on a placebo treatment but attempt & complete suicide at the same rate... well, fuck.
That was not meant dismissive, the placebo effect is of course a well established and very real effect. But there is nothing more than the placebo effect in homeopathy.
Note that most of what we call placebo effect is actually return to the mean. True placebo effect exists but its much more limited than what people usually think.
Naively I would expect regression toward the mean to weaken the placebo effect - using a placebo seems a better idea in light cases and even in a controlled study you would probably not be allowed to only use placebos in severe cases so that it seems more likely that the situation worsens which would reduce the observed strength of the placebo effect in the other direction.
But placebo only work in the situations considered as light cases, where regression to the mean is still feasible. Once you consider cancer, severe infections or other stuff like that, there is no placebo effect anymore. That's why I said most of the placebo effect is regression to the mean, and once you study diseases where regression to the mean never occur, then the placebo effect is in-existent.
The knowledge of homeparhy in Science is really limited.
We cab image the the surface of the top of iceberg as what know the science of homeopathy.
All the iceberg is what you can know learning study and practice homeopathy for years or a live. this is my vision
No, homeopatic anecdotes are not science. Science has studied homeopathy and found it to be complete and utter nonsense. That's the end of the story, it's superstition and does not work. You either understand that, or remain willfully ignorant. There are no other options.
Homeopathy doesn't work, that's a fact, what part about that known fact seems to confuse you? Why are you insisting something that is KNOWN to not work, works? What don't you get?
There is no mechanism of homeopathy other than the placebo effect, homeopathy is pseudo-scientific bullshit, simple as that, it's fiction. If you think it works, it only demonstrates that you have no understanding of the placebo effect and are easily taken in by bullshit.
> Clinic results are differente from test with placebo
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Yes they are differents. Homeopathy cure the person not the hill. In test only the hill is observed not the unity of person. Tests are exclusives, clinics is inclusives
When you run a well-conducted trial you find zero benefit to homeopathy. When you run a poorly-conducted study, with poor blinding or weak randomization you find some benefits to homeopathy. When you don't even run a study, but just give people homeopathy in clinics they'll tell you it works because they say they can feel a difference.
There does seem to be a body of anecdotal evidence pointing towards some kind actual happening "outside what we know" for phenomenon like the "kundalini" effect, however I don't see how the mechanism of action could be quantum in nature. That is, I suppose, not saying much as I don't see how it could work in any case, but I think more exploratory work does need to be done. Then again, I don't really know and if anyone does know of any scientific studies on kundalini phenomenon, I'd love to read about them.
There's a body of anecdotal evidence for anything you can imagine, that's we don't value anecdotal evidence once we've looked for real evidence and not found it. Most people are greatly confused by the placebo effect, it is the source of all these anecdotal experiences.
i think there are studies on the much broader range of phenomena associated with meditation in general. its hard to find good examples of such things quickly with google though because there are a large number of poor quality studies too...
i don't think its particularly crazy to suggest that people practising mental discipline can alter their minds or perceptions.
its very easy to convince oneself that the left arm is paralysed for instance... or to hallucinate by fixating on an object or point in space.
also, its very well evidenced that psychology has an effect on health...
on the other hand there is no evidence of, nor any need for explanations involving, "mystical energies" of any kind, as far as i can see.
anecdotal evidence is evidence, its just not of a good quality.
a lot of things rely on it for their justification. the best example i think i can give in the context of wanky hipster startups would be "agile methodologies"... despite the completely different area of concern they are also attributed properties which are inherently difficult to measure and perform experimentation with. i've seen very little evidence except for anecdotal evidence to back the claims surrounding them (although certainly, they are based on quite reasonable conclusions to reach with no evidence at all - by using logic and "common sense" to derive from better known quantities)
i'd say its often too wooly to even call a single data point, but in other cases its obviously very many.
if 1000s of people are telling the same story, thats 1000s of potential data points... they lose value from being ill defined rather than being small in number.
> if 1000s of people are telling the same story, thats 1000s of potential data points... they lose value from being ill defined rather than being small in number.
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They don't exist in isolation though. If thousands are telling the same story and there is no independent corroboration then it's more likely that one person told a story and thousands repeated it.
Homeopathy is a very specific thing, where you take a substance with a bad effect and dilute it so much there's none left, in an attempt to cause the opposite effect, with more dilution being better.
