Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Yes, I was not going to comment, but now that you mention it...

Downvotes are intended to be cast for people that add nothing to the conversation in course. But many people weaponize them and use them against points of view they feel strongly against. Shame of you... you know who you are!

I have formal training as an Technician Acupuncturist, though I can only practice legally under the supervision of a MD with specialization in Human Acupuncture (and being a programmer, that does not make economic sense to me). Since I was at school, I witnessed several times how some GP got offended by this or another pieces of ancient lore and dropped out of the program.

The thing is, you could see they were not thinking. They did not question if the thing worked or not. They just heard some random stuff like "Qi of air and Qi of rice transform into True Qi" and snapped like a devote Catholic would if told that "Virgin Mary was not really a virgin". They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago.




> They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago.

Wow. I have a new-found respect for acupuncture.

Its interesting that a lot of ancient knowledge is very similar to modern knowledge, they just have different abstract layers. Herbs are sometimes frowned upon as medicine, because people fail to appreciate that our ancestors managed to identify them as a source of some modern organic drug.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: