Reiki can't possibly work, so why does it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/reiki-cant-possibly-work-so-why-does-it/606808/ <comment><USER4> > The ailments that Reiki seems to treat most effectively are those that > orthodox medicine struggles to manage: pain, anxiety, chronic disease, and > the fear or discomfort of facing not only the suffering of illness but also > the suffering of treatment.

This is key.

Modern medicine, with the way hospitals and health insurance are run, do not and cannot address, for economic reasons, a pretty important aspect, albeit subjective, which is well-being.

The figure of the family doctor that takes his time and actually shows you attention has vanished. The average experience of a hospital visit is that of being treated like a number.

No surprise then that Reiki, or whatever other alternative practice really, that allows you to have the undivided attention, one day a week, from someone who cares about you, works wonders. Endorphins are powerful, Oxytocin specially, its role in modulating inflammation response is already known, and a lot of complains (chronic pain, mood disorders, mental function, even obesity) are tied to chronic inflammation.

So, yes, about time more serious study is done on the importance of well- being.

<comment><USER5> > Modern medicine, with the way hospitals and health insurance are run, do not > and cannot address, for economic reasons, a pretty important aspect, albeit > subjective, which is well-being.

The "economic reasons" are just the preferences of the rich & powerful. Resources could be allocated in other ways. It is just that those that call the shots are not interested. In the US, they also managed to convince a large part of the population to act against its own interests.

I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and powerful hide their extreme selfishness.

<comment><USER6> >I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and powerful hide their extreme selfishness.

This is what capitalism is in its essence - a complex decentralised pricing mechanism where every human's choices is taken into account on the free market. The problem is that it has been corrupted by cronyism which has indirectly destroyed the human element of it (through centralisation and the formation of unnatural state-sanctioned monopolies and rent-seekers) and instead, as you put it, abstracted people into numbers.

I don't think anyone actually wants to be treated as a number, and I strongly believe that personal and bespoke service is a quality that most people seek in the services they choose (especially medical and caregiving services). These preferences would normally provide strong competitive pressures. However, in the medical field at least, enormous barriers of entry (largely instituted and enforced by the state) has fortified incumbent corporations and removed the competitive pressure that startups and newcomers would provide. Just look at medical education/licensing and the enormous costs involved.

<comment><USER7> When it's good we call it self-interest. When it's bad we call it cronyism.

We define capitalism in terms of markets because we would rather not discuss the more fundamental question of who owns what.

When capitalism produces spectacular exaggerations of human cruelty, it has been corrupted. When a socialist system produces it, it is intrinsic.

<comment><USER8> > When capitalism produces spectacular exaggerations of human cruelty, it has > been corrupted. When a socialist system produces it, it is intrinsic.

Nobody blame socialism for cruelty in good faith. Cruelty has nothing to do with economic system.

What socialism (or any government trying to replace or severely restrict private sector) really does way more worse is empty shelves, deficit and terrible recourse misallocation.

There are more fundamental questions than the leisure ones like "who ownes what". Such as how come my parents lived in the second largest economy in terms of GDP and only few years later the whole country had nothing to eat, and we had a humanitarian crisis without any war or natural calamity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Many people are commenting that Reiki is like Meditation i.e. all mumbo jumbo placebo effect. This might persuade a lot of people to reject both without going through the experience.

I have been a very infrequent practitioner of meditation since 2009. I am now a very different person and there is no way for me to measure how or what has changed in me. I am way more focused, happier and might I conservatively add the word "successful" in my married life as well as financially.

As most of us have a very scientific attitude towards life, we all can atleast experiment with it. If it works for us, then good. If it doesn't, just move ahead. I have no instrument which can measure my experience but I don't need to google it to know if it has worked for me or not.

Again all I am saying is that please dont have the attitude "Whatever is not written in the books we studied or if there is something we can not explain with our logic, then it must be mumbo jumbo" is the ultimate ignorance. I am not saying that we stop doubting and accept Reiki at face value. I am just saying to keep a scientific attitude, experiment with it and see if it works

<comment><USER10> Genuinely interested, how did you get started with meditation?

<comment><USER11> Don't know about that guy but I did it with Headspace. It's guided meditation - he coaches you through it. I found it pretty helpful.

Nowadays I do guided yoga with YouTube videos but I try to keep the lessons from Headspace in mind while doing them - clear my mind, focus on my breathing, if my mind wanders gently bring it back, think about how my body feels etc.

<comment><USER12> another vote for headspace for a simple reason: it has very little (none?) metaphysical/new age/faux-buddhist BS.

Things "feel the energy of the earth getting in through your soles" kind of things, which I find deeply annoying and distracting.

I am sure such things _are_ useful for some people though, so YMMV.

<comment><USER13> Headspace and Youtube were also my experience. I think a large part of getting into meditation is finding a meditation guide(?) with a voice you enjoy listening to.

It sounds really silly, but certain accents (particularly ones close to my own) were quite uncomfortable to listen to, and similarly certain scripts (like you, the "energy mumbo-jumbo") were really distracting.

After trying out a bunch of youtubers I eventually found some with a voice and script that helped me feel at ease, but I'm sure it's a very personal endeavour

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Almost more interesting than Reiki itself is the reflexive responses, bifurcating essentially into:

1\. it's all mumbo jumbo

2\. there's more in heaven and earth, my son

Note that neither group is particularly interested in the empirical evidence, though group 1 will tend to take a louder cherry-picking feint at it.

An empiricist mindset is _really hard_ for humans to inhabit. We (scientistic hard-heads included) judge propositions new to us largely in terms of what we think we already know, and pre-existing metaphysical beliefs weigh far, far heavier than does empirical evidence.

My reflexive reaction is closer to 1 than to 2. But I don't take that reaction more seriously than any old muscle twitch I might happen to have.

<comment><USER15> Great comment and I apologize in advance for going off topic.

We all have our mental models and it takes effort to re-evaluate and change them. And as the saying goes - there are no right models, only useful ones in some situations. Some are useful in more situations than others. Take "flat earth" model of the world. It's not right, but it's precise enough for the purposes of living in a village. Nothing wrong with that, its when you want to venture out, then you have to find a more precise one. But if you live your life in that village - it's very useful and you can be excused for believing that this is all there is to the world.

I once started learning some chinese martial arts, and the instructor was a true believer in more than the fighting techniques, but the spirituality that comes with it. Very easily debunked by modern fact based science. But if you followed the practices that the believes justified, you could help your health tremendously - meditation, physical exercise, calmness - it had a very neat system to explain everything.

Imagine being a practitioner several thousand years ago - you had a system and if you made people practice it - they got better. Even if the exact mechanism of why it happened is flawed, and failed in some cases, by the most part it worked. You just had to refine it a bit.

And it did help me as well. Had I just dismissed it as shaman mumbo jumbo and not went through with it, I'd be worse off for sure. No reason I had to adopt his model wholesale though - I just needed to attempt to reconcile his one with the science based one I knew, and see where I can learn a thing or two.

Anyway just wanted to say that from that I did learn to be more tolerant and not dismiss out of habit things that were not peer reviewed double blind tested, but rather look at the results first.

All models are wrong, some models are useful.

<comment><USER16> > Take "flat earth" model of the world. It's not right, but it's precise > enough for the purposes of living in a village. Nothing wrong with that, its > when you want to venture out, then you have to find a more precise one.

I don't think you have to have a more precise model. The modern world is incredibly tolerant of bad models.

Last year, I visited four continents. I don't think a single thing would have been different if I believed the world was flat. It's not like I was flying the plane. I just bought a ticket, showed up, and tried to fall asleep.

<comment><USER17> My model is exact. I don't need my world to be round or flat. Until I do I really don't care. The superiority in this model is that it doesn't distract me from things I do care about. You just have to appreciate what little minds we have and how short it lasts.

This is a human doing a puzzle with 2 parts

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1qhCtpAa4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1qhCtpAa4)

This is a human doing a puzzle with 3 parts

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zQmkyH0Mr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zQmkyH0Mr0)

<comment><USER18> Number of pieces isn't strictly the source of complexity. The complexity of the pieces matters too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not so strange that Reiki works; it's a form of placebo effect. Placebos work, despite there provably being no active ingredient at work, and there being no reason at all for them to work _except for the belief of the recipient_. There's a good reason why new medicine needs to be proven to be better than a placebo in a double-blind study, and not merely better than no treatment at all with patients who know what they're getting. It is because a placebo does have effect.

Of course this belief is not going to cure cancer or broken bones, but it can reduce pain, nausea or affect other feelings. And feelings do matter. Our mind is not detached from our body, it is part of it. What we believe influences what we do, how our bodies react. How our bodies heal.

As a parent, I cure a lot of my kid's injuries with a kiss. It's surprisingly effective. No idea why. It's pure placebo, but it helps.

Placebos are still a poorly understood field. I've read that the placebo effect has been getting measurably stronger of the past few decades. How is that possible? And the size and colour of placebo pills matters. Believing that the placebo is the real thing rather than a placebo also helps, but even if you do know it's just a placebo, it can still have some effect.

The human mind is weird and still poorly understood. I don't want to get mystical about it; the mumbo jumbo behind reiki with its ki energy and all is most likely total nonsense. But our mind is part of our body, and what we think and believe influences what we do and how our body behaves. So believing in it may still help, which creates an ethical conundrum: is it okay to lie to someone when that lie has been proven to be good for their health? I honestly don't know. I often think I'm too skeptical to receive much benefit from these 'alternative treatments', just like a kiss is unlikely to make an adult's pain go away. I like believing the truth. But in this case believing the lie might be better for you. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

<comment><USER20> No, placebos don't work.

That is not what is meant by "the placebo effect" by doctors. There is no active ingredient in a placebo. That's why it has no effect on broken bones or cancer. A placebo doesn't have an effect on anything.

However, patients that receive treatment that include a placebo medication and/or procedure (instead of the active version) often report improvement in their perception of their condition. Including pain, nausea, depression, and anxiety. The patients report feeling better.

This "feeling better" after receiving a fake treatment is the placebo effect.

The reason a kiss and a hug works so well on kids (and adults) is that it is comforting and loving. It makes them feel safe and secure and cared for, lowering their anxiety and indeed pain.

<comment><USER21> It sounds like your contradicting yourself. You say placebos don't work and don't have an effect on anything, but in that example the kiss is the placebo. And then you say the kiss lowers their pain, which implies it does work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Over the past two decades, a number of studies have shown that Reiki treatments help diminish the negative side effects of chemotherapy, improve surgical outcomes, regulate the autonomic nervous system, and dramatically alter people's experience of physical and emotional pain associated with illness."

The article links, with the phrase "a number of studies" to what seems to be one study [1]. In this study it looks like they surveyed people who regularly attended reiki practitioners about their trips and found that these people reported positive results.

This doesn't seem like a very compelling study to me. Of course people who go to Reiki will think that it works. That doesn't mean that it does work. People think that placebos work.

I'd like to see a study where half of the Reiki guys are people put through a Reiki training course and the other half are people taught to do the opposite of the intended techniques.

On the one hand, I can see the value of a placebo like institution where people wave their hands and say and do soothing things, and if that makes you feel better, then great. I don't think we need to pretend like this is some kind of mystery though, except as it is a specific case of the more general placebo mystery - which is interesting.

Maybe they go this direction in the article. I stopped reading after it became clear they don't have good evidence that Reiki works.

This also reminds me of the story of an astrologer who genuinely believed in astrology and practiced it according to complicated rules. Somehow he makes a mistake or starts to doubt things, and starts giving people their astrology report (or whatever it would be called) as the opposite of what it should be. Sure enough, the opposite analysis worked just as well as the "correct" analysis.

1 - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31638407](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31638407)

<comment><USER23> If a placebo works _generally_ then it works. Isn't all psychotherapy in a way just a placebo?

<comment><USER24> > Isn't all psychotherapy in a way just a placebo?

Absolutely not.

It is one thing to just give someone a sugar pill or a random ritual and tell them "this will make you feel better". That's placebo. (Not saying it never works, just that's the definition of placebo.)

It is another thing completely to help people realize which thought patterns and which conscious focus and which memories keep them stuck in old loops. Which subconscious patterns and habits make them miserable. Which parts of their current world model are not working for them and help them actually transform the way they think about themselves, view themselves, feel themselves, the way they operate in the world on a day-to-day basis. That's psychotherapy. It is literally changing the software of the human mind.

Now there might be fake psychotherapists out there who don't know what they are doing and are limited to the effects of placebo in their practices. But that does not mean that one thing is the same as the other.

I can also see how there could be cases where a person receives a placebo, for some reason (the magic behind placebo) it makes them feel exceptionally well, and they use this push of energy to transform some part of their worldview on their own and so they keep some long-term effects of it. This doesn't either make one thing the same as the other, and it does not happen so often either.

<comment><USER25> It's not completely clear whether there are any psychotherapies that are better than placebos.

Though you have to be careful how you define your placebo.

One approach would be a sugar pill. But the patient would know that this is not psychotherapy. So it doesn't work as a proper placebo.

A slightly better example is a heartwarming chat with a high status individual who is not schooled in any psychotherapy. Say a random professor.

See eg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict)

<comment><USER26> You've linked to the dodo bird hypothesis, but the dodo bird hypothesis does NOT claim that all psychotherapy is placebo. It claims that all or nearly all established evidence-supported treatments given by trained professionals produce very similar outcomes.

If you read deeper in the page you linked on the subject, it goes on to the actual conclusion that the common factors of psychotherapy - empathy, positive regard, strategic alliance, and others - are predictive of psychotherapeutic outcome across therapies. In addition, it is shown that many key features of modern psychotherapies including awareness of one's thoughts and emotions are essentially universal therapeutic components.

In the book on the subject by Wampold and Imel, they found real and significant difference between therapists on their ability to produce outcome based on these common factors. So while modern therapeutic models may be indistinguishable in terms of outcome, modern therapists are not. And there IS such a thing as better vs worse therapy. And this is an ongoing research area.

<comment><USER25> I was alluding to these concerns.

To be more explicit: it's a bit of an issue of definition.

I was going by the rule of thumb that whatever your homeopath or acupuncturists would also do, would count as placebo from the point of view of psychotherapy.

And, yes, those people employ many of the same common factors. And different people have different amount of skills in employing those. (Or creating different outcomes in general.)

If you want to call that placebo or not, is up to you.

There's also very interesting research into what makes effective placebos, and how eg cultural context influences that.

From what I've read (sham) surgery is more effective than an injection which is more effective than a pill. And more expensive placebos are more effective than cheaper ones.

If memory serves right, whether big or small pills have a bigger effect depended on country. (The hypothesis was that some cultures believed smaller pills are more highly concentrated, whereas others believed bigger is better.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Human touch does trigger positive neurochemical cascades. We might understand how all this works much better in the future, perhaps we big improvements in in vivo imaging of biological processes. Maybe some future version of CARS microscopy that does not fry the cell; better theory on multi-scale processes in human biology; and much better fMRI than what we have now.

<comment><USER28> I think "can" is better than "does trigger" here. I know I am not alone in genuinely disliking physical contact with anyone at all, including strangers, friends, parents, pretty much anyone other than my wife.

I put up with it for ease of social pleasantries, but otherwise am much more comfortable not touching than touching. Massages are at best pointless and at worst counterproductive for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been attuned to level 2 reiki. I've also received it a few times both in person and from a distance. And stone me, but I felt stuff every time. The first time I had it from a master on my crown it was like something pouring down through my body. It felt electrical and great.

I've no idea how the distance stuff works, although I've been told how to do it. Well, I've been given explanations about the 'all-is-one, time and space is an illusion' stuff, but I'm still waiting on that experience for myself. But now my mind is well and truly open.

<comment><USER30> If you can reliably distinguish whether the distant practitioner is doing anything to you or not, you should be able to get yourself a million dollars [0].

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge)

<comment><USER19> It's entirely possible that he can still hear the distant practitioner, and that the practitioner's words are enough to trigger the effect.

If it even works without hearing the distant practitioner, then yes, go win that million dollars.

<comment><USER30> True. By "distant" I got the impression that the practitioner is in another building or even another city, but that might not be the case.

<comment><USER19> It might well be the case, but we've got telephones and even more advanced communication tech these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Reiki can't possibly work, so why does it?

It doesn't. Intro section on Wikipedia [0] already lists five studies that concluded it doesn't work: "Clinical research does not show reiki to be effective as a treatment for any medical condition, including cancer,[4][5] diabetic neuropathy,[6] or anxiety and depression,[7] therefore it should not replace conventional medical treatment. There is no proof of the effectiveness of reiki therapy compared to placebo. Studies reporting positive effects have had methodological flaws.[2]"

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reiki&oldid=94822...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reiki&oldid=948223368)

[2] Lee, MS; Pittler, MH; Ernst, E (2008). "Effects of reiki in clinical practice: A systematic review of randomised clinical trials". International Journal of Clinical Practice (Systematic Review). 62 (6): 947–54. doi:10.1111/j.1742-1241.2008.01729.x. PMID 18410352. "Most trials suffered from methodological flaws such as small sample size, inadequate study design and poor reporting....In conclusion, the evidence is insufficient to suggest that reiki is an effective treatment for any condition. Therefore the value of reiki remains unproven."

[4] Russell J; Rovere A, eds. (2009). "Reiki". American Cancer Society Complete Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Therapies (2nd ed.). American Cancer Society. pp. 243–45. ISBN 9780944235713.

[5] "Reiki | Complementary and alternative therapy | Cancer Research UK". about-cancer.cancerresearchuk.org. Retrieved 2020-02-12.

[6] Bril, V; England, J; Franklin, GM; Backonja, M; et al. (2011). "Evidence- based guideline: Treatment of painful diabetic neuropathy: Report of the American Academy of Neurology, the American Association of Neuromuscular and Electrodiagnostic Medicine, and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation" (PDF). Neurology. 76 (20): 1758–65. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182166ebe. PMC 3100130. PMID 21482920.

[7] Joyce, Janine; Herbison, G Peter (2007-10-17), "Reiki treatment for psychological symptoms", in The Cochrane Collaboration (ed.), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. CD006833, doi:10.1002/14651858.cd006833

<comment><USER32> An interesting point TFA makes is that it doesn't have to beat placebo: the placebo effect itself provides therapeutic benefit!

> Ted Kaptchuk, a Harvard Medical School professor and one of the lead > researchers, theorizes that the placebo effect is, in the words of the Times > article, "a biological response to an act of caring; that somehow the > encounter itself calls forth healing and that the more intense and focused > it is, the more healing it evokes."

I dug up an article in which he explores this further and it's an angle I haven't considered before [1]:

> More recently, however, experts have concluded that reacting to a placebo is > not proof that a certain treatment doesn't work, but rather that another, > non-pharmacological mechanism may be present.

> How placebos work is still not quite understood, but it involves a complex > neurobiological reaction that includes everything from increases in feel- > good neurotransmitters, like endorphins and dopamine, to greater activity in > certain brain regions linked to moods, emotional reactions, and self- > awareness. All of it can have therapeutic benefit. "The placebo effect is a > way for your brain to tell the body what it needs to feel better," says > Kaptchuk.

> But placebos are not all about releasing brainpower. You also need the > ritual of treatment. [...] You receive all kinds of exotic pills and undergo > strange procedures. All this can have a profound impact on how the body > perceives symptoms because you feel you are getting attention and care."

If reiki can evoke this effect consistently, reliably and cheaply at scale (and this is believable, because according to TFA, the lot of the practice is just physical touch in ways that the body might perceive as caring?) - <USER2> there actually is value in it?

[1] [https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of- th...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo- effect)

<comment><USER33> Yeah, but how does placebo actually work? :D

If it works, why don't we use it for our benefit?

<comment><USER34> > ...but how does placebo actually work?

Whatever the mechanism factors turn out to be, I would not be at all surprised if it involves areas of study that clinical studies currently dismiss as unimportant.

> If it works, why don't we use it for our benefit?

Currently difficult to control outcomes because we understand so little of it, and a possibility that it would depress the financial results of a lot of current US "medical/healthcare industry" stakeholders if it turns out for example, having a doting Israeli grandmother dropping by each day with steaming hot matzo ball soup with some unmentionable ingredient that still tastes bitter as hell, a handful of friends calling with jokes, and a couple hours a day in the sauna works cheaper and just as well as a $200 antiviral prescription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm fascinated that, as far as I can tell, there's a lot of disagreement here about whether this is "mumbo jumbo" or not, when nobody is addressing the major aspect that differentiates reiki from other non-traditional medicines -- which is that it is based on _touch_.

We're social animals. I've never had reiki but I have spent some time in hospitals. You know what you NEVER get in a hospital? Someone touching you in a way that isn't associated with a (usually painful) medical procedure. There is literally no aspect of hospital life that accommodates human sociality. So the idea that someone comes in to your hospital room and touches you gently and that makes you feel better? OF COURSE it makes you feel better. In the same way that therapy dogs make you feel better. It's social touch. It's pleasant. It addresses an incredibly deep-seated need in the human psyche, one that if it is not met eventually results in - if nothing else - <USER3> mental health issues.

So it seems to me that the right scientific study to do here is not whether reiki improves on (say) chemotherapy outcomes; it's whether any sort of touch therapy, including therapy animals or just regular hugs from family, results in improved outcomes.

<comment><USER20> Only it is not based on touch. The "Reiki Master" quoted in the article says it works just as well at a distance. He also claims that it works on animals and plants and that many cats can perform Reiki on their owners.

<comment><USER35> So I'm pretty skeptical of the distance aspect and the plant aspect. I'm actually _not_ skeptical of the "animals" claim.

Cats cuddle with you. They enjoy being petted. So do dogs. And so do humans! I have a dog whose primary pleasure in life is snuggling up to you on the couch and getting petted. This is not surprising; dogs, like humans, are social animals. And this is a symbiotic relationship. It's pretty well known that therapy dogs significantly reduce stress, including physical markers of stress such as blood pressure and cortisol levels.

<comment><USER20> I love animals and I agree that Dog Therapy is effective for the reasons you state. I fail to see what any of that has to to with Reiki and it's claims of tapping into the "Universal Source" and manipulation of "Healing Energy".

Hugs are also beneficial and cause documented positive chemical changes in our bodies. No imaginary mystical forces or increased "vibrations" needed.

<comment><USER36> >Hugs are also beneficial and cause documented positive chemical changes in our bodies. No imaginary mystical forces or increased "vibrations" needed.

It's just a different theoretical framework for describing an observed phenomenon. Even if it's not technically correct, it can still be a good enough cognitive heuristic to help people intuit what's happening or how to influence it.

Think about it kind of like Newtonian mechanics, which are also not quite right but make predictions that are generally close enough for most of what we do in everyday life and much easier for people to work with intuitively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really there are only 2 positions here:

1\. All this spiritual mumbo-jumbo is a crock of shit

2\. It's real

While it's fashionable to think 1 is correct, it is just possible that 2 is in fact our reality. I mean quantum physics shows us the universe _is_ weird. Not bothering to try to find evidence of 2 and dismissing it out of hand is as counterproductive as people who blindly accept 2 with no evidence.

No doubt some of you are thinking of replying along the lines of 'well you should waste your life investigating whether an invisible spaghetti monster lives in the sky, or whether it's turtles all the way down, etc'. To those I'd say had there been several thousands of years worth of people recounting their own experiences of either a flying spaghetti monster or turtles all the way down I'd agree with you.

I see it as little different to the UFO stuff - mocked for years, but actually if you look into it there's probably something to it, based on the weight and volume of eyewitness reports. But it's just easier to not risk looking foolish and dismiss it out of hand instead of investigating it for yourself, isn't it?

<comment><USER19> There's a middle ground: the spiritual mumbo-jumbo is a crock of shit, but the treatment still works because of the touching, the patient taking time for this to relax, and maybe the patient believing that something is being done about their pain or other feelings of unease. It's possible that the theory is wrong but the practice still works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why? Easy - just phoning outpatients 2 days later helps with reported post- operative pain and adjustment. Its the human factor. We respond to touch and concern.

Note its not quite placebo - because it provokes actual physiological changes.

My local hospital has a Yoga class for seniors waiting for their Residency postings. Helps a lot to survive the stress. Nothing surprising about that either.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am enjoying the comment section here just as much as the article. Not many here will pull more comments than points. I cant see the word "Reiki" without hearing "URAMESHI!"

To me, most new-age medicine is an exercise in low grade mental programming. By forming and guiding behavior under close supervision, positive reinforcement helps to remake harmful neural short-circuits. By giving your treatment a name, a method, and a history, you are creating a corrective program that is then delicately implanted in the patient, then activated in the physical sessions. If coercive brainwashing and mind-control is black magic, what these people and other similar healers do can best be called white magic. Braincleaning. In the article, they especially note that these treatments are effective on problems that cannot be fixed with surgery or medicine, thus are almost totally in the mind. There is such a thing as psychosomatic illness, and the nervous system doesnt end at the spinal cord. Your muscles have a simple, low-level form of memory in the patterns of nerves and motor neurons, and this extends throughout the body. Sometimes these systems get badly imbalanced, and the body's failsafe mechanisms, the sympathetic, parasympathetic, lymphatic and immune systems cannot correct it. Rolfing, chiropractice, and massage techniques act physically on this system to reset muscles and nerves, putting them back into line. By combining a physical regime with psychological correction, you can clear the nervous system of stubborn low-grade problems.

True, in a double-blind experimental setup, it may be difficult or impossible to reproduce the results. This is because the results hinge on a relationship between patient and practitioner, the experimental setup tends to nullify the methods that this relationship advances on. Its programming, brainwashing, but to benefit the person; not just turning them into a cultist.

</comment><comment><USER39> The article asks:

> "Why do we have a problem accepting when somebody says, 'I feel better; that > helped'?"

And the answer is:

1\. Because they are often sent to say that by interested parties and maybe have their own biases (e.g. hoping the treatment to succeed, because that means their life will improve).

2\. Because the people who don't feel better don't typically go around telling you about it.

3\. Because feeling is subjective and fluctuates; and while it has its own significance, it is often independent of the state of underlying physiological conditions.

4\. Because of past (collective) experience with many kinds of supposed cures or treatments which ended up not helping, or marginally helping, or having detrimental effects which weren't taken into account.

</comment><comment><USER40> Or for a cynical (but evidence based) rebuttal to this bullshit, have a look here - [https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/16/reiki-in-the- atla...](https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/16/reiki-in-the-atlantic/)

It's just another nonsense, unscientific, 'energy healing' pile of woo trying to get itself integrated into medicine.

</comment><comment><USER41> Does reiki work on animals? Say, a turtle with a heart condition. Or a worm that was accidentally cut in half with a spade. If so, then I might become a believer. If not, it's woo.

<comment><USER42> Does the turtle have stress or is it depressed, feeling isolated and alone? Does stroking a depressed dog make the dog feel better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Or it does not:

No, editors of The Atlantic, reiki does not work: [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-editors-of-the- atlantic-...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-editors-of-the-atlantic- reiki-does-not-work/)

</comment><comment><USER44> It's just a form of guided meditation where you focus your attention on the practitioner's touch, so it does exactly what meditation does (which is potentially relaxation, reduction in anxiety, reduction in pain perception, improvement of mental health).

The claims that it cures specific non-mental ailments are of course bullshit, but the meditation part is real, although you can get the same effect from any other meditative practice.

</comment><comment> ur-whale [https://archive.is/Li75A](https://archive.is/Li75A)

</comment><comment><USER45> People trying to control their emotions succeed in varying degrees. Unbeliviable, how is this even possible?

</comment><comment><USER46> I feel this is closely related to Therapeutic Touch. While these practices may be generated by a placebo affect, I would argue that there is a difference between feeling better and being better. Therapeutic touch was largely debunk by a 10 year with a simple experiment that blinded the practitioners as to whether they were applying their touch to a patient or not using a piece of cardboard [0]. The practitioners could not tell the difference. Interestingly, the author is the youngest person to publish a research article. Science based medicine has a nice response to this article as well [1]. [0] [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/187390](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/187390) [1] [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-editors-of-the- atlantic-...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-editors-of-the-atlantic- reiki-does-not-work/)

</comment><comment><USER47> > For 200 dollars, what is the Placebo effect?

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe there is a way to use this concept of reducing stress with a gesture without invoking supernatural gibberish.

I mean to me it seems totally plausible that having a person there that is trying to help you in and of itself can reduce stress. Also if they touch you, that seems like it could definitely reduce stress also.

Or just the psychological effect of knowing that there are people who care, that seems like it could have at least a minor lasting effect on stress.

The question is can that basic concept work without the mumbojumbo. Or could you sell it without talking about magical powers.

<comment><USER49> > The question is can that basic concept work without the mumbojumbo

I used to think like that too, but I'm more open that sometimes a story, any story, allegory can be helpful in many contexts, by creating an identity, an aesthetic quality of the thing; help us conceptualize it. Since this in particular is about psychological phenomenon, I think it perhaps shouldn't be discarded. The question would be (if the story is an important part of a working practice) how to keep the story from being confused with fact. I think that's achievable (treat it as a mythology, or something). I don't think anyone would defend the banning of telling stories to children or fiction movies.

<comment><USER50> Surely there's a way to believe something important and true with the right emotional valence. Consider the story I laid out in a nearby comment: "A competent, trusted person loves you and is laying hands on you in a kindly way to heal you. When this happened to our ancestors, they were in a safe position and their bodies needed healing; under these circumstances, there was no risk of further injury and no need to worry about other needs (because they will be attended to), which means the body should turn down its immune response and focus on healing. Evolution carried this lesson down into your body. I will be the competent, trusted person who loves you, and I will lay kindly hands on you, and your body will respond instinctively and heal."

It doesn't need to be any more (or less) magical than what happens in theatre. The actors do their best to live their roles, to do the things and feel the emotions their characters would feel, and they let the audience see it—perhaps playing it up a little, because the audience is tens of feet away. I believe there are at least some in the service industry that have a related "I'm playing a role, of one who is delighted to help my great customer, to the best of my ability" ethos.

<comment><USER49> I guess it could be analogous to watching say a circus (say Cirque du Soleil) presentation with a story and a presentation without a story -- one with just actors doing impressive stunts, the other with a narrative, clothings, a coherent aesthetic, but still centered on doing impressive stunts, movements, etc. The story-free might be interesting, some would feel there is something missing (I would), the stunts themselves not as remarkable as they could be.

There is always a story and an aesthetic -- if you chose to tell no story, you'll simply be clinging to the aesthetic of modern hospitals (with innocuous minimalist environments), hospital or casual clothing, etc. It just may not be sufficiently captivating, at least not for everyone.

At least it's worth research and experimentation instead of dismissal as "unscientific" or "woo woo".

To give other examples, imagine hospital clowns (hired for kids) without clown clothes or being identified as 'clowns', but rather 'entertainment therapists'. Possibly lame, just not the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The article states:

> _Various non-Western practices have become popular complements to > conventional medicine in the past few decades, chief among them yoga, > meditation, and acupuncture, all of which have been the subject of rigorous > scientific studies that have established and explained their effectiveness._

This is wrong as far as acupuncture is concerned. Wikipedia states:

 _Acupuncture has been researched extensively; as of 2013, there were almost 1,500 randomized controlled trials on PubMed with "acupuncture" in the title. The results of reviews of acupuncture's efficacy, however, have been inconclusive._

... and also ...:

 _A 2014 review in Nature Reviews Cancer found that "contrary to the claimed mechanism of redirecting the flow of qi through meridians, researchers usually find that it generally does not matter where the needles are inserted, how often (that is, no dose-response effect is observed), or even if needles are actually inserted._

</comment><comment><USER52> Tl;dr: placebos are great, we should use them more.

</comment><comment> Digit-Al I've read a small fraction of the comments here and just want to add my thoughts. Please bear in mind that I am ill educated, but well read, so have patchy knowledge at best.

The article stated that Reiki can have beneficial effects and has no harmful side effects, meaning that it can be useful as a supplement to conventional medicine. This seems reasonable to me.

Beyond that, we have all sorts of people making all sorts of claims about it in the comments here. The problem, as far as I'm concerned, is if you make a claim without a shred of evidence to back it up then you are practising religion, not science.

As far as I can tell, the best anyone can offer so far are flimsy hypotheses, with very few suggestions as to how to test them. And then they try to claim this as some actual truth.

Subtle energy? It may very well be, but you can't really offer a hypothesis and then claim it as fact.

I think people would be a little more open to these ideas if those proposing them were to be more honest and say "we have no actual idea how this works, but I'm working under the hypothesis that [x] and hope that someone can come up with some way to test if this is true at some point in the future".

There are some strong claims that patients that are given more "care" recover better than those who aren't. For example, I watched a really interesting program a while ago about using the placebo effect to help people with back problems. They took a large group of people who had ongoing back troubles and told them they were giving them a new medicine to help with back pain. Half were given the medicine and half were given the placebo, except they were all given the placebo because there was no new medicine. On top of that half out of each group were given very short, brusque, medical appointments (as we are normally used to these days) and half were given longer appointments with doctors that spent time talking to them and listening to them.

Despite everyone being given a placebo, some made really dramatic recoveries, and many made at least minor improvements. And those who were cared for more seemed to make better recoveries than those who were given short appointments.

There is so much about the placebo effect and how we can heal ourselves that we do not understand even in the slightest yet.

I could give you carrots mashed in rabbit urine and swear blind that it has been proven to cure headaches. If you reluctantly took it and your headache was gone half an hour later, well maybe it would have gone anyway, maybe it went because you believed me, and maybe I got lucky and carrots mashed in rabbit urine really does cure a headache. I know where my bet would be though. (Please don't try carrots mashed in rabbits urine, I'm not even sure it would be safe for human consumption.)

</comment><comment><USER53> My dad has spent almost all of his free time, for the last 40-50 yrs, as an amateur pseudo-scientist, including spiritism and syncretism, practicing a good subset of beliefs and rituals spliced from Christian, African and Asian religions.

He has been a part of different communities or groups at times (kardecists, candomblé and buddhists to name a few), as a teacher and practitioner (ie. "medium" and "doctor") but never did any of it for money (or power), afaik, but as a spiritually fulfilling hobby. Besides practicing things like issuing homeopathic treatments to the sick, having a very lively shrine at our different homes, reading and teaching at study sessions, and a hack-load of strange rituals, he also did plenty of charity and fundraisers for the needy in our different communities.

Now he's semi-retired and focus mostly on Reiki.

I grew up believing our home-equivalent of a "religion" (my mom is also a believer) to be the absolute and undeniable truth. It took me years to unlearn and today I'm quite the unattached, worldly person I've become.

After watching dozens of people benefit or suffer under these rituals, is that there IS more good in it than bad. In the case of Reiki specifically, it's the "science" of _comfort_. The amazing feeling of human proximity, human touch and humane social interaction is very energizing and therapeutical. Reiki is different from mindfulness and meditation (which my dad taught me when I was 7) but not unlike them, is tied to healing activities practiced since ancient times and has many psychological, or even evolutionary, explanations on where its benefits come from. But its science is not linked in any way to quantum physics or energy as such. There's just no way my dad is _actually_ sending me Reiki from 8000 miles away! He does try, though.

Today I accept their beliefs, as I accept Reiki, and my only gripe is how my parents judgement was, at times, completely impaired by their faith, as they use it as a substitute (not a complement) to real science, in particular, as a proxy for a visit to a doctor. Or an "Earth doctor" like my dad used to say. As they've aged, they've also tuned down their rhetoric as only "Earth doctors" can install pacemakers.

And that's the real damage Reiki, as many other treatments, inflicts: it can easily become a proxy therapy to real medicine and science, out of fear, money, conspiracies or plain dumbness. Maybe the way forward would be for (Western) science to embrace the study of spiritual therapies, so it can be understood and applied by the medical profession, which would help hinder obscurity and quackery. But I guess that's just what makes them appealing to so many people.

</comment><comment><USER54> It doesn't work, no more than placebo or straightforwards meditation does.

<comment><USER55> That is addressed in the article:

 _Skeptics are quick to point to the placebo effect: The body's capacity to heal itself after receiving only the simulated experience of medication or therapy is well documented. But precisely because that capacity is so well documented, reflexive dismissal of the placebo effect as "fake medicine" demands scrutiny—and is now receiving it. In late 2018, The New York Times Magazine reported on a group of scientists whose research suggests that responsiveness to placebos, rather than a mere trick of the mind, can be traced to a complex series of measurable physiological reactions in the body; certain genetic makeups in patients even correlate with greater placebo response._

I think the idea that we have a biological response to people showing they care about us is plausible. That would suggest it might also have a different/stronger effect than meditation. I would be very surprised if there was a measurable difference between "real" and theatrical Reiki, though.

<comment><USER56> I believe that _most_ discussions about the placebo effect are muddled by whether regression-to-the-mean effects are included or not. [1]

When one is comparing a treatment with a "placebo", it makes sense to include "regression-to-the-mean" effects, since you're obviously looking to do better than that with your treatment.

However, when people ask "What are the biological causes of the placebo effect?", they should really be excluding "regression-to-the-mean" effects since there's no causal link between the "placebo treatment" and the regression part of the outcome.

If one looks for a placebo effect and EXCLUDES regression-to-the-mean, the effect sizes tend to be small to nonexistent, which makes discussion about their physiological causes a lot more shaky.

[1] [http://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are- weak...](http://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak- regression-to-the-mean-is-the-main-reason-ineffective-treatments-appear-to- work/)

<comment><USER57> Your concern disappears if your method is to compare, on one hand, difference between treatment and nothing, and on the other hand, difference between placebo and nothing. To only compare treatment and placebo directly is of course a methodological error.

PS: By the way, I'd advocate to scrutinize the biological bases of the placebo effect, in order to 1/ use it instead of trying to ignore it 2/ predict accurately its effect and thus lighten a lot the burden of test plans (ideally the tests could not need anymore to be double blind -- would save lots of time and money)

<comment><USER56> my understanding (see references in linked page) is that when one does what you said and compare placebo to "nothing", almost the entire effect goes away.

<comment><USER20> How would you propose a blinded study will work to compare between a Placebo treatment and no treatment?

<comment><USER57> To compare placebo vs nothing (i.e. no placebo), you don't need the double- blind requirement. Because the group receiving nothing is not receiving the placebo, and thus does not (and should not) benefit from any illusion of having being treated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> placebo.

</comment><comment><USER59> Who cares? Honestly, stop giving a crap about what other people do to make themselves happy, just don't try it if you don't think it will work. If no one is getting hurt, one person leaves happier and one person leaves richer, then it's a win-win-win (win-win, plus a win for society as a whole).

<comment><USER60> A lot of people are scammed though by Shamans and the like. And often times they do not leave that much happier but emotionally dependant and sometimes even broke. I've seen it plenty of times and think it's absolutely immoral.

<comment><USER59> True, but that's not as common as the vast, vast majority of people who just spend a comfortable amount of money on these things and become happier for it. We need protection against those bad actors, perhaps, but there will always be scammers in any profession. I also think those scams are small-scale in comparison to the vast "scam" that modern medicine has become, for Americans at least. Sure, the shaman can take your life savings, but he cannot additionally stick you with loans for whatever amount he wants that you cannot discharge via any means whatsoever. At least you just stand to lose everything, not lose everything and then some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Western medicine is, IMHO, too averse to exploiting the very real, very powerful, placebo effect. To get a treatment approved you need to prove that it's not a placebo, which excludes, of course... effective placebos.

In India, for example, a lot of family doctors don't see their job as curing the disease, but as giving the patient a feeling of agency and control over their lives. Letting them feel like they're doing something. So when a patient comes to them, the feel that their job is to give them a pill, and a pill is what they will get. If they have a treatable condition they'll get a pill that treats the condition, otherwise they'll get a random herbal tincture or similar, something foul-tasting that gives the patient whatever relief the placebo effect can deliver.

<comment><USER62> No, clinical studies work by showing statistically significantly greater efficacy than the placebo (sham treatment) group. Placebo can be anything. Just as the treatment.

But it turns out that placebo is basically the measure of how much the patient believes in the treatment. And that correlates with price, attention of staff, length of treatment, etc.

<comment><USER19> That's exactly the point: new medicines are tested against a placebo rather than against no treatment at all, because the placebo does have an effect: the placebo effect. It is an effect, and it can be leveraged to make people feel better. Is that quackery? Or is that making people feel better?

<comment><USER62> The placebo effect is already exploited day by day in every hospital, clinic and small primary care physician office.

The problem is the whole marketing narrative of Big Pharma is bad makes people less susceptible to that placebo effect, because they want more. But instead of paying for simply more time with a real doctor they want something special.

People want magic so bad. They already want just one more test to make sure, just a pill to fix it, make it better, to make it go away, to manage it.

And sure, who could blame people we know all of this about DNA and virus spike proteins and MRSA and so on, but our treatment options are not fundamentally available at that level. We are still far from being able to whip up a vaccine just from a drop of covalescent blood. Or from just the RNA of a virus.

And people are very easy to fool into the narrative that there is something fundamentally different that actually works. Ancient Tibetian knowledge. Energy, chakra healing, whatever.

And nobody stops anyone from going to the FDA and showing how better their treatment is than a pill. Or how their treatment plus a pill works wonders.

Yet "alternative medicine" doesn't do this. Why? Because they don't want to spend money on that. They like it in the shadows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Magical thinking and placebo effect. I don't see any Reiki masters on the front line fighting COVID-19 because they know it has no real effect.

<comment><USER64> Actually, if you google, you'll see everyone from Chiropractors to acupuncturists to reiki practitioners claiming they can help. (The most outlandish claims are coming from the chiropractors!)

<comment><USER65> Fun fact: at least in the United States, chiropractors do not have medical degrees and so they are not licensed doctors.

<comment><USER66> Yet it is still somehow legal for them to market themselves as "Dr. $NAME". It's baffling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Garbage :-(

Believe in Placebo believe in Nocebo as well.

Where do you draw the line? I draw it at unscientific.

What do you think has all this shit done for our society?

Reike, antivax, flat Earth, akkupunkture, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, fake news.

It's all bullshit. If you as a human just believe in stuff without effidence you are dangerous.

Climate change? Oh no someone told me it's a hoax to get us to buy solar power. How do you argument with those people? You can't.

<comment><USER68> Some people have a psychological condition they get sick from things they _think_ makes them sick, like wireless and 5G. I don't judge the merits, but it can be anything and sometimes rooted in the psychological makeup.

Your failure to argument is just a failure to listen.

<comment><USER67> I did mention the Nocebo effect.

And I do think talking to others or having professional help to a normal psychologist is absolutely okay, the right thing / a good thing.

<comment><USER68> Yes, my last point was meant generally (can't edit anymore). Ie. we often tend to try to convince others with long-winded arguments, while what may be needed is just listening and learning different perspectives. It rarely works well that you can actually "convert" people. When that succeeds, the ground for critical thinking tend to get even worse, ie. in closed or cult-like groups!

More important than the positions we take, is the critical introspective thinking that leads us to along the way (free thinking).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Quantum physics "observer effect" influencing the body molecules to improve the health..simple

</comment><comment><USER70> It can possibly work, if you open your mind to more then what's possible in the materialist scientific viewpoint.

<comment><USER71> I don't know what a "materialist scientific viewpoint" is, but I'm not sure how one would seek to understand the world from other than a scientific viewpoint. You'd just be guessing based on intuition. If there's something that's real, it should be possible to investigate it in a scientific manner. For example, you could imagine a study comparing the effects of a real Reiki session to a fake one performed by an actor with no Reiki training. Depending on the results, that might give scientific evidence (not definitive proof, of course) suggesting either that there is a not-yet-understood element to the Reiki practice that does have a real effect, or that the effects are tangential, perhaps due to relaxation, placebo effect, or endorphins. Either way, further studies could be designed to delve further into understanding. That's science.

<comment><USER72> I agree with you (and upvoted).

However wish to point out that, if the study gave a clear result, great you have something to work with, but if it gave a negative result, that wouldn't prove Reiki per se doesn't work.

Instead it would prove that _Reiki training is not necessary_ to obtain the same outcome in this setting. Which would also be great as something to work with.

But because of logical possibilities like "actors perfoming the actions they are told to do automatically draw on natural Reiki ability that we all have" (among others), it would be incorrect to rule out Reiki itself from a result like that without a much tighter definition of what is being ruled out.

(And people would likely argue over such definitions and talk past one another while doing so.)

Generally: Proving negatives is hard, and requires us to describe carefully what we're really proving, which is invariably narrower than we would like (non-generalisability of negatives).

That's one of the difficulties with studying this sort of thing in a genuinely scientific way.

<comment><USER71> Yes, I totally agree with the challenges you describe. And certainly, there are always going to be further avenues of study, whatever the result. For instance, I'm certainly not a Reiki expert, but my understanding is that chakras play a role. One could perhaps narrow the study I described above by having one practitioner intentionally misplace the chakras, while keeping everything else constant, to study specifically whether those locations are indeed meaningful.

If you wanted, you could also approach studying it from another direction, and try to measure the transfer of energy that supposedly occurs. There would be various ways to go about that. Obviously I seriously doubt that a rigorous experiment would actually show an energy transfer from the practitioner, but if it did, and no flaws could be found in the measurement techniques, that would be pretty interesting!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Empiricism asserts that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. Skeptics have the audacity to deny the experience of others, relying only upon that which is measurable by an external apparatus. I hear people describe things as "not scientific" which amounts to willful ignorance- the opposite of science. Hard science doesn't assert there are human 5 senses; it merely demonstrates that there are 5(ish) taxonomies for which measurement is currently feasible.

Taking a position as a denier means one is essentially unwilling to expend the energy requisite to study a phenomenon. In our infinitely complex plane we inhabit, that is a valid strategy, given the finite energy that one can expend during their lifetime (something on the order of 16,500 Kw/h). Passively denying a subject is a low energy task, and only risks the opportunity cost of non-participation of something beneficial or of avoiding harm. Actively denying a subject is expensive. Denying climate change, or a spherical Earth, or the existence of Boston, MA, USA takes tremendous mental gymnastics, and sometimes profound time and physical resources.

My own experience with Reiki is limited, but memorable. I was standing in the 4th floor of an office near Pioneer Square in Seattle, chatting with a colleague. He told me that outside of development work, he practices Reiki. I had questions for him about it, but he insisted it was easier to show than tell. He placed his hand on my head and I felt powerful change in my state of mind and a sensation I haven't really experienced before or since. It was like... "wow" \- then off to play ping-pong. It certainly gave me a wider aperture on what this life can offer, but I haven't chosen to pursue Reiki in any further depth.

You, from afar without knowing me at all, can feel free to label my experience as placebo, say I'm irrational, or deny that others could have a similar experience. Just know that as you're doing so, you're rejecting empiricism and the essence of science- which is to have more questions than answers.

</comment><comment><USER74> I've studied this and made a throwaway since wow something I know on HN: It works like aspirin works, or other temporary fixes that get chemically flushed. But no I'm not gonna get all nerdy for you. google.com if you're actually interested, not just looking for shallow socializing

Touch lifts our spirits by instigating chemical change in our body.

It's like saying ow or fuck in surprise, which has been shown to help us process a rising action in our system.

We can manually hold muscles and create issues in our body. It's not a shock to find people with issues from years of muscle tension they didn't realize was there.

When you're doing Reiki it's ok to process and we emotionally do

What a shock in an uptight Puritan culture that's all about how correct or theories and work are, some old school caveman niceness makes us feel better in a real way.

<comment><USER75> If you have studied this then you should use your usual identity with its established credibility to state your views. State them honestly and you will be treated honestly, is my experience of HN.

I don't believe in Reiki or stuff like this in general though I do appreciate the placebo effect and think that personal interaction has a benefit which is difficult to measure. If people wish to be spiritual then that may be good for them but that doesn't mean that spirits exist or have any measurable effect on the physical world. However I had a partner some years ago who was Reiki trained and did very much believe in it so as a result I have experienced Reiki and found that the effects were not clearly undetectable. For instance, though my partner did not touch me at all during sessions, I could feel the same things that I was being told. I am specifically referring to the 'energy flow' which 'channels itself to the most needed area' which I could feel the heat of this burning in the same area that my partner told me was problematic which was all around my shoulder and collar bone. Interestingly, about six months later I had a problem with a dislocated clavicle for no apparent reason (just woke up like it) though I had no treatment for this and have had no further issues for 20 years.

Anyway, apparently the person who started ('discovered') the modern Reiki movement found that his power to heal was not valued in general so he formulated the modern system where you must pay a master to be advanced through the levels (I forget but I think there are three levels) and stated that this should be an increasingly significant payment and those who are activated like this should not give Reiki for free. Now, this whole thing sounds so much like a multi-level marketing scam it is unreal but at least my partner was not involved in this aspect, had been given the training and activation for free by a buddhist monk and did not believe in charging for treatments.</comment></comment>


How to Prevent Coding "Heroes" from Destroying the Team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/thoughts-on-software-development-heroes-5ec656c2e31a <comment><USER2> The hatred the normals have for standout talent or the individual willing to put in extra effort is always astonishing to me.

While the no assholes rule should reign supreme, organizations need to realize there are linchpins holding stuff together. "Work smarter" is a familiar refrain from management types that don't understand or appreciate the work at hand.

When you've got a hero, thank him or her and figure out what they are holding together and then fix it. Then fix the next thing they hold together, and thank them along the way for doing the stuff no one else can/will.

<comment><AUTHOR> The extra effort usually hides a bigger issue. One should be able to do their job in their time, if they can't, then that means there's something wrong that needs to be fixed.

The whole idea of working smarter is to be able to do your job efficiently in order to use the rest of the time for other things, even if that also involves coding (e.g. open-source)</comment></comment>


How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in-math <comment><USER2> > And indeed, it's easier for teachers to induce students to discuss a > mathematical subject (which, if done properly, can do much to help promote > understanding) than it is for that teacher to tediously grade math homework.

It's much easier to give rote problems and grade them mindlessly because it doesn't require you to engage the students in any way. Moreover, engaging your students requires you to actually _know_ the mathematics more deeply than a textbook, and most high school math teachers don't come close to this.

> ..., someone who dances daily with triple integrals, Fourier transforms, and > that crown jewel of mathematics, Euler's equation

I've met scores of engineers who can "dance" with triple integrals, and yet are still terrible at formulating or understanding the most basic of mathematical claims. But what do they do in their jobs? They certainly don't compute integrals all day.

Being good at mathematics requires practice, as does every pursuit, nobody is contending that. But what this author (and most critics of Common Core) don't understand is that knowledge of mathematical facts and rote symbolic manipulation skills is not equivalent to skill at mathematics. We do not teach our students mathematics so they can swim in triple integrals. We teach them mathematics to develop analytical minds. Rote computation does not do this, and thank goodness the standards writers are finally starting to acknowledge that.

<comment><USER3> "'ve met scores of engineers who can "dance" with triple integrals, and yet are still terrible at formulating or understanding the most basic of mathematical claims. But what do they do in their jobs? They certainly don't compute integrals all day."

scores eh?

<comment><USER2> between tens and hundreds?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8402859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8402859)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's just a damn teaser. :-( "The full article appears in the Fall 2014 Nautilus Quarterly. Subscribe today!"

<comment><USER6> How fucking annoying! :S</comment></comment>


Ask HN: iPhone Development Resources - <AUTHOR>

I've got a couple of applications I plan to build for the iPhone.  (I mainly plan to use them myself; diet/caffeine tracker and the like.)
However, I don't know of any good resources available for iPhone development.  All the books I've found deal with Jailbroken iPhones, not the newer 3G.  Can anyone here recommend some sites, or even better, some print books that will still be relevant in the 3G world?
Thanks for your time! <comment><USER3> I've been very impressed with the Apple documentation in the SDK. The included applications cover a lot of ground in the UI, and thanks to the speed of the development tools, it's easy to code and learn a step at a time.

I've had a fun few hours this afternoon building a very simple image processing app that uses custom table view cells as a way to show each step of the process.

The foregoing said, there are other materials coming out, but I believe that the NDA surrounding the SDK is holding these up.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are no books available yet for the iPhone SDK, as it is still under NDA (why, I have no idea!)

That said, when you download the SDK, you receive a lot of good documentation direct from Apple - tutorials, programming guides, API references etc. It's a bit more work then just picking up a book, but it's not bad.

There is probably one book from the Mac world that is worth looking at - <USER2> forget the title, but it's written by Aaron Hillegass - everyone just calls it the Hillegass book... The first half of that book just teaches you basic Cocoa patterns, that are every bit as applicable in the iPhone world as they are in the Mac world. Once you have got those basics nailed down, the Apple documentation does become a bit easier to use.</comment>


Bitcoin's Biggest Problem: It's a Den of Thieves - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nyaruka.com/bitcoins-biggest-problem-dens-of-thieves <comment><USER3> The trust issue he encountered he mis-attributed to bitcoin when in fact the issue was with paypal and credit cards. Bitcoin is like cash. There's no "reversal" of charges. Once something has been paid for, it's public record and there's no one-sided taking it back. This is a good thing.

The use of Paypal and credit cards destroy this trust by allowing a paying party to reverse transactions so the payee gets nothing. It's empowering a third party to arbitrarily negate charges.

Bitcoin is no more a "den of thieves" than a cash-based society, which most of the world was until recently. I'd argue that Credit Cards and PayPal are much more a den of thieves by abusing their trust to cause no end of issues for people receiving payments.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are absolutely right in that it is exactly like cash, and for transactions that are exactly like cash I think Bitcoin is great. But how much commerce is done online now? How big is Amazon.com? How many other online merchants exist?

If Bitcoin's ambitions are only to replace physical cash transactions, then sure, it works. (and that's no small success!) But if we are talking any kind of online transaction with delayed gratification, then trust is required, as is a recourse when things go wrong.

<comment><USER4> Bitcoin is something basic and should not be taken for more. What banks and other services do nowadays is something far more complex, including leveraging trust in a way or another. These kind of services can be built on top of BitCoin. Their business models won't be equivalent in all aspects with what we have now in the current system, but there is enough room and potential for such services to exist/run covering needs. It will be just a better system regarding the corruptible nature, because there won't be an central authority with whom to strike deals under the table and get empowered to "be a necessary evil".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My main problems with Bitcoin:

1\. I don't deeply understand the maths behind it.

2\. I don't know how vulnerable the entire Bitcoin infrastructure is to hacking, allowing someone to generate fake Bitcoins.

3\. There seems to be no way to securely store BC's.

4\. There is no governing body to resolve disputes or to enforce rules. (Yes I realize that to some extent this is also a strength)

5\. It is the Wild West. There is no rule of law and the value of the Bitcoins are purely subjective. Better be wearing your Titanium Super Pants when "investing" in BC's.

<comment><USER6> > 3\. There seems to be no way to securely store BC's.

There is. You can print out the private key and lock it away in a safe.

<comment><USER7> And ideally the private key would be generated from an permanently offline machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "This has some very neat advantages, the largest being that no one entity controls Bitcoin, instead it is a community all agreeing to use a currency with particular rules, with some clever algorithms keeping everybody honest. No single government, much less corporation, can dictate what happens to Bitcoins."

\- I'm not sure about the construct of your argument. It appears that this is indeed the biggest disadvantage with Bitcoin, not an advantage. The very thing holding back adoption of Bitcoin is this sense that there is no single entity that can ensure the offering functions as hoped.

I wonder if Bitcoin isn't the Napster and somewhere out there is a Steve Jobs ready to launch an iTunes version.....

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe advantage is the wrong word, maybe it is just what makes Bitcoin even possible.

Centralized digital currencies (eGold?) have been around, but their problem is twofold in that they are more vulnerable to single points of attack and more importantly, can be shut down by governments.

I don't know if there have been any real efforts yet to crack down on Bitcoin but it seems well positioned to survive such an attempt.

<comment><USER8> Yes, maybe it's "Bitcoin has some very unique characteristics that are either it's biggest advantages or drawbacks, depending on your point of view" Full disclosure. I work for a payments startup. We have a tug of war around Bitcoin. We're fascinated by it's potential but also fear tying our brand too closely to it as it seems to receive bad press around something every 90 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm very interested in trading/investing in bitcoins but I don't have confidence in any of the markets. Every few months there is another story about an exchange getting hacked and people on the site losing their coins.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be largely solved now. There are numerous digital wallets that do client side encryption, so even if they are hacked, your funds should be safe.

Two that I looked at were <https://www.strongcoin.com> and <https://www.blockchain.info>, the latter winning out after some test driving, just because it is larger and has a nice Android client.

<comment><USER10> Until they get hacked, and if history is any guide, they _will_ get hacked.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose there is the possibility of a hacker changing their actual content so that things AREN'T done client side, and therefore being able to decrypt the keys. In that case any user who used their site with that malicious code would be compromised.

That is a very real threat, I grant you that, but it is a hell of a lot better than what the state of the art was a year ago when a hacker got everybody's information once they got root.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> BitCoin isn't a payments infrastructure. Rather, it's a set of primitives over which you can create one.

The same can be said of git w/r/t source code control systems.

</comment><comment><USER12> [sorry; digression]

what is it about current sites that completely breaks text selection? is it something to do with web fonts? is it a bug in chrome (linux)?

for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read it. i've noticed that recently on many sites - this one included - i either fail to select anything, or select an area of the screen that is only vaguely connected to the text layout.

i'm pretty sure this isn't click interception. is anyone else seeing this? i guess i should poke around and see if i can find a bug report....

[edit: this seems to be the same thing - [http://css- tricks.com/forums/discussion/14750/text-selection...](http://css- tricks.com/forums/discussion/14750/text-selection-bug-at-chrome/p1)]

[edit2: i looked at chrome's bug list and there are hundreds of text selection bugs. i can't work out if this particular one is known or not.]

<comment><USER13> > for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read > it.

I have the same condition, selectitis. Drives the people around me mad when I'm clicking loads and I don't even notice. And websites that do things on select like pop up a definition or search box are really irritating to me.

<comment><USER14> It's called compulsive highlighter:

[https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&...](https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=compulsive+highlighter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "At its roots, Bitcoin is based on some rather clever mathematics, ironically the same primitives that keep our credit cards secure when buying things online." What is he talking about? SSL? What about credit cards is encrypted?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, SSL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Trust is a big problem for any peer to peer situation. eBay, Airbnb, and Paypal all had to figure out ways to jumpstart trust in their communities - <USER2> Bitcoin can do the same, then the potential is huge.

<comment><USER17> > if Bitcoin can do the same

You assign agency where there is no entity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> hackernews.org?

<comment><AUTHOR> Jeez, what the hell is wrong with me? Not enough coffee apparently. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Truthfully, I have purchased about 4-5 things with bitcoins, both digital and physical products, and got stiffed EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Yeah, go ahead and downvote me, but it's the truth.

<comment><USER20> Fool me once, shame on you..

Fool me five times?

<comment><USER19> I was trying to unload my bitcoins and found various vendors to spend it on. Not so weird.</comment></comment></comment>


Energy first as UK successfully transmits data via national electricity grid - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/11/energy-first-as-uk-successfully-transmits-data-via-national-electricity-grid <comment><USER2> Why though, isn't it an OK assumption that anyone who can afford solar panels or whatever buys internet access before that?

</comment><comment><USER3> Maxwell's demon doing somersaults.</comment>