[gklitz]

> with no seeming explanation

Oddly though every such thing that “defies explanation” also defies being reproducible in controlled experiments.

That’s the thing a about non scientific stuff like this. If it actually worked it would literally just be science and we would be able to reproduce it.

If you buy a magic moon rock that lets you only roll 6’s on dice, you would equally be left feeling that the 1/6 of the time that it worked was proof enough to you that it was actually true, because you bought yourself a bias along side the useless rock.

Same is true a lot with things like yoga for anything outside the Pilates component, it only “works” if you dedicate enough time and money to it, at which point you’re just biased because you don’t want to feel you’ve wasted your time and money. Sure 1/20 might find that it “cured” their illness, but only if that’s the rate of improvement in a control group as well.

[JohnMakin]

There actually has been some science done on the monks in the example I am talking about, particularly their ability to control their body temperature in a controlled setting, and the conclusion was that they can, but there was some skepticism as to what precisely was going on: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/04/meditation-ch...

skepticism is healthy but if you discard things out of bias immediately without looking further, you’re kind of practicing the same kind of ignorance that leads to these types of superstitions.

[nuc1e0n]

Another factor is a poor understanding of selection bias and statistics can skew expectations as well. Mentalists like Darren Brown make use of this for their stage shows.

[trilbyglens]

I think only very simple mechanisms can be fully described and reproduced by modern methods. Is it not too hard to image that our grasp on reality is limited, and that the tools and language we possess right nowight simply not be up to the task? Why be so fast to dismiss things that are not currently reproducible? I bet if you took 100 people you'd have a hard time reproducing an Olympic athlete even if all 100 were subjected to the same fitness regimen. But we know Olympic athletes exist. Maybe you should also be skeptical of your skepticism.

[vacuity]

Also, we know placebos exist and in fact are expected to exist in medical trials, but...how? Why? Can we control this? Evidently we're seeing something, and we've incorporated it into scientific understanding, but only at a high level so far.