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Comment by bluntfang | Hacker News Reader

Oh gosh can you grow up and read between the lines and refrain from ad hominem arguments? OP is saying that exercise is important for a healthy body and mind. It's true and we all know it.

Do I believe in Qi Gong woo woo? No, but I do know that Qi Gong is a physical practice that can make you more aware of your body and how it feels by sheer mindfulness, just like yoga, running, hiking, etc.

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Being right for wrong reasons is still a bad thing, see the recent article about gettier cases. Eg. if you see a cardboard cutout cow in the field and think that is a cow, you are wrong even if there is an actual cow behind the cutout. This is not a mere epistemic nitpicking, it is a question of whether your process of arriving to conclusions can give you right answers in other applicable cases.

So calling out woo is worth it even when it happens to lead to conclusions you agree with for other reasons.

All of science is right for the wrong reasons. Our models are wrong. Just by decreasing degrees. Science will never be "true" in the strictest sense. Looking at it otherwise is a flawed viewpoint that is perpetuating post-modernism.

Sure, I didn't mean to imply one can be absolutely right. But willfully choosing more wrong model and not looking to improve it is, well, more wrong.

I don't think I agree. If a model is known to be largely false but in certain situations it provides good enough results and is easy to work with, that model will continue to get used until a better one replaces it. It's the classic problem undergrads have with Physics I vs. Physics II where the second declares all of Physics I false. Really, it's that Physics II is more accurate under more conditions, but that doesn't make what's learned in Physics I useless.

There is a small step from physics I to physics II, accuracy wise. There is a huge step between physics I and astrology, or basic anatomy and energy meridians. To the point of one of those method from each pair not being useful even in limited specific circumstances.

I don't disagree with your points mind you, I'm making a distinction between inaccurate methods that work in their own limited domain with limited accuracy (that is all we have, I agree) and not even wrong methods that sometimes work by accident but don't generalize even within their own stated limits.

> OP is saying that exercise is important for a healthy body and mind

Well, they're also saying there exist magic 'energies' that can be 'rebalanced' to fix problems such as 'anxiety, mental imbalances, neurosis etc.' Personal attacks aren't warranted, but lambasting such medieval silliness surely is here? What next? Chakras? Magic homeopathic waters?

Its not magic. Just an aspect and extension of your physical body. All of chinese acupuncture is based on the same principles, which is thousands of years old and a reputable system of medicine.

I am not claiming god powers, just that your body is a complex system that can be finely tuned with some attention and the proper tools. How much control do you have over your body and your mind? How much control do you have over your computer? It probably took decades of attention and the right tools to develop a high degree of skill to be able to get the computer to do what you want. The same can be said for the human body, which is infinitely more complex if you pay attention to it.

So if it's not magic, what is the 'energy' whereof you speak?

[Edit: that question's a tad rhetorical. Qi is the epitome of a pre/anti-scientific 'magical' concept]

a metaphor for something we don't understand.

Phlogiston, God, chakras, qi etc aren't metaphors - they're (quite literal) concepts from discarded prescientific ontologies. As far as we know (which isn't everything, but it's all we've got for now) they have no referents.

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