Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

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I mentioned in a parallel comment that I had similar experiences, so I'll jump in until the other commenter does. And to keep spirits cooler, I'll mention my experiences in martial arts. I gained my black belt in Aikido in a wonderful dojo, wonderful teachers, doing many activities together otherwise. I found a few lifetime friends there and love as well, so it was definitely more than "training", it was a real community. Yet I'm not going there anymore for a dozen years already. The entire teaching is based on life energies and ki flows which... just weren't there for me. I was able to progress nicely also without them - faking them to be more honest, I could have been continued growing in the technique, but what was the point continuing something I don't believe in? What was the point in rebelling and showing them how simple sportmanship gets the same peace of mind, does the same precision, builds the same attitude towards "martial" and life in general? People are good if they choose the good, and not everybody needs the supernatural element in order to stay good. And I don't mean a fear of supernatural punishment, but in my Aikido case, a belief in supernatural and benevolent support.

I read a book by Eckhart Tolle that gave me two takeaways. The first was that the book was full of nonsense. The second was that it was clear why this nonsense was so effective for people.

What are the downsides to suspending scientific accuracy for the purposes of doing Aikido?

I did it for years for myself but at some point when you're supposed to tell your pupil to bend more forward to not obstruct the ki flow, you just can't bring yourself to do it anymore... you can't bear the dissonance anymore.

The same as with every other sport: injury. You don't want to risk injury by extrapolating a faulty training method from magical thinking. In my experience, the arts and systems geared more towards full-contact spars have way, way less Ki/Qi in them.

Hmm I definitely cannot say the training is faulty. You cultivate (in Aikido) exactly the harmony of movements which also without spiritual dimension can be understood and practiced in a very physical, efficient and safe way (as safe as martial arts go, duh). Whereas with krav maga for example there's nothing of this, not because ki is missing (it is) but because it seeks efficiency instead of beauty. Or maybe it's only me not able to find the right balanced system...

"All models are wrong, but some are useful"

> The entire teaching is based on life energies and ki flows which... just weren't there for me. I was able to progress nicely also without them - faking them to be more honest, I could have been continued growing in the technique, but what was the point continuing something I don't believe in?

I had a similar experience — in Kung fu and Buddhism.

Beliefs are a model of the world: just because a model isn’t phrased in terms of my core beliefs doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach me.

In the case of Kung fu and Buddhism, I don’t believe I would understand things as well as I do (physics, physiology, neurology) without having taken the time to understand what those other models were trying to express about the world.

To use an analogy: just because I have an irresolvable dependency conflict with a new piece of software doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach me about software and programming.

I think the question still stands: what's the point of staying in the versionthat doesn't match your core beliefs vs finding an equivalent that does?

Can you name an equivalent of Kung fu?

I can’t — so I found it necessary to dig into the old program and port the concepts.

I would argue that more people should do that, even when they don’t immediately understand the old model well enough to port.

Both in software and martial arts.

If my message came across as dismissing the ki let me reiterate: I used the model as a tool, it's based on generations of experimenting and I know it works for the practical goals. My issue is that it comes with an esoteric luggage in which I don't believe, yet I'm expected to pass further on. The tool wanted to be also the goal. I assume you can't teach kung fu without some buddhism (I suppose, I'm not a kung fu practitioner) so what is the way forward? Practice krav maga? Practice by yourself on a mountaintop? Neither of those help you much advancing in what you loved... but I'm diverting already too much from the OP. My point was, community is great, but if the spiritual dimension doesn't resonate I can't remain as true member.

I can’t tell you what to do with your life.

My solution to encountering outdated beliefs with great utility was to try and update them — to retell Kung fu (and Buddhism) in that new world view. Buddhism has a maxim to keep what’s useful and discard the rest.

What does “ki” mean in physics?

I think it’s more than esoteric luggage, but a class of physics equations which are nasty to write down because they’re complex differential equations — and the numerics don’t matter to the practice, just the behavior of the system.

So you give a name to that behavior and model it experimentally, describe it euphemistically, etc.

I get spending the time to learn multiple models and translate between them isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, though. Those people reasonably make different choices than I did.

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