Prometheus

It's a good question, very much maths related. I think you are confounding two slightly different questions. So let's assume the bee is point sized. The probability that it will land on any one specific point is zero, whether that point is covered in honey or not. The the chance it lands on any specific point covered in honey is the same it will land on any specific point on the un-honeyed area. Here we have two conditional probabilities: the chance it will land on a specific point given it lands somewhere honeyed and the chance it will land on a specific point given it lands somewhere un-honeyed. Both zero. This is different to asking what the chance is of the bee landing on honeyed versus un-honeyed places. We are no longer concerned with specific points but a sum of many points. The sum of all points covered in honey adds up to some area. We then assign a probability that the bee will land in that area - assigning greater probability to it landing on honeyed areas than un-honeyed areas as we know bees like sweet things. However, given it has landed somewhere honeyed one time, and given it has landed somewhere un-honeyed another time, the chances it landied on specific points is the same. Zero. This is a consequence of dealing with infinitesimals. Chance and probability are synonyms - at least i've not come across any distinction in probability texts. I'm not rigorous with my maths but hope that makes sense.

These are reviews and meta-analyses of randomised-controlled trials - considered the best evidence in healthcare research - of homoeopathy, all claiming beneficial health outcomes. 1.)Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homeopathy. Br Med J 1991; 302: 316–23. 2.) Linde K, Clausius N, Ramirez G, et al. Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials. Lancet 1997; 350: 834–43. 3.) Linde K, Scholz M, Ramirez G, et al. Impact of study quality on outcome in placebo controlled trials of homeopathy. J Clin Epidemiol 1999; 52: 631–6. 4.) Cucherat M, Haugh MC, Gooch M, Boissel JP. Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy – A meta-analysis of clinical trials. Eur J Clin Pharmacol 2000; 56: 27–33. There are literally hundreds of such articles. This systematic review claims that distant healing has broadly beneficial health outcomes - it mentions chi gong. 30. Astin JA, Harkness E, Ernst E. The efficacy of “distant healing”: A systematic review of randomized trials. Ann Intern Med. 2000;132:903–10 It was harder to find clinical research specifically on chi kung, but i found this. Also this one shows fair amount of evidence showing chi kung to have benefits on things like well-being, balance even blood pressure when compared to groups doing nothing - but when compared to normal gentle exercise there was no extra benefit. Most research on chi-kung focuses on it as simply an exercise regime which is not quite what you are claiming. So i looked for chi kung in relation to prolonging life in cancer. This review contains articles that purport to show increased life after chi-kung (and conventional treatment of course), though the review itself is unflattering for chi kung. From a reiki website after having mentioning some 'robust' studies with hard to find links/references so i won't bother chasing them up: Sound familiar? This one came under the heading of biofield therapies. I didn't read more than the abstract from most of these, what i want you to notice, and why i have given articles for different phenomenon, is that they all use the same 'scientific' language. The advocates for homoeopathy are just as enthusiastic as you using the vernacular of science to try to convince others. Your claims do not stand out.

You fail to convince me to spend my time to examine your claims. Why? Because there are hundreds if not thousands of people who sound exactly like you making all sorts of claims. "Yeah, but mine isn't some wishy washy theory - it's backed up with science" and "look at all the scientists that support my idea" and so on. Again borrowing from the climate science argument, there are a plethora of skeptics arguing that the science is on their side, or that such and such respected scientist is on their side and so global warming isn't true. Out of these hundreds i choose to investigate none because most are rubbish. Despite what you think, I don't have the time to investigate all of them, and the case you have so far put forward sounds no different to all the other 'yeah but mine is supported by science' ideas. Doesn't mean you're necessarily wrong, just that i judge it not worth my time. I'm not trying to convince you to stop looking into it, just telling you why i don't look into it. Be careful of using the 'people laughed at such and such person', it bears the hallmarks of crackpot arguments, from which i know you wish to disassociate. All the people you mentioned were proven correct as the evidence supported their ideas. If the evidence is on your side the truth will out.

Interesting. That's exactly what they said to me too. Deepak Chopra is a real medical doctor: an endocrinologist and Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Bit off topic, but you might like this paper. Let me know what you think. A reasonable question - one theists will often ask of 'too skeptical' atheists. For a great many things i do not have the time to look at the evidence myself and so i rely on the scientific consensus to inform my beliefs. Global warming is a good example - I trust the scientific consensus, though i cannot look at all the evidence. If there was a consensus that the phenomenon you describe were true, then i would believe. There are some issues i do not have to take on trust because i do have the time to look at the evidence myself, and in the future even acquire some evidence myself, but afterlife claims will never be one of them because i have learnt that there is a method for being comfortable with mortality.

Given the inevitable heat death of the universe , if not other ends to the human race, we will have to confront death at some point. Denial is certainly the coping mechanism of choice in the West, but whether it is the best one is another question. It is some people's job to usher the dying so there is a body of literature around the death process - though due to numerous difficulties in end-of-life research it is inherently poor quality evidence. Here we have discussion about the role of denial in palliative care. This one is interesting as it seems to suggest people with advanced breast cancer in denial live longer though are more anxious and alienated, while those who accept death have shorter lives with more positive moods. I say seems as i can't yet get hold of the full text to give it a proper read through. There are a plethora of people coming forward to say they have been tested by scientists. You can find a 'scientific' journal on just about anything. Someone even tried one for astrology. I won't look into your specific claims for two reasons. I can see nothing to distinguish your claims from hundreds of other 'scientific' claims. Also i have practised kung fu which included chi gong and nei gong. They gave me no reason to explore it further.

Who's denying what? This is Pascal's wager in another guise. There are many reasons people don't fall for this. One reason i do not take the wager, or watch your video, is that there are perhaps millions of people claiming to have various means of living forever or some such and if i chased every one i would become an old man not having lived at all.

It seems like wishful thinking to me as well, but good luck in your search. On a related note i would say that a religion, or any ideology, that propagates the idea of an afterlife does a grave disservice to humanity. It prevents us from truly addressing our fears and concerns around death making the whole process harder than it need be.

Sorry, I've lost the plot of this thread. Why are we talking about bioelectricity on a thread about fearing death?

It seems you are suggesting others keep an open mind to your ideas, while yourself not being open to other's ideas. I'm sure that's not what you meant. It's debatable how central belief is to Buddhism, but that is another discussion we could have elsewhere if you like. . Is it reasonable to surmise the main thrust of the argument for Synchronicity is incredulity? For instance, you quoted someone as saying: How many is too many? Has an attempt been made to quantify any of this? It might be fine to suggest that there are 'too many occurrences to be guesswork' as a hypothesis, but to jump straight to it as a conclusion seems over-enthusiastic. Without applying any maths we are simply waving our hands with you saying 'yes, there are too many to be coincidence', and myself saying 'no, there are not enough to be more than coincidence'.

Sounds like you need to revise your sleep patterns. Google sleep hygeine. Here's one. Find an outlet for your stress - exercise would be a good one.

If you think can change the fact of death then please try, but it is unlikely you will succeed in your lifetime: then you may benefit by developing the grace to accept with serenity your death. Accepting the inevitable is not the same as being limp. I didn't watch the video; what was the synopsis?

Do you you refer to the process of dying itself or what comes next, or the combination of the two?

Night terrors are definitely worse for the person sharing the bed. You are lucky. I wonder what the frequency and variation is for people having nightmares. As for my own dreams, i sometimes have complete dreams with a coherent beginning middle and end. I once had such a complete dream in which I fell asleep to have another complete dream then woke up to continue the original dream (which ended with a plane crash-landing). Another cool dream was being a fragment of a planet that had blown up, travelling the stars then seeing the earth and thinking i'll pay a visit.

I think you alluded to it: the multi-disciplinary approach. Something like the Crick Institute hopefully.

And thank Zeus they did. Whatever their motivations they have taken mankind forward with their thinking. I found this website, which though doesn't tackle the 'Achilles and the tortoise' paradox, it tackles similar ones. Together with the other chapters, it provides a good account of our understanding of infinity.

Don't know how rigorous was this study, nor if it translates from mice to men, but your disrupted sleep patterns might be doing even more harm than you thought.

Just an aside; i think Zeno offered his paradoxes to support the view taught by Parmenides that change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. His view was that what we perceived was an illusion.

It's quite possible to have a moronic idea without being a moron. I should know. We need to be wary of the self-fulfilling prophecy of labels.

Whether it makes sense in terms of global resource management is one question. Whether people would willingly choose to stop is quite another - eating meat is a large part of our culture. You would have to seriously contend with the notion of limiting people's freedom to eat what they like. I think it would meat a lot of resistance. The calorie comparison is quite interesting. Perhaps we need to reintroduce the idea of meat as being a luxury item (luxury items typically (stereo-typically?) being somehow more expensive). I've been thinking of reducing my meat intake for a while now - part of the reason is that most of the meat I consume is in ready-meals, and the enjoyment i get from it is virtually non-existent, so why consume all that energy and put an animal through all that just for mediocrity. Steak, however, is another question.

You can only do so much, then it is up to readers to put in some effort. It shouldn't be a passive process. Lazy reading surely facilitates lazy writing, as writers get away with ambiguity.

Here is my honest assessment of this debate. I'm too lazy, i mean busy, to look at the evidence for myself. Therefore i use proxy measures to help me decide. It has the feeling of climate science debates where a slew of information is presented making interpretation very difficult. Because i am more confident of the evidence on climate science i will prefer those who debate in a similar style to climate scientists and reject those who debate like climate denialists. At the moment i am erring on the side of pro GMO.

How about looking at the prevalence of sepsis in chemo patients with a source linked to poor footwear. Patients receive loads of information about avoiding possible infections, does this get missed?

Sepsis is the presence of SIRS plus a likely source of infection. Based on the information given alone we couldn't be sure whether SIRS is present. Even the second case isn't necessarily sepsis if the specified parameters aren't off (though they likely are). Inflammation is a normal response but if it's local to your larynx you're in trouble - it really depends on the situation. Bottom line, sepsis kills. A lot. I think maybe you're getting hung up on what are essentially arbitrary criteria when you seem to actually want to understand the pathophysiology. If the latter is the case, focus on learning immunology perhaps, the definitions of SIRS/sepsis are only really useful if you are a clinician.

There is this technology, though it's not being used for quite what you have i mind. It's still an early tech and thankfully only therapeutic uses are being explored (as far as i know anyway).

You didn't answer the question, unless i am to take it you mean you do rate anecdote higher than peer review. All the scientists you name were subject to peer review anyway, just not todays format, but their peers certainly weighed in. Anyway, shall we not hijack the thread any further with this.