8 ms·

With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm

With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm yourself. I started yoga before it became mainstream and with a lot of the practices I tried them for myself. For example I noticed that some pranayama practices work for me and others don't. Back then pretty much every "serious" scientist or doctor would have told you that all this is nonsense. Same for meditation. Try it. there is not much to lose. It doesn't cost anything and won't harm you. Worst case it doesn't work.

eblanshey 6y ago
This. The purpose of science is to discover the truth, not make the truth. You don't science to confirm everything before you try it. With things like breathing where you know it's not going to cause harm, just try it for yourself.
- tines 6y ago
  The problem is that you're biased - confirmation bias, expectation bias, selection bias, optimism bias, observer expectancy effect, the list goes on - and you end up learning all things except the truth.
  - onemoresoop 6y ago
    As long as it does something beneficial who cares after all what the bias is? Placebo may play a role in it but once again, what do we care about here, whether something is beneficial or whether it can be explained why it is beneficial? For some the former and for some the latter, ofc depending on perspective.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      As long as it does something beneficial who cares after all what the bias is? I do. I hate being wrong about stuff.
      - tedunangst 6y ago
        Wrong about what exactly? I'd say I'm mostly a breathing skeptic, but if it makes you feel better, then... it makes you feel better and you aren't wrong for feeling better.
        CamperBob2 6y ago
        Wrong about what exactly? If someone observes measurable benefits after (e.g.) breathing through one nostril for a while, I'd consider it important to know exactly why. Maybe there are important things about the mechanics of respiration that we haven't understood yet. Dismissing such phenomena with "If it feels good, who cares why?" seems counterproductive in the long run. OTOH, if no one sees measurable benefits, then the various anecdotes from practitioners really are just bias in action, and (IMO) are not worth expending further thought on.
      - onemoresoop 6y ago
        But even if you think you’re right you may be wrong. All current understanding is bound to change when better understanding is achieved. Sometimes things that are scientifically thought to work in a certain way take turns, sometimes going into opposite directions. So even if you think you understand something, it’s healthy to keep a bit of skepticism and a bit of open mind.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      I guess I care. Yes it's beneficial if something works, but I want to know why it works too and not just believe in random pseudoscience. Also, determining if something really works is hard. I want to understand the mechanism. If there's something true there then you may be able to use that directly, you can also avoid untrue things that are harmful (history is full of these harmful 'treatments'). [0] Without this people just end up wearing energy crystals, while dismissing real medicine for homeopathic nonsense that can lead to death [1][2]. Humanity has used the scientific method to barely rise above the collection of hocus pocus explanations. It's worth the effort not to fall back into that. [3] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Health_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Health_problems [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882029 [3]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causality https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causa...
      - brigandish 6y ago
        There's a big difference between wearing crystals because you believe it improves your life, and doing a physical exercise that changes your mental state. If one can't confirm changes in their own mental state, especially profound changes, I'd suggest that's a far bigger and more pressing problem than anything you've listed.
        fossuser 6y ago
        I'm sure people believe they confirm 'profound changes in their own mental state' from energy crystals too. We can delude ourselves into believing anything. That's why we need to test things empirically in order to find out the truth.
        brigandish 6y ago
        > I'm sure people believe they confirm 'profound changes in their own mental state' from energy crystals too. Not sure about you, but if someone tells me "I've been exercising lately and mentally I feel much better" I don't say "but does homeopathy really work" and wink at them.
    - talaketu 6y ago
      Maybe there are more reliable ways to achieve the benefit for a greater number of people. Science offers an approach to discovering this, and the "why" - the theory - is what drives science.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      > As long as it does something beneficial You can't easily measure if something is beneficial. Which is precisely why a bunch of plants that people were taking before for different ailments were found to have absolutely no medical value when tried through a scientific method. And in the age of social media, individual confirmation bias and a megaphone is the best way to promote non-science to hordes of people.
      - fsloth 6y ago
        Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. Easing suffering, thus reducing stress levels, which in turn help body to function better. But you are quite right, individuals with strong confirmation bias and a large social media following are harmfull. Still, that does not mean individuals should not perform harmless experiments. Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths.
        ekianjo 6y ago
        > Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. It depends what you refer to when you talk about a placebo. What people call the "placebo effect" is in practice "regression to the mean" in most cases, which is the fact that you would get better over time even if you did absolutely nothing. You will notice that placebo 'effect' works best in contexts where the illness has a psychological component (mental illnesses and the like), but absolutely fail to show any effect at all in other contexts like viral infections. > Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths. I agree, but how can you prevent people from claiming that something worked for them if they are absolutely convinced of it. It's an unsolvable problem.
        fsloth 6y ago
        "how can you prevent people from claiming..." Do I understand correctly that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills because they might accidentally get better, and a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople?
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    We don’t even understand the placebo effect, there is little hope in learning the truth in regards to human biology as it would be too complicated, expensive, and unethical to try.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - cgag 6y ago
    I suspect you learn less by doing nothing. This kind of advice is probably good for normal people, but the people who need it least seem to be the ones most paralyzed by it.
  - jclos 6y ago
    That's only a problem if you are trying to generalise your discovery and say write a paper or sell a product about it. If it's just "a thing you do" and it makes you feel good, then biases don't really matter as much as the end result.
- talaketu 6y ago
  Reminds me of the President's rhetorical "What do you have to lose?", that he apparently hadn't thought through.
pldr1234 6y ago
A truly practical approach that can be stretched/applied to other fields of life, including business, relationships, etc. +1
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  That’s how most of life is. Do you get scientific measurements before having friends or having a family? Most of what we do is highly subjective. We are not as rational as we like to think.
PhantomBKB 6y ago
It's not true that it won't harm you if not done properly. Please learn it from professionals or friends who are already well versed in the practice if you are new to it.
- sanmon3186 6y ago
  Absolutely. You do need professional who understands the benefits and potential side effects. If done wrongly, it can mess things up. Anecdotal, but I tried anulum vilom ten years back as a remedy for general anxiety, went overboard with no proper guidance, and my BP shot up. It took me a while to understand that the key is to go slow and increase your practice slowly.
ekianjo 6y ago
> Try it. there is not much to lose. And since you can't really measure things well with n=1 you end up with confirmation bias at the end of the day.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Confirmation bias or actual personal discovery. I don’t see what is so controversial about this. Lots of people take up exercising as a lifestyle and say they are much better for it. I don’t see what saying ‘yes but there is only one you, maybe you would have felt better without the exercise in this span if time...’ - which means statistics 101 really is not blindly applicable to all venues life. Also why bayesian statistics are sometimes much better in real life situations...
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > Confirmation bias or actual personal discovery. And you would not be able to actually figure out which one it is.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  Do you constantly measure your friendships or family? Most things in life go by instinct or how they make us feel.
acituan 6y ago
> With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm yourself. I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. If something is potent enough to deliver benefit, it can also be potent enough to deliver harm. You can't have it both ways. Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise. Just like with McMindfulness, I wish some of this kind of instruction required licensing.
- waihtis 6y ago
  Breathing practice is the most simple thing in the world. Sit, breathe, relax - definitely doesnt need a license. Sounds like you’re confused of the purpose of it.
  - acituan 6y ago
    Just because it is simple in your experience doesn't mean that is universally true for everyone. Certainly not for anxiety disordered or PTSD suffering people for example. See my reply to comment below which cites studies when these sort of practices backfire in a non-trivial fashion. Like I said, it is either too trivial as sit, breathe and relax which won't do much good, or it is potent enough to do some good in which case it also has the potential of doing some harm.
    - waihtis 6y ago
      I have multiple problems with this statement. First, the problems you are describing are external to breathing. If you suffer from PTSD and get an episode at the grocery store, do you want to regulate grocery store visits also? Second, breathing has multi-thousand year old legacy spanning multiple cultures and eras touting it's benefits. Why would you obtain your perspective from a click-driven Vice article referring to a study of 73 people instead of the infinitely more robust source of truth?
      - 6y ago

eblanshey 6y ago

This. The purpose of science is to discover the truth, not make the truth. You don't science to confirm everything before you try it. With things like breathing where you know it's not going to cause harm, just try it for yourself.

tines 6y ago
The problem is that you're biased - confirmation bias, expectation bias, selection bias, optimism bias, observer expectancy effect, the list goes on - and you end up learning all things except the truth.
- onemoresoop 6y ago
  As long as it does something beneficial who cares after all what the bias is? Placebo may play a role in it but once again, what do we care about here, whether something is beneficial or whether it can be explained why it is beneficial? For some the former and for some the latter, ofc depending on perspective.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    As long as it does something beneficial who cares after all what the bias is? I do. I hate being wrong about stuff.
    - tedunangst 6y ago
      Wrong about what exactly? I'd say I'm mostly a breathing skeptic, but if it makes you feel better, then... it makes you feel better and you aren't wrong for feeling better.
      - CamperBob2 6y ago
        Wrong about what exactly? If someone observes measurable benefits after (e.g.) breathing through one nostril for a while, I'd consider it important to know exactly why. Maybe there are important things about the mechanics of respiration that we haven't understood yet. Dismissing such phenomena with "If it feels good, who cares why?" seems counterproductive in the long run. OTOH, if no one sees measurable benefits, then the various anecdotes from practitioners really are just bias in action, and (IMO) are not worth expending further thought on.
    - onemoresoop 6y ago
      But even if you think you’re right you may be wrong. All current understanding is bound to change when better understanding is achieved. Sometimes things that are scientifically thought to work in a certain way take turns, sometimes going into opposite directions. So even if you think you understand something, it’s healthy to keep a bit of skepticism and a bit of open mind.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I guess I care. Yes it's beneficial if something works, but I want to know why it works too and not just believe in random pseudoscience. Also, determining if something really works is hard. I want to understand the mechanism. If there's something true there then you may be able to use that directly, you can also avoid untrue things that are harmful (history is full of these harmful 'treatments'). [0] Without this people just end up wearing energy crystals, while dismissing real medicine for homeopathic nonsense that can lead to death [1][2]. Humanity has used the scientific method to barely rise above the collection of hocus pocus explanations. It's worth the effort not to fall back into that. [3] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Health_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Health_problems [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882029 [3]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causality https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causa...
    - brigandish 6y ago
      There's a big difference between wearing crystals because you believe it improves your life, and doing a physical exercise that changes your mental state. If one can't confirm changes in their own mental state, especially profound changes, I'd suggest that's a far bigger and more pressing problem than anything you've listed.
      - fossuser 6y ago
        I'm sure people believe they confirm 'profound changes in their own mental state' from energy crystals too. We can delude ourselves into believing anything. That's why we need to test things empirically in order to find out the truth.
        brigandish 6y ago
        > I'm sure people believe they confirm 'profound changes in their own mental state' from energy crystals too. Not sure about you, but if someone tells me "I've been exercising lately and mentally I feel much better" I don't say "but does homeopathy really work" and wink at them.
  - talaketu 6y ago
    Maybe there are more reliable ways to achieve the benefit for a greater number of people. Science offers an approach to discovering this, and the "why" - the theory - is what drives science.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > As long as it does something beneficial You can't easily measure if something is beneficial. Which is precisely why a bunch of plants that people were taking before for different ailments were found to have absolutely no medical value when tried through a scientific method. And in the age of social media, individual confirmation bias and a megaphone is the best way to promote non-science to hordes of people.
    - fsloth 6y ago
      Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. Easing suffering, thus reducing stress levels, which in turn help body to function better. But you are quite right, individuals with strong confirmation bias and a large social media following are harmfull. Still, that does not mean individuals should not perform harmless experiments. Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths.
      - ekianjo 6y ago
        > Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. It depends what you refer to when you talk about a placebo. What people call the "placebo effect" is in practice "regression to the mean" in most cases, which is the fact that you would get better over time even if you did absolutely nothing. You will notice that placebo 'effect' works best in contexts where the illness has a psychological component (mental illnesses and the like), but absolutely fail to show any effect at all in other contexts like viral infections. > Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths. I agree, but how can you prevent people from claiming that something worked for them if they are absolutely convinced of it. It's an unsolvable problem.
        fsloth 6y ago
        "how can you prevent people from claiming..." Do I understand correctly that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills because they might accidentally get better, and a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople?
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  We don’t even understand the placebo effect, there is little hope in learning the truth in regards to human biology as it would be too complicated, expensive, and unethical to try.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cgag 6y ago
  I suspect you learn less by doing nothing. This kind of advice is probably good for normal people, but the people who need it least seem to be the ones most paralyzed by it.
- jclos 6y ago
  That's only a problem if you are trying to generalise your discovery and say write a paper or sell a product about it. If it's just "a thing you do" and it makes you feel good, then biases don't really matter as much as the end result.
talaketu 6y ago
Reminds me of the President's rhetorical "What do you have to lose?", that he apparently hadn't thought through.

pldr1234 6y ago

A truly practical approach that can be stretched/applied to other fields of life, including business, relationships, etc. +1

spaetzleesser 6y ago
That’s how most of life is. Do you get scientific measurements before having friends or having a family? Most of what we do is highly subjective. We are not as rational as we like to think.

PhantomBKB 6y ago

It's not true that it won't harm you if not done properly. Please learn it from professionals or friends who are already well versed in the practice if you are new to it.

sanmon3186 6y ago
Absolutely. You do need professional who understands the benefits and potential side effects. If done wrongly, it can mess things up. Anecdotal, but I tried anulum vilom ten years back as a remedy for general anxiety, went overboard with no proper guidance, and my BP shot up. It took me a while to understand that the key is to go slow and increase your practice slowly.

ekianjo 6y ago

> Try it. there is not much to lose. And since you can't really measure things well with n=1 you end up with confirmation bias at the end of the day.

fsloth 6y ago
Confirmation bias or actual personal discovery. I don’t see what is so controversial about this. Lots of people take up exercising as a lifestyle and say they are much better for it. I don’t see what saying ‘yes but there is only one you, maybe you would have felt better without the exercise in this span if time...’ - which means statistics 101 really is not blindly applicable to all venues life. Also why bayesian statistics are sometimes much better in real life situations...
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Confirmation bias or actual personal discovery. And you would not be able to actually figure out which one it is.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
Do you constantly measure your friendships or family? Most things in life go by instinct or how they make us feel.

acituan 6y ago

> With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm yourself. I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. If something is potent enough to deliver benefit, it can also be potent enough to deliver harm. You can't have it both ways. Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise. Just like with McMindfulness, I wish some of this kind of instruction required licensing.

waihtis 6y ago
Breathing practice is the most simple thing in the world. Sit, breathe, relax - definitely doesnt need a license. Sounds like you’re confused of the purpose of it.
- acituan 6y ago
  Just because it is simple in your experience doesn't mean that is universally true for everyone. Certainly not for anxiety disordered or PTSD suffering people for example. See my reply to comment below which cites studies when these sort of practices backfire in a non-trivial fashion. Like I said, it is either too trivial as sit, breathe and relax which won't do much good, or it is potent enough to do some good in which case it also has the potential of doing some harm.
  - waihtis 6y ago
    I have multiple problems with this statement. First, the problems you are describing are external to breathing. If you suffer from PTSD and get an episode at the grocery store, do you want to regulate grocery store visits also? Second, breathing has multi-thousand year old legacy spanning multiple cultures and eras touting it's benefits. Why would you obtain your perspective from a click-driven Vice article referring to a study of 73 people instead of the infinitely more robust source of truth?
    - 6y ago