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Anytime nationalistic pride is stirred hard, it's hard to be not biased. So my bias is pretty pro-Chinese and anti-West, so just to start off there. >Chinese p

Anytime nationalistic pride is stirred hard, it's hard to be not biased. So my bias is pretty pro-Chinese and anti-West, so just to start off there. >Chinese philosophy seems to me to be mostly about society and the duty of men You are referring to Confucius and also perhaps the highly hierarchical nature of the Chinese community party. Chinese philosophy in general is a mix of Taoism, Buddhism and Confuciusm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters) with conflicting tenets that respectively focuses on individual conduct, moral values and social harmony. In general, Western media focuses on the governance of the Communist party; that’s analogous to reduce Western philosophy down to Locke and Mills and ignoring Heidegger, Nietzsche and Rousseau that is concerned more with the individual development than the social contract/utility. Note that a lot of Westerners also attempt to find spiritual alternative in Zen Buddhism which is of Chinese origin. >While Europe was worse off early on, it allowed the region to discover math and science and make use of it. I’d argue that the reason for the lack of a Chinese industrial revolution is not because any inherent “thought” deficit but due to the Empire’s decision to employ a Closed Door Policy and Sea Ban (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin). Compare China during the Sea Ban and Japan’s Meiji Restoration at the time or even more recent economic development of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (all of which are very Confucian) as an argument against any culture having an monopoly on innovation. Unfortunately, at the time the traditional Chinese culture is very inward looking and arrogant toward foreign thought because we thought we were the best. But anytime you become close-minded and think that you are the best in the world, you close yourself to alternative ideas beyond your borders and will inevitably decline. Thankfully, we’ve learned this lesson in the 20th century. >China had a big fleet, but cancelled the project … China invented gun powder, but they didn't use it to gain a military advantage. Colonial conquest of foreign cultures is a very Western concept. Note that China at one time had the most population and military power and built a great wall at the Northern boundary; because China is more interested in governing from the within. Even with Sinosphere neighbors at the time that were heavily influenced by Chinese culture, Emperors were happier to have tributary states than conquering the neighboring countries. >Traditional Chinese Medicine used penicillin indirectly, but never managed to understand or extract it. That’s an implicit value judgment that Western medicine that focuses on pharmacodynamics and pharmakinetics is superior than the holistic take of Chinese medicine. Again note the Western movement to seek out holistic medicine and more importantly, major Western pharmaceutical companies push for personal genomics treatment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_genomics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_genomics) which takes into account the patient’s individual genetic variation. This is not an attempt to conflate Chinese medicine with 23andme, but rather the perspective that modern medicine is constantly evolving - from the discrete scientific method of breaking down chemicals to their individual interactions to a systematic view of complex metabolic pathways and cascade signaling networks, which echoes the Chinese medicine’s idea of feedback cycle of Qi.

deleted 13y ago
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Retric 13y ago
> which echoes the Chinese medicine’s idea of feedback cycle of Qi Qi may have some vague similarity to the basic metabolic path, but it's rediculusluy far from being a useful medical principle. Sort of like calling humorism a precursor to the idea of homeostasis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis PS: Older forms of medicin like Homeopathy are based on a foundation of incorrect assumptions, they are often but not always more useful than doing nothing. However, the foundation of western medicine is do no harm. It replaced the assumption that we know what's going on with the pragmatic acceptance that the human body is to complex to actually understand in detail. At some point we may understand / simulate the human body well enough to change that but no philosophical approach has shown anywhere near the same bennifits simply because randomly choosing a theory when the search space is so large is a waste of time.
Osmium 13y ago
> That’s an implicit value judgment that Western medicine that focuses on pharmacodynamics and pharmakinetics is superior than the holistic take of Chinese medicine. It's implicit because it's the conventionally accepted view around here. I'm yet to see any evidence that would convince me otherwise, in fact–though I'd be very happy to hear some if you have it!
- vbuterin 13y ago
  http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/02/how-med-harms.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/02/how-med-harms.html is the one thing that immediately comes to mind.
DougWebb 13y ago
But anytime you become close-minded and think that you are the best in the world, you close yourself to alternative ideas beyond your borders and will inevitably decline. I kind of have the feeling that's been going on here in the USA since WWII. The 40s gave us a really good reason to be arrogant about our own superiority in the 50s and into the 60s, but since the 70s things have been going downhill and no amount of "USA! USA!" chanting seems to help. >Traditional Chinese Medicine used penicillin indirectly, but never managed to understand or extract it. That’s an implicit value judgment that Western medicine that focuses on pharmacodynamics and pharmakinetics is superior than the holistic take of Chinese medicine. My take on Chinese medicine, and this goes for a lot of non-western 'science', is that it's based on very-long-term observation of cause and effect, with untestable/untested theories to explain 'why' the cause causes the effect. In contrast, western science is much more focused on breaking down causes and effects into very small pieces and doing repeatable experiments to discover 'why' in ways that can be applied more generally. For example, acupuncture: Chinese doctors learned through observation that if you stick a bunch of needles along this line, and give them a little tweak, it'll help that organ over there to function better. "Why?" "Well, there's this energy you can't see flowing though you, and the needles make it flow better." "Oh, neat." As long as the explanation is internally consistent with the observation, the theory is sufficient. It just can't be used to accurately predict new causes and effects that haven't been observed yet. The big drawback to the western approach is that by focusing on the details, it looses the holistic overview, and we wind up with drugs that help one particular health issue while causing a bunch of other health issues. Thankfully, as you mentioned, western medicine is moving back towards the holistic viewpoint, but now it's based on fundamental understanding of the individual biologic processes unlike traditional Chinese medicine. Best of both worlds, I think.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Retric 13y ago

> which echoes the Chinese medicine’s idea of feedback cycle of Qi Qi may have some vague similarity to the basic metabolic path, but it's rediculusluy far from being a useful medical principle. Sort of like calling humorism a precursor to the idea of homeostasis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis PS: Older forms of medicin like Homeopathy are based on a foundation of incorrect assumptions, they are often but not always more useful than doing nothing. However, the foundation of western medicine is do no harm. It replaced the assumption that we know what's going on with the pragmatic acceptance that the human body is to complex to actually understand in detail. At some point we may understand / simulate the human body well enough to change that but no philosophical approach has shown anywhere near the same bennifits simply because randomly choosing a theory when the search space is so large is a waste of time.

Osmium 13y ago

> That’s an implicit value judgment that Western medicine that focuses on pharmacodynamics and pharmakinetics is superior than the holistic take of Chinese medicine. It's implicit because it's the conventionally accepted view around here. I'm yet to see any evidence that would convince me otherwise, in fact–though I'd be very happy to hear some if you have it!

vbuterin 13y ago
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/02/how-med-harms.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/02/how-med-harms.html is the one thing that immediately comes to mind.

DougWebb 13y ago

But anytime you become close-minded and think that you are the best in the world, you close yourself to alternative ideas beyond your borders and will inevitably decline. I kind of have the feeling that's been going on here in the USA since WWII. The 40s gave us a really good reason to be arrogant about our own superiority in the 50s and into the 60s, but since the 70s things have been going downhill and no amount of "USA! USA!" chanting seems to help. >Traditional Chinese Medicine used penicillin indirectly, but never managed to understand or extract it. That’s an implicit value judgment that Western medicine that focuses on pharmacodynamics and pharmakinetics is superior than the holistic take of Chinese medicine. My take on Chinese medicine, and this goes for a lot of non-western 'science', is that it's based on very-long-term observation of cause and effect, with untestable/untested theories to explain 'why' the cause causes the effect. In contrast, western science is much more focused on breaking down causes and effects into very small pieces and doing repeatable experiments to discover 'why' in ways that can be applied more generally. For example, acupuncture: Chinese doctors learned through observation that if you stick a bunch of needles along this line, and give them a little tweak, it'll help that organ over there to function better. "Why?" "Well, there's this energy you can't see flowing though you, and the needles make it flow better." "Oh, neat." As long as the explanation is internally consistent with the observation, the theory is sufficient. It just can't be used to accurately predict new causes and effects that haven't been observed yet. The big drawback to the western approach is that by focusing on the details, it looses the holistic overview, and we wind up with drugs that help one particular health issue while causing a bunch of other health issues. Thankfully, as you mentioned, western medicine is moving back towards the holistic viewpoint, but now it's based on fundamental understanding of the individual biologic processes unlike traditional Chinese medicine. Best of both worlds, I think.