Thanks for once again specifying the
very specific and narrow words you are using. That's very helpful in communications.
I am stating that information is manipulated, and that can be observed.
So... how do you observe it? If I say I can observe my qi leaving my body and affecting people and objects, people ask how I observe it and expect an answer that's a little more detailed than "well, the person/object moves in response to my intentions", because that kind of vague answer doesn't actually satisfy the condition for observation of the mechanics involved. So, I'm really curious as to how you directly observe an informational or statistical manipulation, in much the same way that I can
feel (observation through a sense of feel, though not to be confused with the sense of physical touch) the qi interacting with things outside myself and get feedback from it (which is often then also confirmed via my normal physical senses).
If we have a Random Event Generator(REG) or Random Number Generator, this means that there is low certainty in the events or the numbers. That is called shannon entropy/von neumann entropy. If I have a person attempt to get say a pattern of 6's consistently, that is increasing the certainty of that event which decreases the entropy, because if they successful create a pattern of consistent things per their intention, they are increasing the amount of information. That is called micropsychokinesis, and the average person can do this, so that bit about it being an unfair comparison due to beginner's not doing this is unwarranted.
Uh, no, see you specifically compared qigong and statistical manipulation in terms of holding in a cloud of vapour. That's quite different than a low-level statistical manipulation of an RNG (and I say low level because the average person pulled off the street makes so little of an impact that the numbers have to be run through the mathematical analysis in order to determine whether there was a deviation from random change. The change is so minute that it cannot be observed easily, like manipulating a vapour of gas could be).
It is so unwarranted in that a beginner exercise on this site is manipulating a candle flame. That operates on what I said, for fire is simply heated gas and in playing around with it, one is doing the same thing that goes into manipulation of diffusion of gas.
Well, if we're going to go with that, then you're in luck! Qi Gong beginners can manipulate a candle flame too, after a bit of practice of course. I personally can't cause I suck shit at manipulating a flame for some reason; the only time I've ever been able to pull it off was after my friend "prepped" a candle for me by first manipulating it himself (which leads me to believe, though I could be wrong as I have only a single event to base this on, there's some sort of threshold to beat in order to manipulate the flame).
Although... technically, being able to bend, enlongate, or shrink a candle flame doesn't necessitate that one hold in the vapours to prevent them from dissipating. Assuming that the vapours continue their flow from the candle to the environment, the manipulation would be upon the moving stream rather than the exact particles that make up the gases at any specific instant.
Entropy is what causes things to dissipate, and the ordering of the random states is done without increasing entropy, so this means we can observe it not being impacted by entropy in that information is added to the system instead of being lost.
So you're observing ... the outcome, or the indirect effects of your manipulations?
So, if qi dissipates and what does psychokinesis does not, this means that proposing qi as a causal mechanic with an entropic property is not sufficient to fit what we see.
Well, that would be true. Assuming 1) that qi inherently dissipates when a qi gong practitioner manipulates the candle flame (as opposed to the possibility that I, and others like me, just suck at retaining my qi, for instance), and 2) that your method doesn't dissipate any energy (but since you don't believe in the energy model, and you purposefully don't even bother to look for it, as you've told me before, then your best guess as to it theoretically not dissipating is that you don't notice that you get tired as you practice?), and 3) that we ignore the fact that the candle continues it's own entropic state of dissipation even as it's being manipulated by either a qigonger or a psionic practitioner (I mean, after all, there's a guy who goes up and down the road every time it lightly snows and uses a snow blower to clean the side walks. Pretty sure that his machine is very dissipative, and yet it moves the snow anyway! Wonderful thing, technology, even when it's not very efficient).
In other words, even
if I can blast a whole bunch of qi at something, with that qi dissipating at extreme rates, and yet it allows me to move the object, then that's a fit for telekinesis even if it's a
very inefficient methodology. So, are you complaining that qi dissipation model doesn't work at all, or that the qi dissipation model is just really inefficient?
The problem people have is applying that to macropsychokinesis; however, what makes it so that gas diffuses in a room or dye in a liquid, for example, are entropic properties, so these properties are analogous to what we have with micropsychokinesis.
Nnnnno.
The "entropic properties" of gases and liquids are such that their molecular bonds aren't enough to hold them together against the repulsive forces that cause them to spread out. Psychokinesis is not even on the same page as that kind of physical model, as psychokinesis is presenting an external force to what would otherwise be the normal natural forces, in an attempt at manipulating how the various forces affect one another in order to establish an outcome in accordance with the will/intention of the person adding that new force. Even if you want to claim it's informational or statistical, the pure physics of the matter would require an additional force to start manipulating the forces currently present; to be more clear, even if you try and say that you're only affecting the forces already present by manipulating the information of them, that has to be done by adding a new force that edits the information. This isn't a question: even if you were to use a model similar to the concept of entanglement, whereby there is (so far) no direct link between the object being manipulated (the molecules) and the object doing the manipulations (you) and that you are simply editing information in your own mind and then psychically linking it to the molecules such that they then change their behaviour, you are still adding a new force by means of your psychic influence.
EVEN THEN. The dumb forces of attraction versus repulsion of the various molecules are quite different from the seemingly intelligent (or at least, intelligently controlled, or complexly manipulated) forces acting to modify the way things normally play out; the intelligently controlled force that you add to the mix is on a-whole-nother level from the dumb forces of nature. Much like how a cup sitting on a counter-top would normally continue doing exactly that until you add another force by picking it up.
Now, the force you're adding may not be dissipative, so if that's the only distinction you want to make, then I'll agree to that flat out.
I am not taking this for granted; rather, this is something you are observing when you look at micropsychokinesis done on REG's.
So, back to this observation. You're talking about after the fact, right? When you've run the experiment and now you're looking at the numbers and comparing them to what was expected through pure randomness, and noting the differences, and so assuming your experiment worked the way you thought it did, right?
Information is pretty much an ensemble of probable states where you can very much so observe whether or not information is added to the system in terms of shannon/von neumann entropy entropy due to the frequency of entities that show up.
I'll take that as a yes to my previous question.
In this, we can conclude that qi is not a causal mechanic for psi, if what you said about it dissipating holds true; however, there is not really any testable way we can know qi exists, so I am apt to say it does not exists, entirely.
Do you mean to say that we don't have any sensors that can detect the presence of qi, as a causal mechanic that is distinct from pure intention alone? In that case, I'd agree, except for all the people who can perceive the existence of qi as a distinct thing. Hell, 5000 years of Chinese History does it so well that they even have other terms and forces that they deal with too, and have methods for converting one thing to another. And if I recall correctly, Yoga has somewhat similar concepts with regards to pranayama and kundalini.
You know what, this looks like a job for Being On Topic! Koujiryuu: Does Yoga have beliefs set around multiple forms of "energy", much like qi gong has qi and jing and whatnot, and also practices for changing one form of energy to another, much like converting qi into jing? (haha, funny google. "qigong jin" turns up the first two results for Qui-Gon Jinn. Had to look up which spelling jin/jing was correct, as I keep forgetting).
You'll probably raise the objection that we do not know if the net entropy is increased so entropy could be in play.
Kind of. I was going to mention that for the information to be
added to a closed system, such as a RNG that's set to produce 100,000 numbers, then some other information has to be shunted to make way for the addition (though, one could say that they're not adding information and instead are just altering information already present). But then I thought better of it because it doesn't really matter anyway. In a more cosmic sense, I don't much care because the Earth is not a closed system, and we still have no verification as to whether the universe itself is a closed system. And then there's the psi theories about the possibility of actually being able to create energy out of nothing, and then there's the real world physics possibility of energy potentially being able to be created out of seemingly nothing. So I don't much care unless we're talking about a closed system, and even them I don't much care if there's no real point to be made. And I really don't see the point to the entropy discussion.
In other words, we should see disorder somewhere as a result. We don't see this with psychokinesis
If psychokinesis were to involve disorder, what would it look like, such that you'd know it when you see it?
Or, a more pertinant objection would be that disorder and entropy happen naturally according to the dumb laws of nature/physics. When you intelligently apply forces, you can (but don't have to) reduce disorder towards order. So regardless of whether you use qigong or psi, if the object moves then the object moves, and if you're unable to measure how much "qi" dissipates (because psychology tells us that involved person's reports on themselves and their own experiences are not well matched for proper scientific experiments and can thus be discounted entirely during a proper scientific experiment), then what's the practical distinction between the person who does psychokinesis by one method versus by the other method? So far, the only distinction is in the self-reporting of the people who do it, right?
All of the stuff you said you experience, I do not. I experience none of the limitations you do, period, so based on my experience, I am not likely to agree with you. Not only do I not experience, people I teach and regularly come in contact with do not, either. The people who I run into who experience this tend to fall within the same set of practices, cultural background, and paradigms, so I am likely to think it is a cultural expectation that frames the experience.
There we go. There's the proper answer. It's not that we're "wrong", it's that we follow a different set of methodologies that lead to a different set of experiences. We might be entirely limiting ourselves purely by psychology and not by actual mechanics, or we might be using a set of mechanics that are distinct from what you're using and thereby the mechanics themselves are limiting. Who knows? Oh right, I do, because I use multiple methodologies and have confirmed through plenty enough personal experiences that internal practices don't tend to dissipate "energy", and external practices do tend to dissipate "energy". (I use the terms "tend to" because it's not a perfect correlation)
For instance, if I might guess, I would assume (based on your descriptions of your experiences) that you do most of your psychic stuff within your own head: is that correct, Rayn?
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As an example of what I mean, when I was in post-secondary was when thoughts suddenly started popping into my head and I'd blurt them out (which was uncharacteristic of me), and various people would constantly reply to these events with "wow, I was just thinking that" or "Holy crap, that is literally, word for word, what I was just about to say" over and over again, at least 4 or 5 times a day, every day. At first I didn't realize where these thoughts were coming from, but I certainly wasn't operating outside of my own mind in order to reach out and grab the information. From there I started trying out a set of things that allowed me to start doing internal psychic stuff that was purely mentally based and which still worked without me having to reach out and touch upon the world around me. Unfortunately, bad shit happened in my life at about that time and it took several years before I started practicing again, and I've been mostly keeping my practices to lower level stuff.
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To give another example, of external stuff that I used to do, the first time I reached out to psychically influence someone else, mentally: I was on the school bus in high school. Plenty of kids on the bus, but one in particular was sitting two or three rows ahead of me and staring straight ahead. Perfect target. I tried mentally shouting at him; no response. I tried mentally whispering to him; no response. I tried a couple of other things like poking him and pinging him; no response.
I then used a combination of my energy and my mind to create a tunnel from me to him, connecting my mind to his (watch Donnie Darko if you want a fairly good representation of what I mean. And for anyone who might be wondering, I finished highschool before Donnie Darko came out, so I was not basing my attempt on that); with this, I tried some of the same things as before; still no responses. Then, I created another tunnel from him to outside and a little ahead of the bus, then yelled from my end to him that there's a hot chick down there where the second tunnel ended: no response. I then pushed a bit of my mind and energy through to the end of the second tunnel and yelled back to him "HOT CHICK" (with a mental concept of a hot chick) and his head *finally*, instantly, snapped over to look. Of course, there was nothing there so he moved his head back to staring straight ahead. I then did the exact same thing, no change in what I did; he looked again. I think it was the fifth or sixth time that I did the exact same thing, when I was starting to feel mentally exhausted, that he finally stopped looking each time I yelled it. It was external, it was fatiguing, it worked. I wouldn't say that I dissipated
qi from this specific experiment, however, because of the way I set things up and how I mostly used mental stuff rather than what I call qi stuff.
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A time that I did an external qi thing and it did dissipate energy: working as a busboy at a restaurant. We had a new bartender, farm boy. He was mad one night, though I have no idea why, but I was happy enough. It was end of night and I was cleaning up and as I was walking into the back room, I looked over at him and he looked back at me, and his look caused my body to start shaking slightly; not sure if you're familiar with the concept, and I forget any of the names people tend to give it, but with that look he directed whatever you want to call it, whether intention or qi or energy or whatever, at me and disrupted my internal system a little. It was enough to make my body shake, but not my spirit/soul/center/"energy body"/whatever-you-want-to-call-that. I went into the back, calmed my nerves and then went out and continued working. He did it again; we locked eyes and he caused my body to start shaking a little. Now I was a little bit perturbed as I don't like when people do that kind of stuff to me. So the next time we locked eyes, I sent a wave of energy right back at him; he looked down, his shoulders slumped, and he relaxed a little. I continued working, and he softened the gaze in his eyes because the next time we locked eyes it didn't happen. Me sending that wave at him, depleted some of my reserves.
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And another example of a thing I did recently that was mentally based and didn't dissipate energy: I was talking to a guy at work, he mentioned he lost his favourite pen somewhere on a specific floor. I like the guy so I wanted to help him out a little; I used a psychic ability to determine what I describe as "perceiving pure facts about reality", as opposed to telepathic thoughts from other people, and determined that his pen was in a garbage can on the floor. I casually suggested to check a few places and reinforced that he check the garbage cans. He went back to look for it, and lo and behold found it in a garbage can. I specify this example as opposed to losing something in my room/house and psychically looking for it, because a person could claim I subconsciously remembered where I placed the thing (and sometimes I do), so that wouldn't be a very strong example. Even the times when I put something somewhere, and someone else moves it, another person could claim this would be an example of telepathy rather than gaining access to pure factual knowledge, as they claim I might be tapping into the mind of the other person who moved the object.
Are there any types of examples of experiences from me that you'd rather hear about, than the random ones I spew up?
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Look, I do not believe in qi, I do not believe in energy bodies, I do not believe in energy systems, I do not believe that psi has anything to do with qi, and you have not given me sufficient evidence to change it.
I haven't given you any evidence. I've given you arguments. Even the above examples that I've just included here aren't really evidence, but anecdotals stories, wherein I could be coming to an incorrect conclusion about the underlying mechanics of the events (though, I've made sure that's an unlikely situation by performing similar feats over and over and over again, and trying out slightly different things, and observing what happens as a result, and forming my views and beliefs from there, rather than making assumptions beforehand and tailoring my attempts based on assumptions)
I think this has been beaten to death, though, so that is all I will say on this. To be frank, I do not believe in the vast majority of things on this site and the mystical/religious overtones turn me off...
Well, to each their own. Quite a few people here have their own experiences which they discuss in their own terminology, when they do speak up about it. It makes for quite the open set of systems that different people can learn by, as opposed to a single dogmatic system which everyone is "expected" to learn.
...Yoga is in the title"...Ask any question about...or Yoga..."
Let's just fill that back in, shall we: "Ask any question about Qigong or Yoga."
It doesn't say: "Ask any question about Qigong, or discuss anything about Yoga."

So the primary concept is asking Koujiryuu questions, which we've been failing to do so we (not just you and I, but others as well) have been off topic for a while now.
~Steve