Internal power generation

This type of argument is what they normally call the God of the gaps argument. I am going to call it the Chi in the cracks argument. As science advances you are going to find a lot less cracks to put chi in.

Science's short comings does absolutely nothing to support your belief the chi exists.

How do you know that chi even exists? Especially if it is not measurable by any known way. How do you know it is chi and not Jesus's body odor permeating the universe?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_%28sheep%29

 

I like to use "short power" in clinch and I call it "shaking". During clinch, when I can detect my opponent's intention such as his right hand tries to push me, I will push on his right shoulder, or his right elbow joint. This way, I can interrupt his power generation and speed generation during the early stage. Of course the timing is extremely important.

This is why I like to use "zombie arms" strategy. The further that your arms can be extend near your opponent's body, the better chance that you can fight in your opponent's territory and not fight in your own territory. If your hands are extended right in front of your opponent's face, when you detect that he tries to punch you, all you need to do is to push on his shoulder joint with very little force. That's how I use the "short power".

 

Smitfires “Olympic dominance hypothesis” That internal effects must not exist otherwise internal training practices would be used in high level sport. Contains several unsupported assumptions and logical errors.

For example

1 – Assumption that internal training is not performed in high level sport.

Internal practices feature heavily in target sports such as archery and shooting where visualization techniques are used to control breathing, heart rate and focus. In fact Sport Physcology a mental approach used to improve physical performance is used heavily across all sports. If sports pyhscology is not an internal practice - what is?

2 – logical error That It follows that if internal practices help, sportsmen would necessarily adopt them.

There may be significant barriers to adopting internal practices. The iceman evidence is only recent. Athletes, coaches, funding bodies have a wealth of well evidenced training practices to use but at the same time limited time and resources. It is reasonable that if practical choices need to be made that they will chose proven approaches over unproven ones.

3 – Various claims about the efficacy of internal training have been made. there may be conventional training options available to well funded high level sportsmen that have similar effects to internal training practices.

If we take a middle road and say that internal practices do not give magical powers but rather allow for a tuning of the bodies physiology under certain situations, then modern training practices may archive these tuning effects anyway. For example It might be possible for internal practices to stimulate production of a hormone that increases the bloods ability to carry oxygen. Training at high altitude has this effect, so do illegal practices such as taking of epo or blood packing.

I am sure if you think about it you can come up with some more assumptions and logical fallacies of your own.

 

No one seems to have a concrete definition for what constitutes "internal" as opposed to "external" training anyway.

Which is exactly like when religious groups have some nebulous, vague description of something in a religious text, then science finds the existence of black holes and the religious folks go "aha! Look we were right all along." But one is a specific descriptor of something and one is trying to ride along on the back of the other. It would be like me claiming vaccines are internal chi magic because they work using unseen hidden energies. That's clearly a load of nonsense.

So basically what you're saying is that these training practices (again assuming you could get people to agree on what they actually are) can't be proven to work better than what's already being used. That's not exactly a roaring endorsement.

So modern sports training has specific definitions of objectives and results and proven methodologies for measuring, testing, and achieving them while "internal" training is a hodge podge of things people can't settle on a definition of, can't define, and can't prove actually does anything. Well I'm certainly sold on "internal" training!

 

The only assumption I'm making is that if the chinese had any unique advantage at all that could produce effects useful for fighting and martial arts, and so by extension also be useful in a wider sporting world where the attributes useful for fighting will also come into play, they would use that advantage and achieve anomalous results that could only be explained by that unique advantage.
I see no such results.
The world's strongest men are not 135lb chinese men with 40 years of internal training to control and utiise chi to be very strong. They are very large thick-set men with years of progressive resistance strength training, good genetics and pharmaceutical help.
If internal training can make someone stronger than just the output of their muscles (as we are led to believe by various chi tricks such as multiple people not be able to push back one man) then the chinese would use that to show the superiority of the chinese and produce the world's strongest man.

 

Sometime I just wonder myself. Why did boxers, wrestlers, Judo guys ever care about looking into "internal"?

I have talked to the Chinese Olympic Judo/wrestling coach Wang De-Yin when I brought my Chinese wrestling team to visit the Beijing PE University back in 1985. I asked his opinion about "internal". I do believe that Chinese government would try very hard to get more Olympic metals if they could.

The old man Chinese Olympic Judo/wrestling coach Wang (at 1.36) said, "If internal works for Judo or wrestling then what do you think that I'm still doing here for?"

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwxcsAGWtHc&feature=youtu.be"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwxcsAGWtHc&feature=youtu.be[/ame]

 

Yes absolutely correct.

No, incorrect, it is scientifically proven that it can do this.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrIDVNkPOb4"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrIDVNkPOb4[/ame]

Currently there is insufficient scientific understanding to say how or if, internal practices can have other effects. However what this does do is show for the first time that other effects are potentialy possible, and it suggests mechanisms by which such effects could happen.

 

While a few nutters might believe that the demonstration tricks are due to "chi magic" most traditional practitioners know these tricks are tricks used for the purpose of entertaining a crowd and have nothing to do with chi at all.

 

So...utilising "chi" can't make you stronger? We can scratch that off the list of things it can do?

 

If you cannot define with absolute scientific specificity what it is you're claiming is the mechanism of action to the level that you can be proven wrong you don't get to do a "we were right and it's definitely our stuff" dance when something happens which just isn't understood yet.

If I say the ball will land somewhere on the roulette wheel no one is going to gasp in shock, claim I was right, or give me any money when it lands on black 29.

 

Again simply because we don't know what's going on doesn't mean that it's chi. That is not logical .

 

You are correct that modern sports people use visualisation, mindful slow motion rehearsal and other practices that are also associated with internal martial arts (though in no way exclusive to them).

But that is not the point. It is the chi-as-unmeasurable-energy model that we are arguing.

Just as chiropractic methods are based on complete nonsense but can benefit patients because manual therapy is known to benefit people regardless of the hypotheses used to support it.

The actual techniques that work are the baby, and the spurious notions of all-pervading life energy are the bathwater.

 

And your third eye is so keen that you can peer into mysteries of the universe that others are too blind to see?

Must be tough being a one-eyed man amongst the blind. How do you deal with such god-like powers?

 

This is about alternative medicine and science, but since Gunner brought up some of these anti-science points I thought it was relevant:

"1. Science doesn’t know everything.

Comedian Dara Ó Briain said it best: “Science knows it doesn’t know everything, otherwise, it’d stop. But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”

2. There are other ways of knowing.

Sure there are: intuition, imagination, dreams, revelation, tradition, speculation, the “stoned thinking” favored by integrative medicine guru Andrew Weil, anecdotes, and personal observations. All of these can lead people to strong beliefs, to the illusion of knowledge; but until those beliefs are tested, we can’t trust them to reflect reality. Only the scientific method can lead to the kind of reliable knowledge that took humans to the moon and transformed AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease with near-normal life expectancy.

3. Science is only a belief system, just another religion.

Science is founded on only two underlying premises: that there is a material world, and that we can learn about how that world works. Science doesn’t “believe” anything; it asks and verifies. It has an excellent track record of practical success. The scientific method unquestionably works.

4. Science keeps changing its mind.

Yes, and that’s a good thing. Scientific conclusions are always provisional. Scientists follow the evidence wherever it leads, and they often have to change course as new evidence becomes available. CAM refuses to change its mind even in the face of clear evidence. Scientific medicine stops using treatments if they are proven not to work; medical history is littered with discarded theories and practices. CAM never rejects any treatment and hardly ever tests one of its treatments against another to see which is superior."

There are another 40 responses to similar anti-scientific sentiments here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/defen...ine_44_doctor-bashing_arguments_and_rebuttals

 

agreed not logical. but also not what I said.

What I said is that science is now suggesting a mechanism by which some of the effects of internal practice could now be explained through scientific understanding and not through chi.

Now science has thought of a way that the gaps might be filled in with science and not a fairy tale.


Science - an objective fact based approach based on trust in the scientific method 1. Belivers 0. unbelivers 0.

Yay! the enlightenment wins.

 

If we rule out strength then what about those other mainstays of chi cultivation...hitting hard and resisting being hit hard in return?

Why don't the chinese use chi cultivation to win the boxing at the olympics?
Stand there with their iron shirts on and then focus their chi and hit the other guy with a chi powered strike and win every match?

And then turn professional and become world champion where such tactics would be more suited.

Why does "non-chi" Cuba have a much better boxing record than "person on every corner cultivating chi" China?

 

That may be the model that you are arguing. It is not the model that I am arguing, nor is it a model used by all internal practitioners.

As sifu ben quite rightly pointed out there are many different interpretations of what internal practices are.

Many of these do not rely on the idea that chi is a mystical energy. This has been discussed at length on other strands I think there was a recent one on chi energy.

 

I think Smitfire has been quite clear when he talks of "chi cultivation", which is what you were arguing against.

 

No that is not what I am arguing against.

I categorically do no think that the chie faries can make fighters irresistible to attack or give them super human strength.

Neither do many people who utilize internal training practices.

I put in a link to a medical study identifying newly discovered mechanisms that potentially shine a light on internal mechanisms.

You then said that this still did not pass the smitfire test. I pointed out that smitfires argument was logicaly spurious.