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il y a 6 joursdiscuss

> And then there's homeopathy which is a largely unrelated and entirely nonsensical thing.

And be careful with that dismissal! Not that I'm helping my case, here, but Pollack doesn't think it's baloney (see related chapter in his book "The Fourth Phase of Water").

pkghost

il y a 7 joursdiscuss

Folks still sleeping on structured water.

While admittedly contested and only reproduced by a few labs outside Gerald Pollack's at University of Washington, there is a solid case that it could play a role in transporting water and sap to the tops of trees. At least, it's involved in the motion induced in hydrophilic tubes when there is sufficient ambient radiant energy (uv/infrared).

Relevant papers:

"Exclusion-zone water inside and outside of plant xylem vessels." 2024 Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-62983-3

"Surface-induced flow: a natural microscopic engine using infrared energy as fuel." 202 Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba0941

"Long-range forces extending from polymer-gel surfaces." 2003 Phys. Rev. E. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.031408

Pollack's site: https://www.pollacklab.org/

Some critiques of Pollack's theory:

Schurr, J.M. (2013). Phenomena associated with gel–water interfaces: analyses and alternatives to the long-range ordered water hypothesis. J. Phys. Chem. B, 117(25), 7653–7674. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp302589y Elton, D.C., Spencer, P.D., Riches, J.D. & Williams, E.D. (2020). Exclusion zone phenomena in water — a critical review of experimental findings and theories. Int. J. Mol. Sci., 21(14), 5041. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21145041 (open access; the most thorough critical review) Elton, D.C. & Spencer, P.D. (2021). Pathological water science — four examples and what they have in common. In Water in Biomechanical and Related Systems (Biologically-Inspired Systems, vol. 17), pp. 155–170. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67227-0_8 (preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07287)

pkghost

il y a 3 moisdiscuss

Based on the list of contenders feels like you might be missing rsync.net?

pkghost

il y a 3 moisdiscuss

A so-called fourth phase of water (liquid, but with some crystalline organization) that grows on hydrophilic surfaces by absorbing ultraviolet and infrared light, and organizes into a honeycomb-like lattice similar to ice, but lacking the H+ binding layers to make it rigid. It has higher viscosity than bulk water, and a net-negative charge.

Yes, it's a relatively recent concept (decades) pursued mostly by Gerald Pollack at University of Washington and not widely replicated, though there is some replication that has prompted critical review (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7404113/). It's also downstream of work by Albert Szent-Györgyi (Nobel prize for vitamin C) and Gilbert Ling. And, of course, there are a bunch of folks Pollack distances himself from commercializing the concept.

From the horse's mouth: https://www.pollacklab.org/research

If I had a coloring book for every person who cited wikipedia as a reliable source on cutting-edge science... I'd have Christmas presents for a bunch of people I don't know!

pkghost

il y a 3 moisdiscuss

Get a microscope and help me explore the role of structured water in rouleaux formation.

Rouleaux formations are clumps of red blood cells, and they're bad because 90% of our circulatory system is < 1 cell wide, so clumps cannot pass. Hematological literature of past 50 years is a bit of a mess regarding mechanisms, seemingly has not considered structured water because it's recent and looks a little fringe. Structured water is known to be disrupted by WiFi, so if a clearer connection can be made between structured water and rouleaux, it could offer the simplest and most encompassing explanation for biological harm from EMF; would also make the benefits of sauna, red light therapy, grounding/earthing, and other practices more legible.

I did an n=5 study on sauna and rouleaux (positive result; draft report: https://thespacebetween.xyz/p/sangre-y-sauna/), and some n=1 observations of myself with grounding and wifi. Blog post: https://thespacebetweenx.substack.com/p/blood-and-the-specte...

pkghost

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

“While the attraction is clear, the underlying motivation is not,” he said.

Nobody involved in the study or the article has ever done even a small dose of psilocybin and interacted with crystals.

pkghost

il y a 9 moisdiscuss

they did not use RAG for these tests... how are we supposed to take the report seriously when it does not demonstrate even a cursory understanding of nature of LLMs?

pkghost

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

Ah! When it comes to arguments, yes, I do agree that their supporting examples really ought to be true-to-life.

But I don't think that's quite what was going on here.

munificent was using a metaphor in service of his plea, his encouragement, his advice that you really ought to consider making regular efforts at what you care about. To me, that feels a lot less technical and a lot more human than an argument does.

The difference between metaphors and examples might be that the important part of a metaphor is how it functions in context, how it adds to the metaphrand[1], and the important part of an example is how it functions out of context.

To give an example of metaphor: many Native American tribes besides the Lemhi Shoshone have stories that claim Sacagawea as one of their own. The stories—themselves metaphors for tribal values—are, of course, wrong, but they serve an important instructional purpose, nonetheless, transmitting values and custom in a narrative that inspires. In that case, it seems less important that the children of these tribes are hearing something factually incorrect, and more important that they are inspired by and identify with the story.

To give an example of example: if you're making an argument in court, you have to reference examples of past rulings that support your position. The strength of your argument depends completely on the validity of your examples, as they occurred outside the current context.

If you think I'm full of hot air, you're right, but anyway here is a list of famous authors explaining how fiction is truer than the truth itself: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-t...

Thanks for coming to my TEDxHN talk.

1) Julian Jaynes, in the beginning of "The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", does a lovely segment on how we only learn via metaphor, and in which he develops the terms metaphier (commonly, the metaphor itself) and metaphrand (the thing being described by the metaphor).

pkghost

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

And this is the great thing about threaded comments — everyone who wants to follow the pedantic branch of conversation can do so without derailing the others (though this ideal is frequently thwarted by bad UX).

Of course, it's nice when the pedants are self-aware, as is the case here, and acknowledge the pedantry of their tangent.

Normalize polite pedantry!

pkghost

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

I do

pkghost

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

You're still misunderstanding how the retirement trust works: selling shares does not imply a withdrawal, it just means that instead of owning stock, the retirement account now owns cash. Because selling is not a withdrawal, there is no withdrawal penalty, and no influence on the trustee's ability or willingness to sell.

pkghost

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

That's wrong. Holding something in an IRA doesn't prevent you from selling it, only from taking the proceeds and putting them in your personal checking. The proceeds continue to be property of the IRA/401k, and can be re-invested elsewhere, without incurring a taxable event.

You can day-trade in your self-directed 401k or IRA until you're broke or Thiel-level rich, and the IRS will never get involved.

I mostly agree with the top-level comment, here; ProPublica is losing a lot of credibility for their mildly misleading and black-and-white framing of these tax issues, and I'm someone who genuinely believes that wealth inequality is a problem that can and should be addressed by the state.