Talk:Shiatsu

message: The article God currently says "In monotheistic thought, God is conceived of as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. God is usually conceived of as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent as well as having an eternal and necessary existence. God is most often held to be incorporeal, with said characteristic being related to conceptions of transcendence or immanence."  Obviously too wordy, giving "credence to disproven nonsense" as Alexbrn would say.  Should we just change it to "God does not exist"?  Especially given the occasional report of healing miracles and such, this should fall under the same FRINGE and MEDRS hammers as Alexbrn wants to apply to Shiatsu, no? Dicklyon (talk) 17:54, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: If WP:OTHERSTUFFEXIST, perhaps we should verify that it is a similar subject. Are there people arguing in favor of Godatsu massage as a means to manipulate the flow of God through God channels in the human body mapped out helpfully on Godchannel Maps of the human body by practitioners? If so, we could say that such God and God channels don't exist. I was not really aware that this was the typical treatment of Gods, but I'm always willing to learn. jps (talk) 18:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

text: @Dicklyon: yes, I think this comparison is apt. Ernst 2013 writes:  It's philosophically naive to think that from the fact that these things are not empirically verifiable, we can conclude that they don't exist. To make that conclusion logically valid, you need a second premise, i.e., that things which are not empirically verifiable do not exist. And that latter premise is a philosophical position, not a fact. The difficulty is that most people tendentiously take that second premise to be false when it comes to the things they believe in (e.g., God) and as true when it comes to things they don't believe in (e.g., angels or spirits), while many others take it to be always true. Only some entirely reject it. So depending on the subject, people intuitively take another approach to it. It's clear that Alexbrn is one of those people who think the second premise always holds. If it were up to him, we'd probably be calling belief in angels "woo" and belief in God "nonsense". Except that sources absolutely won't allow that. With pseudoscience, it's very different, because a lot of sources which deal with pseudoscience do take much firmer positions on this second premise (or at least, they all focus on the unverifiability of pseudoscientific concepts, because that establishes that they are unscientific). Still, it's only a philosophical position (not 'reality', as Alexbrn would have it), and though sources are firm they generally do not take philosophically untenable positions or disparage their subject. Because sources take another approach to pseudoscience than to God, we need to do so too. However, the sources do not justify the attitude which seems to be endemic to Wikipedia, i.e., that articles on topics related to pseudoscience should only exist to make it very clear to everyone that it's all just woo and nonsense, and contain no further useful information on it. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:37, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone who has been accused often in the past, including by the likes of none other than Dicklyon, of engaging in an , I think it would be best if you did not cast WP:ASPERSIONS such as this on good faith editors. I doubt anyone here is of the opinion that we should remove all useful information on shiatsu from this article. jps (talk) 18:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking this about Wikipedia years before I ever edited here or came into contact with any editor. And I'm a scientific skeptic myself, mind you! It's a general thing, and if I was thinking about a specific editor, it was of course not about you, but about Alexbrn, who just today wrote the following on this very talk page:  Not the woo, only true, stuff like that. Also entirely ignoring policy-based arguments. Rejecting the part from the proposal that explains what qi and meridians are supposed to be. Am I so far from the mark? But you're right once again about assuming good faith. Eh, did you note though that in these discussions some editors have at times assumed far worse faith on my part? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's not delve into tu quoque if we can help it. Anyway, there are many ways to interpret what Alexbrn et al. are saying here and it helps if you try to be charitable in that and do as the good book tells you to. jps (talk) 19:29, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I will dig an ei etiam on snarky parky here below me though. But now you're just making me curious. What good book do you mean? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:42, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Snarky Parky is so blase... I prefer "the great white snark," "Ned Snark," "Grand Central Snark" or, to make it a sideways compliment, "Arthur C Snark".  ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:17, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you note? Now the joke's on you. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:41, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Shit, I'm as snarky as they get. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

text: Take your pick:  or . jps (talk) 22:43, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

text: You have accidentally chosen the wrong Talk page. Talk:God is that way. You're welcome. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:56, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: God does not exist

message: The joys of full-protection... I'll come back to this later then.  Shiatsu has a brief mention put in context in Regal's Pseudoscience - A critical encyclopedia's "Alternative medicine" section.  It could be used to add a little more context in this article's "description", possibly also to mention that it's listed in this encyclopedia, that might support the pseudoscientific mention (that currently lacks any citations).  —PaleoNeonate – 16:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added it to the article. We probably need a better source though, since Regal does not have a separate entry on Shiatsu (he barely mentions it in the passing without any analysis or further comment), and does not directly call it pseudoscience. That we do need a good source on this is made clear by the fact that while looking for sources, I found both a practitioner's handbook published by Elsevier and one published by Springer, both very well respected STM publishers. Not normally being involved with this kind of thing, I guess I kind of forgot how bad it really is. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Respectable publishers will publish pseudoscience as long as there is a buck to be made. We have a lot of documentation of this problem. Occasionally, some of these publications get pulled when Wikipedia editors go asking at the publishing houses to find out who it was who reviewed the material. I may or may not be guilty of such. :P jps (talk) 18:54, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regal 

message: This is a ‘scientists’ view of shiatsu and seems to focus on ‘disproving it’ as opposed to being an open and unbiased description of the tradition 82.40.149.126 (talk) 23:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia, by policy, takes the mainstream scientific view, reliably sourced, as it's basis. This article reflects that. However, why dont you take a look at the history section, the largest part of the article; it seems quite fair to me. - Roxy  the English speaking dog 23:30, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this is only a "C" class article so needs improvement. The History section is already the longest one but if there is more to say then improve away. As shiatsu is a kind of pseudoscience/quackery Wikipedia does too need to be up-front about that. Alexbrn (talk) 03:55, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The german version still has the "unbiased" aka pseudoscience/quackery viewpoint. 2400:2652:96E0:9700:73BD:95B:9F76:9E18 (talk) 00:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor article