this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
67 points (81.3% liked)

Asklemmy

47328 readers
375 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Came across a list of pseudosciences and was fun seeing where im woo woo.

Lunar effect – the belief that the full Moon influences human and animal behavior.

Ley Lines

Accupressure/puncture

Ayurveda

Body Memory

Faith healing

Anyway, list too long to read. I guess Im quite the nonscientific woowoomancer. How about you? What pseudoscience do you believe? Also I believe nearly every stone i find was an ancient indian stone. Also manifesting and or prayer to manipulate via subconscious aligning the future. oh and the ability to subconsciously deeply understand animals, know the future, etc

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Before she passed my Nan had chronic arthritis. She had many joint replacements (both hips, a knee, shoulder, pins in her wrists etc) and without medication life was a misery.

One thing she said gave her genuine relief was acupuncture, and she wasn't into pseudoscience at all. Maybe is was a placebo effect and it was expensive but it was worthwhile for her.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not sure either of these counts fully as what OP is looking for, but -

The idea of the technological singularity feels right to me. There's a whole section on the wikipedia page about scientific objections to it, and I get that, but if we don't kill ourselves before then, it seems like an event that almost has to occur at some point, to me. And maybe it zigs instead of zags and we get star trek. Or maybe it zags and we get terminator. But probably neither of those I'm guessing, and these days it's hard to imagine that it would put humanity on a worse trajectory than we seem to be on today.

Similarly, but less seriously (for me) I like to consider the whole "maybe we're in a simulation" theory.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yeah I kinda adhere to the simulation thing too. As a videogames programmer, every time I try to learn about quantum mechanics I learn about some new quirk that really makes it sound like some game engine limitation

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

when I like to gain perspective and imagine how useless we are on this meaningless little planet in a massive galaxy universe etc I just imagine the lonely little Boltzmann brain that's actually just imagining the whole thing for a few nanoseconds before it returns back to quantum foam

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

When someone says it's quiet at work, suddenly all these emergencies come in...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Partly hollow earth. There are oceans in the crust, I think that is an accepted theory now. Life could have evolved to survive down there. It might not be anything special but a micro-organism is life too.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Feng Shui, though I mostly credit it to the Dear Modern channel breaking the concept of qi and energy down into stuff like human traffic flow, activities, scenery, and noise, and using that to optimize spaces for comfort. It's mostly psychology, and some of the superstitious stuff I'm not really into.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Body Memory

I mean, cellular memory and muscle memory exist.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Osteopathy.

I thought it was scientifically proven, it seems that's not the case 😬

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Tell that to my back/arm pain I had for months after a Ski accident... After 4 session and one good knack I literally felt how everything got back in place.

I felt so exhausted and somehow strange like a little bit drunk... But after a few weeks the pain went away ! Like magic !

So yeah, science can't prove everything but that doesn't mean it doesn't work or has some positive benefits ! Science has also been wrong numerous times or has been controlled by conflict of interests... What ever, choose your poison !

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Acupuncture, to a certain extent. There's obviously something to it (a friend of mine went there because of various issues, and it helped), but the actual science isn't nailed down yet.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Definitely the lunar effect, but that is still under study. There's a documentary called "The Shark Side of the Moon" which follows a scientist trying to prove a lunar effect on sharks. There's also some inconclusive evidence of a lunar effect on people with bipolar disorder; the full moon might trigger mania, probably due to excess light during nighttime. Context: >!People with bipolar disorder (known as 'manic depression' years ago) are very sensitive to light, substances, and many other things that can trigger manic or depressive episodes for them. The possible mania under the full moon may be a reason behind myths like werewolves and terms like 'lunatic'.!<

I'll edit if I find more.

Edit: I found another one which I would easily try or suggest to others if evidence-based therapies have failed.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy in which the person being treated is asked to recall distressing images; the therapist then directs the person in one type of bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping. It is included in several guidelines for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some clinical psychologists have argued that the eye movements do not add anything above imagery exposure and characterize its promotion and use as pseudoscience.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I really want to believe the Assassin's Creed concept that our DNA holds memories from our ancestors.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Epigenetics. But that's not as cool as whatever Assassin's Creed is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Goodness, that's a lot to read.

I don't know if I believe any of them with actual faith instead of just chalking coincidental things up to some beliefs like that. The Lunar phase one comes to mind as something I'll often reference, but I don't actually believe in lunacy.

However, there's one about grounding methods in the health section. I definitely don't believe there's anything about elecron alignment or whatever bull that all is. But being on the ground helps me a lot with anxiety and relaxation in general. To the point where I prefer sitting in front of my couch vs on it, lol. So maybe I believe in that one, but not in any pseudoscience way??

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I like all the ones you listed and I love β€œwoowoomancer” as a description. Other than those, I have a good feel for future sight.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

ITT: very little pseudoscience. It's pseudoscience only when you try to pass something non-scientific as science (understood in the modernist sense). There are plenty of systems of knowledge that are outside of science and don't really care about passing as science when making statements about the world: metaphysics, theology, cybernetics, open systems theory, and so forth. Those are not pseudosciences.

load more comments
view more: β€Ή prev next β€Ί