About the incident in the videos- straight up, he believed in magic and the magic failed. If you honestly believe that smoke and praying and facing the four directions can keep steel from cutting flesh, it will fail most of the time. On the other hand, it may give you the courage to get in there and try. Ghost shirts didn’t really stop bullets, but the courage gave a few early victories.

You can admire the courage to test your convictions in public and filmed. I admire the courage myself. Nine times out of ten, or more, when these are televised they are outrageously faked. This man had the balls to do it for real… and, for real, he sliced himself.

This is the bad part- he didn’t make this shit up. Someone taught him that magic could protect his flesh from steel. He believed and he tested it. There are hundreds who believe it without testing it. The courage to test is great, necessary. The other believers who only believe, without testing, are not only equally likely to get slaughtered, but he knows it now and they don’t.

As for this piece, “If you are ever in a knife fight you will get cut.” Or whatever variation. The two schools of thought on this are
1)that being told you will get cut prepares you, so tell the they will get cut; or
2) Fear of getting cut will paralyze the students, so tell them it will be okay.

Both are lies. I do my best never to lie to my students. If I were to pool all the encounters of my close friends it would run something like 14-1, fifteen knife encounters between four of us and only one has even been scratched… but you know what? Much more than scratched and you aren’t adding to the data pool because you’re busy becoming fertilizer. I don’t teach children so I don’t have to treat students like children. I don’t have to lie to them. You might get cut. You might not. Whatever happens you keep moving until you are safe. THAT is what you practice. Keep moving until you are safe. The rest is philosophy, stuff you can talk about over beers later.

Here’s an article on state of things in the self defense world. http://ezinearticles.com/?id=2747936

Good luck in your endeavors to learn the truth.

Christophe Clugston

The statistics you posted are ones I’m familiar with — gunfights occurring within 10 feet being the most frequent.

But you’re missing part of the equation. That statistic is usually cited alongside another one which mentions the extremely high “rate of miss” that trained marksmen have in such situations.

Nonetheless, I don’t plan on being shot at any time soon

We make the best decisions we can with the information we have available. I’m not waiting for someone else to make it happen, I’ve been cut before and so have many people; it’s a simple conclusion to draw that hacking yourself with a sword will result in injury. If we’re fancying this man a scientist or experimenter, then yes, his hypothesis was that he would be unharmed, and he was proven wrong. Rather than simply trying it again, wouldn’t it be wiser to go over the incident and find what went wrong? If he really has done it before, than we can assume that something unexpected occurred during this particular trial, and correcting that would lead to more successful results. Is there anything I’ve gotten wrong?

In terms of knife fighting I think that options in general are limited by foreknowledge and that a surprise attack often entails the same limitations regardless of weapon, though the details are bound to vary.

You know I believe in the scientific method, thorough testing and documenting is what allows us to understand the new phenomena, and regardless of naysayers, it is my belief that those novel, inconvenient results do make themselves known and quite popular. As you can see, we do take advantage of the Wright brothers’ work, silicon computer chips, rock music, and other things quite unpopular in their day.

Debate is the only way to solidify results and justify results. Struggle is what yields progress. Rather than shy from it, why not embrace it? Without the arguments resulting from their work, I don’t think the Wright brothers would have developed the technologies that they did. Furthermore, I think the Wright brothers’ secrecy regarding their research (somewhat a parallel to esoteric energy training?) contributed to the unfavorable and, more importantly, lack of response they received at the time. Silence, to me, is the most dangerous critic.

You are correct, I haven’t tested my doubt in detail, nor have I documented any research into the matter. However, as this is a casual discussion, I believe casual research is also in order. Even the infamous John Chang seemed to have trouble explaining just how his abilities worked, and watching Crudelli’s first series, the explanations for kiai-blasts were choppy, at best. Watching the exploits of Dillman does yield explanations, but each is more absurd than the last. This is the reason for my interest in the research into these paranormal phenomena. I do believe legitimate abilities exist, thanks in no small part to this site, but there needs to be research to separate the real from the false. How long did people purchase snake-oil tonics before medical research began providing real medecine to the general public? Yes, explanations are common, but I would prefer explanations that can be tested and repeated and studied, rather than simply given and forgotten.

I feel that ALL of the extranormal phenomena we see should be tested (although I will concede that even scientific testing has social influences, we’ve had that discussion before), and documented especially.

Thomas, why should they be tested and documented?

The Wright brothers defied expectations and “common sense” because they understood the process they were studying and could explain the reason of how to escape gravity.

Spoken like a true Monday-morning scientist, ha ha. Of course, everyone else could (and did) plausibly explain all the reasons why the Wrights would fail.

In reality, the public responds to novel ideas thusly:

1. “Crazy.”
2. “Crazy.”
3. “Crazy.”
4. “Obvious.”

Believe it or not, scientific testing begins around step 2. Subsequently, everyone else (including rival scientists) mounts a vigorous defense of common sense, while ignoring the new and inconvenient experimental results.

You might take a look at newspaper editorials of the late 18th or early 19th centuries, immediately preceding (and following) one of these groundbreaking experiments. I guarantee someone called the Wrights delusional, and someone else claimed they were in league with the devil.

This still happens today.

I doubt that this man (or any number of extranormal specialists) could explain how they would “increase the protective capabilities” of their bodies.

Have you tested this doubt, by asking any of them for an explanation? (If not, some might consider your doubts to be an example of self-delusion!)

Actually, explanations are common. You can even find some in the TV series from which this video clip was extracted, IIRC.