What are "vibes" and how do they work??

[madinmaryland]

I'm not talking about the thingies that buzz.

:shrug:

[realisticphish]

1. i guess

it's a way to pray for someone while still being able to make fun of christians

[madinmaryland]

2. Isn't that kind of hypocrital?

Just saying, cause i see it as a way of mocking one group while doing the same fucking thing.

I am wrong??

[realisticphish]

3. of course it is

you sound shocked that some duers might be hypocritical ;)

[madinmaryland]

4. Honest. I'm not vibrating?

[realisticphish]

12. what you do in your spare time

is your own business...

[TZ]

5. he.

Its new age/warm fuzzies. Note I "wish people well", and don't send "vibes".

[madinmaryland]

6. Even that is odd.

"wishing" someone well. just sayin. it just seems really odd to me that we have all of these fru-fru things to dream upon.

i'm going to hell now, but what the fuck!

:hi: <-- is that a vibe???

[uriel1972]

8. wtf vibes?

bzzzzzz I'm radiating wtf vibes bzzzzzz
How useful is it thinking happy thoughts at people? bugger all as far as I can tell
Better to get off your arse and do something useful for them. But sigh that would require EFFORT and we all know that the homeopathic solution for the worlds problem is to do as little as possible and think happy thoughts. Sorry rambling I know

[madinmaryland]

10. Yeah. Though the beach boys do have some good vibrations....

but i don't let my cats on the beach where they would be be vibrating with happiness over all the seafood available!

:hi:

[Dr. Strange]

7. Just in case you're interested...

I am not going to say anything about turtlensue responding to your question by typing "batteries." That would not be proper.

[madinmaryland]

9. Heh Heh!

[realisticphish]

11. ha nt

[TZ]

14. .....

pev. :rofl:

[mr blur]

13. Woo-woo prayers, and they don''t (nt)

[HamdenRice]

15. It is neither mysterious nor supernatural

People evolved in small troops, from groups like chimp troops through hominid hunter gatherers, through modern human groups, to agricultural societies with segmented lineage affinity groups.

In such social structures, the subtleties of heirarchy, including group approbration, were very important.

As a result, humans react positively when other humans provide them overt approbation.

If a DUers in, say, the Lounge says please send "good vibes" to DUer X, and hundreds of people post back, "good vibes to X," and X reads all those "good vibes," X will have a sense of psychological approbation.

What's mysterious or woo woo about that?

[TZ]

16. Because in the end it doesn't accomplish anything?

Except generating warm fuzzy feelings.
Show me where "vibes" cure someone's disease, then maybe I'd understand.Its the new age version of praying, which HAS been shown to be useless scientifically.
I guess mr "athiest" faith healing is okay in your book too?

[HamdenRice]

17. Warm fuzzy feelings are great ...

if you are capable of having them. I am! Are you? They're wonderful!

That's why when we were children and we were sick, our mothers cuddled with us and fed us chicken soup and camomile tea and tucked us into bed.

Strange that you don't seem to see how warm fuzzy feelings are a net benefit to a person who may be sick or in need of support.

[TZ]

19. I never said they weren't

But in the end as I say, they don't REALLY accomplish much. This is a reality based group here..not the "Up with people" group...

[HamdenRice]

20. Actually, they do

Children who are cuddled have better immune responses than children who aren't.

This was an especially severe problem in the orphanages of the former Soviet Union some years ago, where disabled orphan children had high mortality rates because of lack of human contact.

That's not woo woo. It's science which uncovers effects that have arisen from millions of years of evolution in social troops.

There are even studies that carefully monitor serotonin levels of chimp troops and correlate them to group hierarchy.

The real "reality based" consensus is that social approbation and physical contact have a positive effect on human well being -- obviously psychological well being (which is real -- that's why there is the field of psychology) but also physical well being.

Or do you think there is no such thing as psychological wellness?

[TZ]

23. Geez yes of course I know that human contact is necessary

and beneficial, HOWEVER, the idea that posting "good vibes" for your health on a message board is gonna do anything is a bit irrational.
I've certainly had my share of vibes my way, but its been me going out and actually doing something thats helped.

[realisticphish]

25. honestly, though

it's a pretty empty gesture. i mean, if it's your friend who sends you a nice card when you're ill, that's great. But a random stranger on the internet who posts something because you specifically ask them to? I suppose that might work for some people, and more power to them, but it seems empty to me :shrug:

[cosmik debris]

26. Even the Placebo effect comes in variable strengths n/t

[realisticphish]

27. true nt

[HamdenRice]

29. My impression of the Lounge is that it is a quite cohesive group

That's the forum where I think you are most likely to see someone ask for "vibes."

I only post there in spurts. At first it seems like it is a group of random, anonymous people posting non-sequiturs. But after a while I realized there is a large, very cohesive, distinctly not anonymous core group of posters.

I've been to several meetups with DU's Lounge lizards of New York, and they are definitely not anonymous to each other. They are a large group of friends who spend a lot of time on line with each other and in RL with each other.

[realisticphish]

30. i've been here 4 years

and the vast majority of my posts are in the lounge; granted, i don't know a lot of the people there now, but back in the day i think i was pretty close to quite a few people. even so, for me at least, asking those people to tell me what i want to hear didn't mean a whole lot, or at least not anywhere near as much as a RL friend would.

I don't deny that feeling good is, well, good. But i think that its pretty undeniable that "vibes" fills the same slot that "prayers" do for religious people. I think that for many DUers, "vibes" are just a "keeping you in my thoughts" thing. But for many others, it's basically karma, which is just as wooish as christianity

[cosmik debris]

18. Vibes

As in Vibraphone?

http://www.woodbrass.com/images/woodbrass/VIBRAPHONE+MUSSER+M55.JPG

[Warpy]

21. A synonym is "gut"

Once in a while, we all get a "gut feeling" about a person or situation that turns out to be right. If we ignore that gut feeling, we end up in trouble.

I tend to think of it as the totality of our experience as human beings warning us that the shit's about to hit the fan and we'd better pay closer attention.

"Always go with your gut" was taught in nursing school, and was one of the more valuable lessons. Whenever I had a bad feeling about somebody, it always turned out to be well founded, a hidden disease process was about to create a calamity of some sort. There were occasional disasters that didn't present these bad feelings, but they were a tiny minority. Most of the time, I just knew.

Less reliable are "good vibes" we get from those glowing, confident people we've all met in our lives. They're usually glowing and confident because they're too damned dumb to know how utterly bereft of knowledge and critical thinking skills they really are.

"Vibes" are a warning system, certainly valid enough to get us to pay closer attention, but not valid enough to base our lives on.

[lizerdbits]

22. LOL

Less reliable are "good vibes" we get from those glowing, confident people we've all met in our lives. They're usually glowing and confident because they're too damned dumb to know how utterly bereft of knowledge and critical thinking skills they really are.

That is so true. :rofl:

[madinmaryland]

28. "gut feelings" are things that are generally something you have observed about

a person in the past. Whether you actually recall you observation, it is something that you have actually observed (sight, sound, and even from discussing with other people).

Unless of course you believe in ESP.

:shrug:

[moggie]

31. I had strong gut feelings on Tuesday night

Wednesday morning, I just had a hangover.

[Heddi]

24. Asking for "vibes" is a way for asking or prayers without really asking for "prayers"

THink of the situations where people ask for "good vibes" or "send some good vibes my way"--same situations where people would ask for prayers, or good wishes, or whatever.

But asking for "vibes" is (to some people) not as religious as asking for "prayers"---but really they're all the same:

You (the asker) are requesting that someone else (the askee) to think good thoughts about you in the ultimate hope that those good thoughts will directly affect the asker in a positive way. No different than praying, or vibing or whatever. Just different terminology for the same words. "Please think random thoughts about me that are positive so that way when something good happens, I can thank the "vibes/prayers/wishes/thoughts" but when negative or neutral things happen, I can just say that others weren't praying/vibing/wishing/thinking good enough or hard enough"

I'm sure that everyone here is aware of the Prayer study---where a group of patients who underwent heart surgery were told they were being prayed for, and a group of patients who underwent heart surgery were not prayed for, and the group that had prayers actually had a higher percentage of post-surgical complications.


Guess God didn't like them as much

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html