Quote from Yannis:
Wally,
Although I agree with you in principle, I have to admit to some hesitation to accepting this statement at face value unchallenged.
As you may know, there's a power struggle between the "hard sciences" like chemistry, physics, etc, and the "soft sciences" like psychology, sociology, etc, as to what constitutes "scientific proof."
The physicists etc favor what they call "objective proof," although no proof can be totally objective because human beings ultimately have to evaluate the data the lead us to believe that the proof was objective (witness the ongoing disagreements between the proponents of quantum mechanics and those of special relativity, not to mention the theory of general relativity which is treated as being true although there has been no real proof at all, just elegant mathematics.)
On the other hand, a psychologist is perfectly content in getting to a "inter-subjective proof" where may subjects agree that a certain subjective phenomemon works. For example, what is the proof that humans dream? That love is (one of) the strongest motivation(s) we can have? Everything that Freud, Young, et al wrote and practiced? These human experiences are accepted solely on the basis of inter-subjective agreement: many people agree that these things happen to them.
(...frankly, imo, the relevance of technical analysis to successful trading falls in the same category...)
I have a PhD in Physics, High Energy Theory, from UVA. My dissertation included the dispersion behavior of quarks. I have never seen, touched, tasted, heard or smelled one of those little things, nor has anyone else. But, everybody (at least, most people) in the hard sciences arena believe that they are there. And they hand out degrees to their disciples every day.
On the other hand, I have also been meditating for over 30 years. I know from direct experience that extraordinary phenomena do happen during (or, if you will, because of) meditation. Everybody (at least most people) in the soft sciences arena, agree that these things are a reality. As a minimum, the meditating subject believes the experiences are there, but since we are talking about the subjective realm, that's good enough.
Will there ever be a reconciliation of the two sides? Will we be able to "prove" in a hard sciences way, that meditative experiences do happen? Yes, I think so. For example, by monitoring the brain functions of experienced medidators, one sees much higher level of coherence, etc etc. There's a lot of ground breaking work that is being done in this field.
The opposite (proving a hard fact in a soft way) can easily be demonstrated: hypnotize a bunch of physicists and they'll see all sorts of new elementary particles coming out of each other's ears. Isn't this why some claimed that they had "proof" of cold fusion in the lab a few years ago? Hypnosis, paranoid group-think, extreme (blinding) desire to get the Nobel prize, what's the difference?
Do you want proof? Try it and let us know if a good form of meditation helps your trading as it does mine.
In the meantime, let me say this: it will be much harder to catch a good trade by going against the trend, off Fib extensions - I promise you that! And yet, some people are still attempting to trade this way 
Well, with all due respect, but you are missing the point in what I have said. Yes, quarks have never been observed and the theory explains why. Can the theory of levitation, if such exists at all, explain why the levitation has never been observed? Physics is a sound discipline that is subject to and, what's even more, welcomes falsification. If quarks are really a bunk we will know this sooner or later. They will be replaced by a better model. Quarks are really a model. Nothing else, that's not reality. They may NOT exist.
We do not know the reality, we only try to describe and model it. On the other hand the believers in levitation would tell you that even if someone can do this they would never demonstrate it to the rest of the world. Now, that's the world of difference. In physics things sooner or later can be subjected to falsification and revision and this process continues. We get a better and better picture of the world around us. We may never get a complete picture, but at least we are not fooling ourselves because we are open to falsification.
As far as meditation is concerned, I have never said that meditation is useless (in fact I have said that it is useful), all I am saying is that expecting that you start levitating after meditating is a bunk and if you think I am wrong then perhaps you can provide some evidence to the contrary.
Subjectivity is not something that physics deals with. The hard sciences deal with things that are open to falsification via repeatable experiments. That's a very narrow field of all human experience, but very successful. Sometimes it's better to do less but well than to do a lot but only so so. You can have your personal pet theories but if they fail experimental tests they do not count.
That meditative experiences cannot be proven by physics does not mean that they do not exist. They may but they cannot be treated by physics because physics simply does not deal with such phenomena, perhaps yet, but levitating is a simple physical process and as such it can either be verified or else it makes more sense to assume that it just does not exist.
BTW, trading off of Fib retracements makes sense if you do this in the main trend direction and not otherwise. I don't know why you would like to do this in the opposite direction. It's possible, but harder.
As far as general relativity is concerned, it has been proved very well by many experiments. There are no experiments that would falsify it. There is more to it than some elegant mathematics. It's a well tested theory and it has been tested for over 80 years by now. It can explain things that Newton's gravity theory cannot. It can be replaced by a better theory in future but the new theory will have to be able to explain all general relativity can and more.
In this case I would suggest a reduction of drug abuse.
