Any Grounding Experience?

I see. You were just trying to hijack the thread, yet again.
Ah yes, but dreamers must dream, so that builders can build. Ideas first, reality later. http://physicscentral.com/explore/writers/will.cfm

Empiricism necessarily follows theory and emotion. Nothing to observe or experience, if no one has the passion to build it in the first place. They are all necessary components. http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/1016/1016d_fallingwater.cfm
I think I've failed to make myself clear again. Let me just say I'm a monist, not a dualist, and leave it at that.
 
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I think I've failed to make myself clear again. Let me just say I'm a monist, not a dualist, and leave it at that.
What about qualia? Everyone's experiences reality differently, because our minds/bodies are unique with specific histories, and our sensory organs have different sensitivities and characteristics. What may feel delightful to an asphalt technician such as yourself, may feel like rough road necessitating shoes to someone else. Yet, you are both right, for your own bodies. Current experience is always reflected through the lens of prior experience.
 
there are more transatlantic differences in language than I realised
Language is highly imprecise and does a poor job of communicating the full range of human expression. Despite taking the pains to explicitly define the specific meaning of words used in a contracts, lawyers remain happily employed debating in court. We respect poets and writers who possess the gift of translating the human experience into words. Bare Lee and I are having a wonderful discussion, and I still have no idea what he is talking about.

Much communication is nonverbal: body language, tone, pace, etc. As xkcd shows, the internet is a flawed medium, ideal for miscommunication. If our discussion regarding regarding minshoe manufacturers and grounding had taken place over the phone, it might have been more obvious that my tone was that of sincere disappointment rather than criticism, the admiration in my voice as I spoke of how impressed I was with the quality of work that SoftStar and Itasca produces. That it was apparent from their websites that they advertise their products as consistent with grounding, only because so many customers have asked them about it. Misunderstanding could have been resolved, with the opportunity for immediate feedback and clarification.

Even as I write this, I worry that my prose is ripe with opportunity for further misunderstanding. *sigh*
 
What about qualia? Everyone's experiences reality differently, because our minds/bodies are unique with specific histories, and our sensory organs have different sensitivities and characteristics. What may feel delightful to an asphalt technician such as yourself, may feel like rough road necessitating shoes to someone else. Yet, you are both right, for your own bodies. Current experience is always reflected through the lens of prior experience.
Feeling a bit non sequiturial this morning Sid?
Or have I further muddied my message?
I'm no swimmer, but I know what's wet.
Let's focus on the invariants and call it a day.
Bare Lee and I are having a wonderful discussion, and I still have no idea what he is talking about.
I'm always happy to be pleasantly misunderstood. I hang my hat on that sort of thing.
 
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Or have I further muddied my message?
I'm no swimmer, but I know what's wet.
Everyone may know that running barefoot during the winter is cold, but clearly people have different tolerances.

A room temperature of 76 degrees is too warm for some people and too cool for others.

The bridge builder does not exist in a vacuum. The bridge is designed to be used by commuters, who have their own concept of the purpose of a bridge and what constitutes a good one. Function can be further compromised when politicians are involved. Clearly, the architect did not plan for Jersey politics. Empiricism is still subject to the observer effect, when applied to real life situations.

In real life, there are rarely absolutes. Or is empiricism meant to be philosophical and theoretical?
 
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Everyone may know that running barefoot during the winter is cold, but clearly people have different tolerances.

A room temperature of 76 degrees is too warm for some people and too cool for others.

The bridge builder does not exist in a vacuum. The bridge is designed to be used by commuters, who have their own concept of the purpose of a bridge and what constitutes a good one. Function can be further compromised when politicians are involved. Clearly, the architect did not plan for Jersey politics. Empiricism is still subject to the observer effect.

In real life, there are rarely absolutes. Or is empiricism meant to be philosophical and theoretical?
Rationalism + Empiricism = Science.
Mind + Body = person.
Organism + Environment = Ecology.

You can't have one without the other. This is monism. Most thought tends to lean towards either the idealist or materialist side of things, I see a big tent unity under the lean-to. The trick is to explain it. Not easy with our Cartesian tradition, which permeates our categories, metaphors, and theories.

Let me conclude by saying I am no crude empiricist. A proper exegesis of my position is not possible, but it's not what you've been thinking it is, I think, and I refuse to spend much time at BRS writing much more than quips and overly detailed descriptions of my runs and workouts anyway. Try to imagine these buzzwords cozying up to each other in an nicely worded paragraph: biosocial becomings, conceptual spaces, construction grammar, cybernetics, constraints, recursion, emergent dynamical systems, evolutionary epistemology. That's where I'm at. Can you dig it?

I don't mean to be flippant (OK, maybe a little), or disrespectful (here I'm being sincere), but without the proper structuring of daily events, time will escape into the twilight, . . . something to do with quantum pragmatics.

"Keep reaching for the stars but keep your feet on the grounding."

Now time for a herring infusion.
 
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<<Those who use lies to sell “grounding” products, perform a grave injustice to those who do benefit from grounding. >>
Clearly, Sid, there are more transatlantic differences in language than I realised.

First, let me say that I haven't started my own test yet. I was waiting for comments to accumulate, but then all this broke out. I'll comment on those in other replies.

But regarding "lying", at some point (and I suspect this is where Sid was going), I think a deliberate indifference to the truthcan be characterized as lying. And when the folks doing it are scientists themselves who ought to know about things like observational bias are doing just the bare minimum to make their product seem viable, it's hard not to call that a deliberate indifference to the truth.

There's a really nice quote from Congressman (and plasma physicist) Rush Holt I recently came across:

I am not saying that scientists are smarter or wiser than other folks. But there are habits of mind: you know, a deep appreciation of evidence; an ability to deal with probability and statistics, to be alert to cognitive biases and tricks that our minds play on ourselves; … a willingness to accept tentative conclusions and accept … the uncertainty of these scientific conclusions — not as reason for inaction, but a way of finding the best path forward …

Scientists do have that obligation, and a title like "Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?" throws that out the window (even if the title does end in a question mark) and sure looks likes deception to me (or such a casual disregard for accuracy as to count as the same).

If they were interested in truth, we would have seen more studies by now. Well-done studies. Maybe even studies done by other universities. Confirmation studies. But we've seen nothing. That is highly suspicious in and of itself.

I also note that their product line is . . . um . . . overblown. If you already have grounded sheets (which supposedly are grounding you), why would they also sell grounding pillows? If things work the way they say they do, once you are grounded, you are grounded. You cannot be (grounded)^2.

They do not seem to be taking the intellectual care that scientists ought to know to take.
 
Glad you came back. I hadn't seen the grounding pillows, but I had actually wondered about making one. You wouldn't be trying to be grounded ^2! It is just what would work best for you. If you like to wear long thick pyjamas, you wouldn't make a good contact with the sheet, so the head might work better. A pillow case would also be easier to wash, and presumably less expensive, and easier to take and use away from home. Also easier if one partner is hostile to the idea.
 
Glad you came back. I hadn't seen the grounding pillows, but I had actually wondered about making one. You wouldn't be trying to be grounded ^2! It is just what would work best for you. If you like to wear long thick pyjamas, you wouldn't make a good contact with the sheet, so the head might work better. A pillow case would also be easier to wash, and presumably less expensive, and easier to take and use away from home. Also easier if one partner is hostile to the idea.

Well, yes, it would be grounding^2. As long as one is believing that it is grounding that's important, you only need one spot of your skin touching the grounded area. That could be a hand or a foot.

Yes, a pillow would be easier overall, and cheaper. Yet, on their website there doesn't seem to be any way of just buying the pillow and the connectors. You have to buy the sheet to get that other connection stuff. (I could have missed it, though.)
 
Well, yes, it would be grounding^2. As long as one is believing that it is grounding that's important, you only need one spot of your skin touching the grounded area. That could be a hand or a foot.

Yes, a pillow would be easier overall, and cheaper. Yet, on their website there doesn't seem to be any way of just buying the pillow and the connectors. You have to buy the sheet to get that other connection stuff. (I could have missed it, though.)
How about a hammock made of copper wires?
 
I see a few problems with this scenario. For a start, it would be like me testing aspirin as a painkiller for headaches when I don't actually suffer from headaches. I would not feel any better on days when I took aspirin, but that wouldn't mean that someone who suffered from headaches would feel no benefit. Do you currently feel any malaise that might be due to not being grounded or have any difficulty sleeping? If not, what kind of feeling better are you expecting to feel?

Secondly, if you spend a lot of time outdoors in bare feet, you might already be reaping the benefits of that, so that spending additional time grounded might make little difference compared to someone who was always shod.

Third, assuming that there was some room for improvement as a result of grounding, it might not be a straight on/off. In my experience it takes a few days of not being grounded before I notice my sleep deteriorating again. (Eg, on holiday)

Fourth, what kind of earthing strap are you using, and how to you plan to test it for effectiveness? I have two sheets which differ quite substantially, for some reason. (Tested with a voltmeter).

OK, let me start responding to some of the comments . . .

First, if Earthing really is "The Most Important Health Discovery Ever", it damn well better not be like aspirin when you don't have a headache. In addition, I'm 59 years old. I have plenty of malaise. (Shattered cartilage in one knee, a bad back, BPH combined with having trouble getting back to sleep after going.) Is that enough for you?

Regarding being outdoors in bare feet--not much this winter. And even then, if it is really grounding that's important (as their claim goes), then walking on concrete or asphalt wouldn't count at all. Even walking barefoot on earth probably shouldn't count, since if you look up the code for grounding a house electrical system, you need an 8 foot rod to get any sort of decent grounding. (This ought to be another strike against their claims.)

I could consider not taking data for any day that I go barefoot hiking. On the other hand, if earthing does what they claim, I ought to get extra, noticeable benefits from sleeping grounded overnight.

I thought you'd said that you could tell immediately when your grounding connection had come loose? How does that square with your comment above about needing time to see improvement?

The strap is a standard computer-geek grounding strap.
Anti-Static Wrist Strap Grounding Cord with Adjustable Band

This has a 1 megaohm resistor, so you won't see the grounding with a standard ohmmeter anyways. But you are still grounded.
 
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Would this be considered up to code, or do they need to be 3 feet further down?
article-2385548-1B302230000005DC-967_634x368.jpg
(attempt at humor)
 
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Skin is poorly conductive. When through-skin transmission is desired, steps must be taken to improve conductivity or increase surface area, such as use of abrasive and conductive gels, needles, or conductive pads.

Also, static charges may accumulate on regular bedsheets and clothes.

As such, a grounding strap may not be electrophysiologically equivalent to a large sheet.

Ambient temperature, humidity, hydration level may affect results.

Changes may take more than one night take effect.

Results may be measureable but imperceivable, eg minor changes in blood pressure, heart rate.

A washout period may be required to allow for effects to disippate.

Good luck!

Some of your points argue against earthing, not necessarily my test of it (and I agree!). Regarding skin conductiveness, that applies to the sheets, too ;). As does the bit about static charges accumulating. But I have a hard time seeing that a grounding strap would be too dissimilar. (That also goes for walking barefoot, which is what supposedly what prompted this whole idea--there you have clothing that can generate static charges, and voltage differences between the ground and air at 5 feet above the ground, etc..) Bottom line on this one: I'm not about to buy a sheet.

I suppose things could take more than one night to show up. At this point I'm not willing to do this more than 30 days. Somebody else can. If so, I guess one could leave things the same for three nights in a row and then record results.

In terms of imperceivable results, that's certainly possible. Again, I fall back on their claim(?) that this is the most important health discovery ever. And that spinningwoman said she could tell almost immediately when her ground failed.

I am thinking, though, that I could easily add taking my blood pressure when I get up in the morning and see if there's anything there.

In reality, I'd like to see a decent university with no vested interest do a real test of this. (I'd also like them to be intimately familiar with how to do the medical tests; I'm not convinced that Ober and folks did. A classic case of not understanding ones instruments is Pons and Fleischman.)

But whatever I do, even if I get a negative result, there will still be the true believers who will find some excuse. On the other hand, if I get a positive result, I will be willing to change my mind (maybe not about the mechanism, but of the effect). (Well, after trying to duplicate my results to try to make sure it wasn't a statistical fluke.)
 
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Besides what Sid posted I would check to make sure you have a good grounded connection every night then have your wife connect or dis-connect you from the ground on random nights but you wear the ground connection every night anyways to help take away bias from the experiment basically so you never know if your connected or not.

Just to make clear, there would be a switch that would control whether I was grounded or not, and I would not know how that switch was set until I analyzed the data at the end.

I would not know if I was connected (but I would always be wearing the grounding strap--I just wouldn't know if it was grounding me or not).
 
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There is also a problem with potential bias, that I can see, particularly since the results are subjective. Since you are doing this from a position of wanting to prove that grounding has no effect, it would be important to design the experiment so that your bias can't unintentionally skew the results. Unfortunately, it is hard to do that. It doesn't work just to avoid knowing whether the ground is connected or not, because in both cases (connected and disconnected) the result you 'want' is the same - ie, no effect.

Imagine that you and I both ran the experiment. I have a preference for proving that grounding has a positive effect, whereas you would prefer to find that it has no effect. The experiment you describe would be effective to prevent my bias, since in order to produce the results I 'needed'. I would have to report good effects on grounded days and poorer results on non grounded days, which I couldn't do unless I knew which days were which. You on the other hand would only have to report no effect on all days in order to prove your theory - you don't actually have to know which days are which.

I am not, of course, suggesting that either of us would deliberately skew the results, but only that the design of the experiment does not eliminate unconscious bias towards a negative result, only towards a positive result.

I understand your point. Obviously, I could make the experiment fail by always choosing "off", because then earthing would be guaranteed of 15 failures. At some point one has to trust my scientific integrity. (Hell, you guys don't even know if I'm a dog or not.) As I mentioned just a moment ago, I think I'll add in taking my blood pressure in the morning.

Seriously, I'll be looking to see if I feel an effect.
 
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Why not use one of their straps? If you are supposedly testing their theory, why not use their kit? Otherwise, as you say, you can't test it with a voltmeter and you are leaving an obvious hole in the test, as nobody can be certain that the equipment is really equivalent.

I didn't say I could tell instantly - I said that when I did start to feel it wasn't working, there was a small window because I test it after washing. (Approx weekly). That was in answer to your suggestion that the bad connection could have happened at any time.

I don't think it is about 'feeling' better directly for being grounded, necessarily. In my case, it is about sleeping better, which then of course results in me feeling better, but the feeling is the result of the better sleep, which is (we are postulating) the result if being grounded.

As far as the grounding^2, all I can say is that a better contact makes a bigger difference on the voltmeter when testing. If I were doing the test I'd try not to make too many assumptions about what would or wouldn't make a difference, but then I don't have a mental model of what is or is not possible like you do.