[jbotz]

One could also say:

Pranayama is a thousands of years old religious practice laden down with ritual and unscientific concepts such as "vital life force".

Wim Hof has, by trial and error, distilled the essential parts of it into a modern practice free of religious baggage.

[winnit]

On the contrary, trial and error is a process that relies on thousands of years and many subjects to yield reliable repeatable results. Unless you are implying that Wim Hoff studied pranayama deeply and learned for himself the aspects of the practice which are relevant to him (which he now extols), I don't understand how you think that the trial and error of one man is better than that of generations of men - is it just because the first is a Westerner?

[jbotz]

I really can't speak about Pranayama practice, but in general, just because something has been around for 1000s of years doesn't mean it has been improving. Ideas and practices associated with religion tend to be quite static, of the "do this ritual 3 times, not 2, not 4, the number shall be 3 times" variety. With a few exceptions, religions do not tend to encourage trial and error. And yes, I know Buddhism is one of the rare exceptions, at least as taught by the Gautama Buddha... even so, many Buddhist sects today are quite calcified and full of extraneous ritual; the main exception is Zen.

Win Hof claims he spent decades intensely practicing Yoga and refining his techniques. I don't know if that's true, but I absolutely can believe that in principle someone can improve on thousands of years old religious practices doing that.

[winnit]

Yes, there is a similar expression in the Bible to the one you attributed to the buddha 'But test everything. Keep what is good, and stay away from everything that is evil.'. Though in practice, you are right, such advice is often overlooked. My personal encounters with pranayama e.g. reading Iyengar's 'Light of Pranayama' are that the ritual aspects are not strongly emphasised but there is a cultural message designed to keep alive aspects of the tradition which are beneficial - in a way which could be compared to the learning of Kung Fu, where anger is the main emotional enemy of successful practice.

On a side note, I wonder what the general reception amongst the tech community is to Tesla's eccentricities e.g. opening and closing a door thrice before entering a room. Of course, these are mostly seen as expressions of OCD and ignored but I wonder if there isn't any connection between these impulses of Tesla's and his particular genius? I worry that in the process of stripping away superstitions we might accidentally take away more than we desired and lose the authentic character of progress.