How do I mean?

Let's analyze alternative medicine by picking on two particular fields that I think fit the bill perfectly here, which are chiropractic and acupuncture. These are practices that have hundreds (if not thousands) of years of experience behind them, with practitioners that are so refined in their techniques that they have created legitimate professions out of each of them. Thousands of people all over subscribe to these treatments to cure certain ailments, and almost all of these individuals swear by these treatments to fix problems that no other kind of approach can help (whether surgery, drugs, etc.).

Now, the biggest criticism of both of these fields is the placebo effect, and that bears a certain amount of relevance here. The biggest problem, though, is that both chiropractics and acupuncturists have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. This is because the fundamental tenets of both of these practices, vertebral subluxation and [meridians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_(Chinese_medicine) (or other qi-based theories), have both been shown to be completely invalid by science; they are demonstrably not true. This is a little more fuzzy with social sciences, but evolutionary psychology and some of the nonsense that TRP pushes are not the same thing, so bear with me.

How is it possible, then, that techniques based on incorrect foundational assumptions can flourish in today's medical world? The simplest answer that can be given is that over thousands of years, it can be learned where one can stick a needle into someone's body without causing harm, as can it be gradually understood that human beings can bend in certain ways but not in others. Moreover, it is entirely possible that applying a certain treatment can cure a particular ailment, even when the fundamental tenet of the treatment has no bearing on that particular person's medical situation. That is to say, spinal decompression can aid in treating disc problems in a person's back, regardless of whether or not I believe all diseases have a spinal origin/component - or, in TRP's case, sacking up and acting like a man can sometimes be a remedy for a relationship despite the fact that All Women Are NOT Like That.

Furthermore, if you were to actually poll a number of chiropractic or acupuncture offices today, you would likely find those who firmly believe in the aforementioned principles to be few and far between. No reputable chiropractic office believes that general well-being (in a broad and holistic sense) is mostly determined or affected by the state of the spinal column; it is a little bit worse in the case of acupuncturists, who literally have no idea why their treatment purportedly works at all in the context of Western medicine. This coincides perfectly with the vast gamut of TRPer attitudes out there, for either you will have a Red Piller who doesn't ingest the dogma like a rabid animal and merely plucks things here and there that he enjoys (which consequently collapses the idea of TRP as a coherent philosophy), or those who drink the Kool-Aid but can't for the life of themselves explain why their theory doesn't work outside of very specific pre-established scenarios.

Hell, the "alternative" aspect is right there on the product tin, where TRP believes that they are waking up from a collective consensus that doesn't understand the true nature of interpersonal relationships with sexual elements, much in the way traditional Chinese medicine believes that health is related to the flow of energy throughout the body. At best, it can be considered an abridged parable on how the body actually functions, much like TRP is the ultimate "cliff notes" version of our more primal psychology, but just like acupuncture only seems to fix ailments that we cannot even see and chiropractic only fixes problems that medical science says it should be able to, TRP seems only to solve problems of the individual that have absolutely zero relevance once you get out of your own skin. Perhaps your girl wasn't terribly fond of you moping around like a depressed animal - she's going to enjoy your newfound confidence as long as she doesn't get a whiff of the fact that in your head you are running everything through a cynical sexual algorithm. The philosophy behind TRP is completely irrelevant to the results.

However, much like a placebo, I suppose some people just don't give a shit how they solve their problems. Even if, in this case, it makes them look like arrogant pricks.