I'm curious about what cognitive biases are occurring

Sorry this question comes with a video. The video is of martial arts "master" claiming to be able to throw chi balls. I'm curious about all the cognitive biases that are occurring to produce this phenomena. One of the students says that "after seeing so many demonstrations you can't help but believe". I guess there is an availability cascade going on here. Some poor reasoning about what counts as an authority. There's an ad hoc fallacy towards the end. Misuse of scientific language. It's chalked full of poor reasoning but I'm not sure exactly what cognitive biases are at work here to produce this type of phenomena. I'm sure it's not just one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z0_n7tGnK0

Before we get to why people believe it works, we need to talk about why it actually does "work." Let's start with a concept that I refer to as cognitive overreaching , which is the creating an unsupported narrative in an attempt to explain a phenomenon. When we break down what is happening, the "master" says some thing, the students believe those things, the "master" makes some motions and the students fall down. Notice this is the same phenomenon we see with preachers who claim to fill people with "the Holy Spirit." The same thing is going on, the only difference is the preacher and the "master" are using different narratives, neither of which are in any way supported by evidence.

The reason this "works" (that is, people really do fall down and lose bodily control at times) is because it is a form of hypnotism and suggestion, which only works on those who are susceptible to suggestion. Whether it is the fake martial artist, the TV preacher, or a stage hypnotist, they are all able to facilitate a state of hypnosis which can be interpreted or sold in any way to believers.

Notice this important difference: We have a term for this phenomenon that we call hypnosis that is essentially a placeholder for the phenomenon itself. We know some things about hypnosis through experimentation and testing (e.g., FMRI) but we never go beyond what we know (if we do, it is proposed as a hypothesis subject to further testing). The "master" and his followers cognitively overreach by attaching a story to the phenomenon, specifically the mystical "chi" that is said to come from the "master's" body and affect others. Again, this is pure conjecture that has never been demonstrated, just like the TV preacher's "Holy Spirit." This cognitive overreaching is done all the time with pseudoscience, religion, and any domain where people are bad at scientific reasoning.

Now, we can easily see how people who are not scientifically literate, have some knowledge of psychology, or who are just gullible, can easily believe the explanations given by those who demonstrate this phenomenon. This is what is really going here. In terms of biases or fallacies, they could best be identified if attached to an argument or a statement of belief. For example, someone who said, "this must be real, I have seen it demonstrated too many times to be fake," besides engaging in poor scientific thinking, are probably a victim of the confirmation bias , where are they ignoring all the videos of these masters getting their butt's whipped by real martial artists (Google it). Fallacy wise, this might be a good demonstration of the argument from ignorance , given that they don't know what is going on psychologically, they attribute it to magic (i.e., chi, the Holy Spirit, etc.).

In summary, this phenomenon is a good demonstration of the power of suggestion (a form of hypnosis) and those who attach unsupported narratives to it are simply not scientifically literate, lack the necessary knowledge of psychology to understand what is really going on, or are just plain gullible.

Is that link correct? If I put it in either Chrome or the YouTube android app it just brings up a list of videos, with the top video being "phony karate master - no touch KO debunked" but when I watch the video he talks about pressure points which I think is a real thing.

I watched a video a couple of days ago with a different "master" who was doing fireball moves like Ryu from Streetfighter and people were falling over. Well they were until an independent black belt knocked him out.

The phenomenon appears to be similar to hypnotism where it only works with people who choose to go along with it. Either that or they were stooges.

There's also faith healing but that seems to use things like adrenaline and exaggeration to con people. Derren Brown did a good expose on the techniques which he can replicate and makes no claims of power other than psychology.

If you're interested Derren Brown also exposes "mediums" or "psychics" explaining the techniques used. I read about the Barnum effect, where statements that apply to everyone are presented as personal, and then emailed a "reading" to my superstitious friend who was amazed at the accuracy. Sadly after learning of all the techniques he still believes.

Of course all of this is in Bo's professional field of expertise, so I'm sure his reply is more explanatory.

Edit: also I just thought about "talking in tongues" (after seeing Bo's comment about the holy spirit) which I think it's Pentecostals do. There's an element of peer pressure involved where everyone else can apparently do it fluently and you trick yourself into doing the same as you don't want to stand out as not being filled with the "holy spirit", or as somehow decective, undeserving, etc. or even to be ostracised.

The same pressure to perform as expected works with stage hypnotism and I'd imagine with a ring of students surrounding you and the chi master.