Granted, there are a lot of wacky ideas about ki/chi out there (the 99%) but as Mark mentioned, there is the 1% out there as well and you would really be doing yourself a disservice to ignore it altogether. About 35 years ago I came back to the states after studying Ki Society Aikido over in Guam and I was a firm believer in ki as taught by Tohei at that time. However, I ran firmly into the Western agnostic mindset of ki as you describe in you post. So being a young naive person, I thought they were all right and I was wrong so I discarded what I was taught and went off searching for the real thing that caused those techniques to feel like magic - after all, if it had nothing to do with ki, it had to be something. Well, 35 years later I have came full circle when I met this guy up in Massachusetts who told me to use my intent to extend energy out in a certain direction and all I did was extend ki as taught by Tohei and he said, yes, that is it - I realized I essentially wasted 35 years ignoring something I could have been developing better simply because most Western minds could not grasp an Eastern mindset on certain concepts and principles.

Today, I look at ki/chi like the Chinese: " heart leads mind, mind leads intent, intent leads ki/chi, and ki/chi leads body."

After all, a million Chinese could not all be wrong for thousands of years

If you look at the above as a process, even your viewpoint of thought and visualization fits into that model.