Ron-
If the placebo is double blind I've heard the percentage shoots up.
But the fact remains that a mere thought, or belief, is affecting
something. If science were untainted that would be the basis for
massive investigation.
I like your point. When I first recognized the significance of a
*double* blind test, it shocked me. Now I accept it as "obvious".
I have any number of friends and acquaintances who subscribe to what is
hard for me to measure as anything but "woo" in the hard sense, yet I
see they derive significant value from it in a softer sense.
*Naturapathy and Homeopathy*
While I accept significant (materialist?) utility to some
Naturapthy, Homeopathy is beyond the pale (materialistically). Yet
many who I know who resort to both or either gain at least two
benefits... one is the placebo effect. The other is that it soothes
their hypochondria... to whatever extent they might be seeking attention
from others (or themselves) it offers them a (usually) benign forum to
play that out in. They have something to talk about with like minded
people and even "professionals" who will assure them that their symptoms
are as real as the cures being offered.
This may sound cynical, and maybe it is, but it is also pragmatic.
I believe a lot of these people would be a lot more miserable *without*
access to snake oil than they are with it. Their "remedies", even
without a materialist/causal embedding soothes them and allows them to
relax and provide other forms of useful self care (rest, nutrition,
sunshine, exercise...) which *do* have understood materialist/causal
mechanisms. It always disturbs me when someone offers to "pray for me"
when I have an affliction, but I do believe it helps them and am sorry I
can't offer them the same... The best I have to offer is "I'll be
thinking good thoughts", or "I wish the best", etc.
*Oracles*
I am almost always offended when someone starts explaining to me my
own behaviour or circumstances based on the alignment of the stars (at
birth) and planets (at birth, in the moment, etc.). I also find the
casting of bones, dice, coins, or fishing through tea leaves or goat
entrails potentially quite disturbing as a way of trying to predict the
future.
On the other hand, I do believe there is great potential in using
whatever methods or systems you have at hand to try to reflect on and
meditate on the present state of your life and the implications of that
for the future.
The /I Ching/, for example, offers a wide range of insightful and
thoughtful ways of thinking about the world and our place in it.
Whether the specific reading one gets by tossing down their great aunt's
knuckle bones (or yarrow stalks or coins) is specifically relevant in
any divine way is moot. The simple fact of focusing on a *single* bit
of wisdom and reflecting on it's relevance to the situation at hand
seems to be very useful. Not a lot unlike listening to your preacher,
priest, imam or other holy man relate a parable from The Book and
meditating (praying) with those ideas in mind.
*QM and Emergence*
It is the divide between materialism and non (I think) that keeps me
fascinated. I'm a materialist for macroscopic and near-equilibrium
phenomena, but as we edge into the territory of quantum mechanics and
emergent properties, I feel I have already let go of hard materialism.
I feel a bit hypocritical to make exceptions for those specific
paradigms whilst poo-poo (woo woo) ing everything else. I assume that
most (nearly) all here accept that QM and Complexity both offer some
mysteries to hard materialism but do not immediately take it to full-up
mysticism right away?
- Steve
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Barry MacKichan
<barry.mackic...@mackichan.com <mailto:barry.mackic...@mackichan.com>>
wrote:
I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the
patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect
("You can fool all of ....").
--Barry
On Apr 4, 2013, at 11:14 AM, Ron Newman <ron.new...@gmail.com
<mailto:ron.new...@gmail.com>> wrote:
There's no money in it (actually, there's a lot of money in it)
but the effects - 30% efficacy I heard once - are impressive,
without side effects.
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--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com <http://www.Ideatree.us>
The World Happiness Meter <http://worldhappinessmeter.com>
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