Interesting. I suppose I'm guilty of dysrhetorica, here. My intention in describing my friend who is now receiving acupuncture was to orient the conversation towards _action_ and away from thoughts about Truth. I tend to try telling stories of my actual experience with actual people and events as a way of orienting the conversation away from ideology toward methodology.
To me, this is in the same vein as Bruce's Feynman quote. Feynman suggests several experiments that might be performed, particular ways to intervene in the miracles to see if/whether their outcome can be manipulated. But my rhetoric bit me in the @ss. By using biased phrases like "burst my placebo effect bubble", I defeated my own rhetorical purpose. What I should have said would be more like: Should I have intervened in my friend's therapy? If so, when? If so, how? For example, from my own tiny research, I also read what Ron's friend claimed, that acupuncture points are correlated with some neuronal structures. If the answer to when to intervene is "immediately", then I should have immediately told my friend a) about my skepticism and b) of this confirmatory correlation between acupuncture points and neuronal maps. If the beneficial effect is psychosomatic, then telling her about the correlation would give her more power (even if insignificant) to improve whatever mechanism she's already using. And expressing my skepticism might give her reason to do more research on her own. It might also provide a thicker skin for future skeptics who may be less friendly than me. On the other hand, she may choose to hear my words in such a way as to limit or eliminate the beneficial effect. I don't really care whether acupuncture is _truly_ false, truly True, or anywhere in between. What I want to know is what I can _do_ to make me (and my friends) more likely to achieve my (their) objectives. I know intellectually, however, that I appreciate it when my friends provide alternatives to various modules in my world view. So, it's difficult and interesting to apply the Golden Rule to my actions with my friend. Did I keep my mouth shut because I somehow sensed she would be detrimentally affected by any action I might have taken? Or is it perhaps that even though I _think_ I like for my friends to treat my own views with skepticism, perhaps I really do _not_. I.e. I was obeying the Golden Rule and treating her as I (viscerally, not intellectually) want to be treated? Steve Smith wrote at 04/04/2013 11:49 AM: > I think the distinction is about *confirmation bias*? > > If you assume that placebo effects are in some way *bad* and that we > need to seek ways to predict their effect waning or seek to determine > when and how to "burst the placebo bubble" most gently then that is what > we will find... examples of where placebo effects diminish and local > minima where bursting will do least harm. We won't find the cases where > placebo is sufficient for relief/recovery nor will we find ways to > *maximize* it's effects. > > Of course, the opposite is true. If we seek *only* to maximize placebo > effects, we can easily fall into the trap of believing that placebo is > always a good thing, etc. and overlook the larger context where it might > not always be so (allowing gangrene to set in while rinsing the wound > with holy water). > > There is no lack of work having been done clinically and scientifically > around the "placebo effect", though I'm sure it's application and > refinement in more esoteric circumstances has no limit. > > I think the "woo" question is significantly about *human bias* in the > scientific community. We *know* there is bias in the "woo" community > but just repeatedly pointing that out is not the same as looking in a > mirror for where the scientific community has conspired with itself to > fashion and wear blinders. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella Robot Lords of Tokyo, SMILE TASTE KITTENS! ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
