= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
mwengler comments on Study shows placebos can work even if you know it's a placebo - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (16)
I hope you mean disturbing in a good way, as in "I am committed to understanding the world, not finding evidence to support my view of how I want the world to look." I knowingly use the placebo effect on myself, relieving all sorts of things with ibuprofen. I figure the little bit of real pain relief the ibuprofen provides probably helps me to imagine myself better in other ways after I take it.
Perhaps the placebo effect works even when you know it is a sugar pill in the same way that essentially all optical illusions work even though we know they are illusions. Placebo effect probably reflects some deep wiring in us, which would hardly be expected to go away just because we know about it.
A possible defect in the study: it was based on people reporting improvement. That my knowing I took a fake pill might get me to report a fake improvement I don't think should be ruled out. I think I would like to see if Placebos can lower temperature in a fever, and compare the effectiveness of placebos when we tell you its a placebo and placebos given in all seriousness as an implied effective drug.
An acquaintance regularly treats headaches by putting two aspirins in his shirt pocket.
He is as bemused by this as anyone, but figures as long as the headache goes away, why should he actually consume the aspirin?
I can't fault his reasoning, though I'll admit to finding it disturbing.
I wonder how far he can take it.
If he can't find aspirin, can he write "aspirin" on a piece of paper and put that in his pocket? Can he just imagine doing it? Or can he do absolutely nothing and have it still go away?
Regarding writing it on a piece of paper: apparently some homeopaths actually do that. (And this is regarded by mainstream homeopaths as superstitious pseudoscience.)
Well it's obviously not homeopathy, since you can clearly distinguish between a piece of paper saying "homeopathic remedy" and a piece of paper saying "ordinary water".
What they need to do is write "homeopathic remedy" on some paper, pulp it with clean paper in a 1/1,000,000 proportion, make recycled paper out of it, and give the patient some of that recycled paper. Without writing anything on it.
I've wondered that myself, though I've never asked. I expect he could train himself to eliminate the headaches without the ritual, were he inclined to do so.
Ibuprofen isn't exactly a trivial pain reliever; it's decidedly more effective than tylenol and about the same effectiveness as codeine.
May be true on average, but YMMV. I find it slightly less effective than paracetamol (Tylenol) and way less than codeine. (I have a dodgy back and a keen interest in painkillers at times.)
Codeine is almost always mixed with tylenol or another painkiller, and in its mixed form is more effective than pure codeine or ibuprofen. I meant that pure codeine is about as ibuprofen (not by weight, but by equivalent dosages) but it's not really a useful comparison because pure codeine is rarely prescribed.