jimrandomh comments on Beware of Other-Optimizing - Less Wrong
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Yeah, that sounds really suspicious, actually. See, there's this thing called the "placebo effect". How do you know which of your willpower tricks work only because you expect them to work? Or should I not ask that?
The placebo effect is a term that refers to psychological reactions intruding on studies intended to measure non-psychological effects. When both the thing being tested and its outcome are purely psychological to begin with, then the term "placebo effect" is either meaningless or a misleading term for all uncontrolled variables. If you want to accuse a psychological study of failing to control for an important variable, you have to name that variable, and "placebo effect" is not specific enough.