jimrandomh comments on Beware of Other-Optimizing - Less Wrong

79 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2009 01:58AM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 10 April 2009 08:56:47PM *  17 points [-]

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.