Let them see that regardless of what inflammation occurs, I show no signs of pain.
I think it would be likely that inflammation would also be reduced.
I'd sooner use the Active Denial System though. Once you've subjected yourself to a dose of capsaicin, there's pretty much nothing you can do but bear it, regardless of how stoic you may or may not be.
Basically you would do it because you aren't confident that you could eliminate the pain. I don't think that someone who would go into an experiment like this would have that concern.
On the other hand it would make it hard to recruit the people in the audience who are supposed to test the diluted version if they will feel intolerable pain for half an hour. It would also make it hard to get ethics approval if you want to get published.
As far as the Active Denial System goes, it's expensive equipment. That means it will be hard to test the conditions of the experiment before you run the actual experiment. I have never heared of the technology before. This means you would have to explain it. That explanation adds complexity to the whole story that's not good for PR purposes. I also wouldn't want to do a public promotion of the Active Denial System.
I'd look up someone high profile like James Randi and ask "do you believe I could do this?
I don't think that the experiment fulfills Randi's criteria's of paranormal phenomena. Randi also doesn't take challenges anymore from people who aren't noteworthy to begin with.
Before betting decent money I would guess that a skeptic would read the literature and papers like "A systematic meta-review of hypnosis as an empirically supported treatment for pain by Russell MF Hawkins" which conclude:
There is sufcient evidence, of sufcient quality, for a number of high-quality review studies to have concluded that hypnosis has demonstrable efcacy in the treatment of pain.
A study like that might not be enough to convince a skeptic that you can do major surgery under hypnosis. When looking at something like your capsaicin example or the Active Denial System I'm not sure that you can convience people that those produce enough pain to make a profound impression that would warrent decent bets and PR.
Basically you would do it because you aren't confident that you could eliminate the pain. I don't think that someone who would go into an experiment like this would have that concern.
On the other hand it would make it hard to recruit the people in the audience who are supposed to test the diluted version if they will feel intolerable pain for half an hour. It would also make it hard to get ethics approval if you want to get published.
I would go up on stage and stick a capsaicin swab up my nose, outside the hypothetical where I have the ability to elimin...
I started going out with a fantastic girl a couple of weeks ago. Everything is great, except that whenever I've sent her a text message or email requesting something and haven't received a response yet, I experience significant dysphoric anxiety, fearing that her response will be not just "no" but "no and I don't want to date you any more". This is due to brain chemistry or personal history, take your pick—either seems like a possible explanation to me. But there's certainly no evidence supporting the idea that this is likely to happen, nor is the anxiety helping me prevent it or helping me in any other way.
Does anyone have evidence-based advice, or pointers to same, on dealing with this kind of issue? It is the only splotch on what have otherwise been the best two weeks of my life.