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James_Miller comments on Open thread, Dec. 14 - Dec. 20, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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My n=1 experiment evidences against this. When my son was much younger and complained some part of him was hurting (because, say, he bumped against a wall) I would put lotion on the part and say it was powerful medicine. It usually made him feel better. And I wasn't even lying because the medicine I had in mind was the placebo effect.
You were not measuring actual improvement -- you were measuring the amount of whining/complaining.
Which is strongly correlated with pain. A reduction in pain is an actual improvement.
No, not in the sense we are talking about here. Pain is known to be quite psychosomatic, anyway.
You were lying, because you were making a statement that you knew would be understood as an untruth and with the intention of it being understood as that untruth. The fact that it may be true using a definition that isn't used by the target doesn't change that.
Disagree. I believed that my statement would be interpreted as "this will reduce your pain." Because of my belief in the placebo effect I really thought that the lotion would reduce my son's pain.
I suspect you may be overestimating young childrens' critical thinking abilities. If daddy say X is "powerful medicine", then "powerful medicine" is defined as X.