The placebo effect has little relevant effect.
I'm not sure whether that's true, the last time I investigated that claim I don't found the evidence compelling. Placebo's are also a relatively clumsy way of changing beliefs intentionally.
People who believe they can fly don't fare better when pushed of cliffs.
How do you know? If you pick a height that kills 50% of the people who don't believe that they can fly, I'm not sure that the number of people killed is the same for those who hold that belief. The belief is likely to make people more relaxed when they are pushed over the cliff which is helpful for surviving the experience.
I doubt that you find many people who hold that belief with the same certainity that they believe the sun rises tomorrow. If you don't like idealism, argue based on the beliefs that people actually hold in reality instead of escaping into thought experiments.
A world where you believe x is different from a world where you believe not-x, and that has slight physical effects given that we are embodied,
I would call 20000 death Americans per year for the belief that stress is unhealthy more than a slight physical effect.
'Reality cares about your beliefs' sounds far to much like a defence of idealism
I don't think that the fact that you pattern match it that way speaks against the idea. I think the original quote comes from a place of Descartes inspired mind-body dualism. We are embodied and the content of our mind has effects.
I doubt that you find many people who hold that belief with the same certainity that they believe the sun rises tomorrow. If you don't like idealism, argue based on the beliefs that people actually hold in reality instead of escaping into thought experiments.
The original quote is taken from an article about the vaccine controversy. People who don't vaccinate because they believe that God will protect them or whatever actually exist, and they may be slightly less likely to fall ill than people who don't vaccinate but don't hold that belief but a lot more likely to fall ill than people who do vaccinate.
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: