Posted on 11/08/2010 8:33:23 AM PST by The Comedian
Yep. Still, marginally effective and ineffective drugs manage to make it through the process.
Perhaps a better appreciation of the placebo effect will be a major medical advance of the 21th century.
Or not.
If that’s to be considered “psychic,” then pretty much any time our mind tells our bodies to do something would also be “psychic,” for instance when my brain told my fingers to type this post.
Actually, that was psychokinesis. My brain made your fingers type that post.
I had a feeling about 2 months ago that you would know that.
Thanks Whenifhow!
“We observe quantum-mechanical behavior and use those observations, but we don’t understand them.”
It’s one thing to say that no one completely understands quantum mechanics, another to say there is nothing but rote observation.
“’I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.’ —Richard Feynmann”
The same can basically be said for all modern physics, at least going back to Newton, based as it is on higher mathematics. They call math a language, but it’s not. It’s a convenient process for the efficient application of logic, and in a sense has a mind of its own. A scientist can be adept at math, be able to follow the necessary steps, and give you the bullet points as to what it all signifies. But they don’t really understand it. If they did, they’d be able to explain it with words instead of using math.
I’m just saying that though quantum mechanics is more esoteric than previous “paradigms,” it’s yet a coherent body of deductive knowledge. Scientists still cook up theories, express them in comprehensible “language,” and test them empirically. Too many guesses have been confirmed and upheld for too long for it to be nothing but mindless observation.
- Lonesome in Mass., and everyone who has been part of the priesthood (scientific or otherwise) since the dawn of recorded history when confronted with anything outside of their existing orthodoxy.
Were micro-organisms real before they were observed and we had the mechanisms to quantify them?
How about heleocentrism?
Quantum mechanics?
Quasars?
Love?
You evidently know.
Precisely.
It is essential to accurately evaluate a drug or treatment.
OTOH, we know peoples' beliefs and expectations affect their outcomes, yet we systematically eliminate this from clinical trials.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever studied what factors contribute to the efficacy of the placebo effect.
Is there some cue that triggers it? Can doctors and/or pharmacists be trained to give this or these cues?
IF one can trigger the placebo effect is it ethical to cure the patient that way? Is it ethical not to?
(Here in California it is illegal to prescribe or dispense placebos)
4 8 15 16 23 42
;^P
James Randi has $1,000,000 dollars waiting for you.
I am not a member of any priesthood, in fact, it is you who are making extraordinary and occult claims. The burden is on you to provide credible evidence and you have none.
Yeah, those numbers are sure to come up someplace one day. Jean Dixon would understand.
You never watched Lost, did you?
There is a man I wish were around today to opine on the Cult of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
“So, explain what consciousness is.
You evidently know.”
What a stupid post. Can’t believe I’m even responding to it, if only to dismiss it.
Time is volumetric. We exist in a planar frame of same, and our sensory mechanisms have been fabricated by God to operate on received data, in other words, we operate based upon linearly transmitted past events arriving at our planar present sensory apparatus. But because we have a soul, we conflate the data from a volumetric position. Our spirit component is not dependant upon the linear temporal data, so we are existing in the volumetric time of the universe. The body of electromagnetic dependency is trapped in the planar temporal band.
Randi is a waste of time, and anyone who cites his challenge is, himself, research-challenged.
I am not a member of any priesthood,
It's a metaphor for those who are glued to their orthodoxy so tightly, that they are incapable of accepting something outside of their current experience to the point of willful ignorance and even manic denial.
in fact, it is you who are making extraordinary and occult claims.
Extraordinary, maybe. It depends on what your boundary conditions for "ordinary" are. Occult, no. Nice smear attempt, though. Sadly, it's probably the best you've got.
The burden is on you to provide credible evidence and you have none.
See, there's that willful ignorance and manic denial in full bloom.
What research protocol did you use to acquire my credible evidence, and what formal logic did you use to invalidate it?
Empty assertions made by uninformed minds don't warrant much from me beyond an amused chuckle.
I prefer working with guys like Dean Radin and Harold Puthoff.
They get it.
For the purposes of this conversation, I don't have any fundamental argument against any of those assertions, and it is a reasonable description (although perhaps it mixes disciplines or domains unnecessarily) of how I perceive humanity.
You objected to that statement.
What was your objection?
“My only point was that we don’t know what consciousness is, and it is intimately related to quantum mechanics.”
No it wasn’t.
“You objected to that statement.”
No I didn’t. I objected to this statement:
“we do not understand one shred of quantum mechanics”
Except to people with an axe to grind, that’s obviously false (notwithstanding Feynmann’s cheekiness). Just ask Faraday, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, von Neumann, Durac, Pauli, Born, and Einstein, amongst countless others.
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