Re:Make Believe
by unsupp0rted on Saturday January 21, 2023 @09:46AM
(#34466750)
The thing with some surgeries being no better than placebo is that this can be shown and behaviors can be adjusted.
With religion, "god did it" and "god works in mysterious ways" is always the answer and behaviors can't be adjusted.
Why do we do these needless surgeries? God works in mysterious ways.
The “god did it” argument is weird anyway. If you truly follow that logic, then god gave us the scientific method and double-blind experiment so we can more effectively cary out their ideas.
More importantly, we have evidence that believing something, anything, is really good for the human psyche. You can pull a meaning out of your arse tomorrow morning and that leads to better psychological outcomes than no meaning. Even something as simple as “I need to keep this potted plant alive” will work.
Viktor Frankl’s work is a good intro to that topic.
For example: New-ish research is showing that some surgeries are no better than placebo. https://www.painscience.com/biblio/four-orthopedic-surgeries...
Another fun example is that allergy drugs, which clinical trials have shown are effective in double-blind studies, are less effective if you watch an ad saying that drug is bad right before taking it. Nocebo effect. If you have a strong belief the drug works, it will work better. Placebo effect is strong even in drugs we know are not placebo. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-the-placebo-effect-for-r...
And then you have the whole field of management and business books. Very close to a sort of federated decentralized religion.