Placebo Effect

Had an interesting conversation the other night about "The Secret," and whether or not your attitude toward something can affect its outcome. This write-up in Slate harmonizes with some of my personal skepticism on the subject.

What's interesting to think about, though, is that much of our social reality is constructed. I was trying to use the example of the 4-minute mile, which at one time people thought was impossible to beat. Turns out it's not. The problem, with this example, though, is that it's anecdotal evidence - impossible to repeat the experiment, so to speak. We can't go back in time and re-do the breaking of the 4-minute-mile record, this time without a widespread assumption that it was impossible.

The placebo effect, though, seems like a good example of the social construction of reality. People feel like their pain medication is working better if a doctor in a white coat gives them an injection, instead of getting an intravenous drip that doesn't signal when the medicine is going in.

I thought this was a fairly well-established phenomenon, but it turns out there's controversy here as well. Anyway, the pain relief scenario seems to be fairly well-established. And to me demonstrates a good example of reality as socially constructed. A lab coat signals "doctor," and therefore means less pain. But the placebo effect in any given experiment doesn't show up in the same number of people, nor does it work with a uniform intensity.

If the placebo effect is related to the human tendency to construct reality, then it doesn't give us an answer as to how much of that reality is indeed susceptible to placebo reactions. Unlike what the book "The Secret" might say though, our minds' influence is at the very least less than 100%.

Where the Hell is Matt?

For some reason, I find this video very hopeful:



Thanks, Pa, for pointing it out. :)

Obama Approaches Young Evangelicals

I'm excited to hear that Obama's reaching out to evangelical voters. It's even more interesting to learn he has plans to launch a "Joshua Generation" project for young Catholics and evangelicals. The basic idea is that there are some conservative Christians who are never going to vote for him because they disagree with him on abortion and gay marriage.

But there are others who see other issues as important values questions: poverty, the AIDS epidemic, and the environment, for example, and who might be willing to put those concerns ahead of the traditional "family values" litmus tests. I read a quote from one such person in the Christian Century a few weeks ago. He said (I am paraphrasing), "We like to joke that the people having the fewest abortions are married gay couples."

So, they've come up with a name, "The Joshua Generation Project," which is just about pitch-perfect as far as names go: it could be the sequel to The Prayer of Jabez, or one of the Left Behind series books. The basic idea is that Moses brought the Israelites to the promised land, but Joshua had to lead them into it to settle it.

One personal qualm about that choice of a name - Joshua was responsible for a LOT of killing to clear the land of Canaanites. I guess we'll have to assume the Joshua Generation's battles are not going to be quite so bloody.