Actually, this kind of thing really can bring feelings of peace or healing or whatever to the credulous via the placebo effect, so this bit of silly seems relatively harmless to me, albiet amusing. At least they're not going on about liquid electricity.
The thing is, the various people I run into who are into this kinda thing (and I ran into many while studying Tantra) tend to get tetchy when I explain that energy healing and the like works via the placebo effect. I remain convinced that this is because they don't fully understand what 'placebo effect' means, or what a complicated, useful and trainable psychological mechanism it can be. I mean, that's so much more interesting than pretending that this stuff works because it's magical energy from the land of woo. But maybe I'm just being idealistic.
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Date: 5/22/09 08:59 pm (UTC)From:Actually, this kind of thing really can bring feelings of peace or healing or whatever to the credulous via the placebo effect, so this bit of silly seems relatively harmless to me, albiet amusing. At least they're not going on about liquid electricity.
The thing is, the various people I run into who are into this kinda thing (and I ran into many while studying Tantra) tend to get tetchy when I explain that energy healing and the like works via the placebo effect. I remain convinced that this is because they don't fully understand what 'placebo effect' means, or what a complicated, useful and trainable psychological mechanism it can be. I mean, that's so much more interesting than pretending that this stuff works because it's magical energy from the land of woo. But maybe I'm just being idealistic.