It is you who do not understand the placebo effect. It has an objective, measurable outcome. Not just in your head, but in measurable clinical effects. Placebo most emphatically does NOT mean that the remedy does not do anything. It does something, that is why it has an effect.
Dowsing has shown no effect in scientific studies. Dowsing is utter horse exhaust. I don't know why you are talking about dowsing.
Placebo, on the other hand, has a statistically significant effect on many clinical variables. I don't know why you are having such a difficult time understanding this. It is part of our entire medical establishment. The placebo effect is a measurable force affecting clinical outcome and is measured, QUANTITATIVELY for crying out loud in most medical trials.
There are literally millions of studies you could look at, but here is one about caffeine.
Since you seem a bit dense I will explain it to you. Test subjects were divided into two groups. One group was given caffeine and the other was not. Dopamine was released in the placebo group, showing the classic placebo effect. Dopamine is not in your imagination. Dopamine is measurable. If you are expecting caffeine your brain releases dopamine even if you don't receive the drug at all.
I'm sorry but I was being serious. It's hard to tell sometimes with me.
Placebo effects are real. Here is an interesting case where placebo surgery is as effective or more effective than real knee surgery. There are literally thousands of studies showing placebo effects. The placebo effect is considered to be a substantial part of any clinically accepted treatment. Wikipedia has a good article on the placebo effect.
Many people are dismissive of placebos. Bah, they say. Placebo means no effect. The truth is different! I often wish I wasn't so cynical and well informed. Antibiotics don't work as well on my colds as they do on my less informed friends. Homeopathic remedies do nothing for me. Even my foot surgery went badly, possibly because I didn't believe in it with a childlike absolute faith.
Oh please. There are thousands of studies showing a powerful placebo effect. It is such a powerful force they had to construct double blind studies to attempt to factor out this healing force. I hate witch-doctory more than anyone but the results are in: The human mind has a huge effect on the human body. If you think you took some medicine you will sometimes get better just like magic.
Some people like to be self-reliant. It isn't ludditism. I know how to do simple math in my head. A lot of people don't. The girl at the store yesterday had to call a manager because I found a penny after she had typed in the amount I had given her. That is mind-numbingly stupid.
If you can't see the benefit of being able to do simple math quickly in your own head in a world full of calculators then you are a retard.
If you can't see the benefit of being able to navigate around town when your GPS is broken/stolen/etc. then you are a retard.
I use calculators, but I try not to be too dependent on them for simple things. I use GPS devices but I try to keep my ability to read maps and give/use directions fresh.
It is depressing to me how many people don't know anything about how to get around a town they have lived in for years. They say "I type it into my GPS" when you ask for rough ideas about where they are. They would have to call onstar sobbing if their GPS died.
I used to do this experiment with conical paper drinking cups. The bunsen burner would burn any cup above waterline and boil water pretty reliably. Sometimes a defect in the cup would result in a spill, but it was less than 10% failure rate.
Those of us who hate rap do not hate it in some vague theoretical fashion. I hate it because I am bombarded with it a lot. Maybe I don't know who wrote what song, and maybe I can't tell whether it is crunk or hyphy, but boy oh boy have I heard a lot of rap. I have liked maybe 2 songs total.
I am thoroughly qualified to state my opinion that rap is garbage.
I am similarly qualified to state that I am sick to death of classic rock. I don't have to have a fricking degree from Santana Tech and know exactly what bullshit overplayed song is from which bullshit elderly band to say that I am sick of it. Stop it already.
When people say that planes are safer than cars they are comparing driving a certain distance vs. flying a certain distance. When you compare fatality rates per passenger mile, planes are much safer than cars. The comparison is not exact. For example, we do not know how many fatalities involve long distance trips vs. short in-city driving.
I disagree. A fast horse on good terrain could make 100 miles per day. A car is just like a somewhat faster horse. A plane, not requiring roads and able to travel anywhere on the planet in a day is a several order of magnitude increase.
I think wasting 24 hours, going through airport security multiple times, sitting in an uncomfortable stuffy hot screamy cabin for 8+ hours, all the waste and waiting and bullshit and potential delays, all in order to attend a 1 hour meeting is the height of byzantine ridiculousness.
It's so strange. About 40k traffic fatalities in the US last year. That is over 100 per day. A 9/11 every month. Nobody cares, it doesn't even make the news. Yet people can't shut up about 9/11 even a decade later. People freak out about swine flu. People are up in arms about airline safety.
I guess lots of people are bad at math. Look at the popularity of gambling!
Maybe people should be encouraged to take a probability and statistics course in high school.
The author never claimed that Google invented webmail.
I was glad when gmail came out. All the other free webmail providers I had used either didn't provide free POP access anymore, got spammy, put retarded ads on my email, or went under. The web client had good integration and features. The mobile interface was nice. The only price you pay is your privacy, and that's arguably already been paid.
I think dating is more expensive than hookers. A nice dinner and a movie is easily $100. No guarantee of sex. A $200 hooker is cheaper if you bat less than.500 on your dates.
The only reason I don't use prostitutes is because there is a small risk of legal trouble and maybe some residual shame about openly paying for sex.
You know about XKCD and not the big room?! Kids these days...
Big Room: n.
(Also Big Blue Room) The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations. "He can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room."
If you set off a chlorine bomb in your lunchroom it would affect different people differently. Maybe the guy closest to the bomb wouldn't be affected but others would. Everyone has different body chemistry and health. On bad air quality days some people you wouldn't expect end up in the hospital. It isn't always highest exposure or poorest health.
Life expectancy in India is in the low 60s. That may sound low to westerners but it is much better than in the past.
There is welfare in India. Public healthcare and food assistance are credited with the life expectancy gains. There continue to be problems with starvation and the healthcare system is near collapse, but that is typical for many countries.
Why such an idiotic arrangement? What if I only want to send a few or a dozen a month? I don't want to spend $.25 each, and I don't want to spend $4 whether or not I send any. Also, if you go over 400 you probably are back at the $.25 price again.
Imagine buying power or water that way. Oh, kWH are $2.50 each unless you buy the 100 plan for $50. Go over 100 and they are $2.50. Better get the 200 plan for $70.
Oh well. They're trying to sell internet that way. They already sell minutes and TV that way.
What provider are you using? I am with virgin mobile right now and am pretty happy. I get $.18 minutes but I need to add $20 every 90 days, making it cost about $6.66/month minimum. The money accumulates, so if I go on a trip I can blow $50 talking and not worry about it.
Back on topic, mobile phone companies aren't a very good example of a pure capitalist market. There is the artificial (but necessary IMHO) monopoly of spectrum, the large barriers to entry, not to mention the dominance of carriers that started out in the even-less-pure land telecom markets and still benefit from those arrangements.
I don't follow the market closely, but it seems there are only a few major players left and they all have suspiciously similar offerings and price structures.
My biggest complaint about mobile phones in the US is the handset subsidy that you pay whether or not you upgrade all the time. I would rather use a carrier where you buy your handset at full price on an open market and then can change carriers at will. This artificial lock-in seems to inhibit competition.
Valid prescriptions are trivial to obtain. Ask your doctor what you can do about having low energy and difficulty concentrating. If you don't get a script ask another doctor. It usually takes less than 3.
This easy access fuels a booming black market. For people who don't have insurance or don't want to go to the doctor it is simple to buy pills from students with prescriptions. Another common source is their parents medicine cabinets. Most students don't think of adderall as an illegal drug, probably because many of them have valid prescriptions.
Slashdot Mirror
1989?! We had pretty much everything we do now except for some irritating baloney. We had Email, newsgroups, file sharing, chat applications, porn.
We didn't have twitter, banner ads, AOL users, flash, and computer billionaires. I wouldn't mind having 1989 back.
It is you who do not understand the placebo effect. It has an objective, measurable outcome. Not just in your head, but in measurable clinical effects. Placebo most emphatically does NOT mean that the remedy does not do anything. It does something, that is why it has an effect.
Dowsing has shown no effect in scientific studies. Dowsing is utter horse exhaust. I don't know why you are talking about dowsing.
Placebo, on the other hand, has a statistically significant effect on many clinical variables. I don't know why you are having such a difficult time understanding this. It is part of our entire medical establishment. The placebo effect is a measurable force affecting clinical outcome and is measured, QUANTITATIVELY for crying out loud in most medical trials.
There are literally millions of studies you could look at, but here is one about caffeine.
Since you seem a bit dense I will explain it to you. Test subjects were divided into two groups. One group was given caffeine and the other was not. Dopamine was released in the placebo group, showing the classic placebo effect. Dopamine is not in your imagination. Dopamine is measurable. If you are expecting caffeine your brain releases dopamine even if you don't receive the drug at all.
I'm sorry but I was being serious. It's hard to tell sometimes with me.
Placebo effects are real. Here is an interesting case where placebo surgery is as effective or more effective than real knee surgery. There are literally thousands of studies showing placebo effects. The placebo effect is considered to be a substantial part of any clinically accepted treatment. Wikipedia has a good article on the placebo effect.
Many people are dismissive of placebos. Bah, they say. Placebo means no effect. The truth is different! I often wish I wasn't so cynical and well informed. Antibiotics don't work as well on my colds as they do on my less informed friends. Homeopathic remedies do nothing for me. Even my foot surgery went badly, possibly because I didn't believe in it with a childlike absolute faith.
Oh please. There are thousands of studies showing a powerful placebo effect. It is such a powerful force they had to construct double blind studies to attempt to factor out this healing force. I hate witch-doctory more than anyone but the results are in: The human mind has a huge effect on the human body. If you think you took some medicine you will sometimes get better just like magic.
What the hell?!
Some people like to be self-reliant. It isn't ludditism. I know how to do simple math in my head. A lot of people don't. The girl at the store yesterday had to call a manager because I found a penny after she had typed in the amount I had given her. That is mind-numbingly stupid.
If you can't see the benefit of being able to do simple math quickly in your own head in a world full of calculators then you are a retard.
If you can't see the benefit of being able to navigate around town when your GPS is broken/stolen/etc. then you are a retard.
I use calculators, but I try not to be too dependent on them for simple things. I use GPS devices but I try to keep my ability to read maps and give/use directions fresh.
It is depressing to me how many people don't know anything about how to get around a town they have lived in for years. They say "I type it into my GPS" when you ask for rough ideas about where they are. They would have to call onstar sobbing if their GPS died.
You're crazy. I suggest shorting ProShares UltraShort Gold (ETF)
I should start a fund to make it simpler.
I used to do this experiment with conical paper drinking cups. The bunsen burner would burn any cup above waterline and boil water pretty reliably. Sometimes a defect in the cup would result in a spill, but it was less than 10% failure rate.
Wow, so touchy.
Those of us who hate rap do not hate it in some vague theoretical fashion. I hate it because I am bombarded with it a lot. Maybe I don't know who wrote what song, and maybe I can't tell whether it is crunk or hyphy, but boy oh boy have I heard a lot of rap. I have liked maybe 2 songs total.
I am thoroughly qualified to state my opinion that rap is garbage.
I am similarly qualified to state that I am sick to death of classic rock. I don't have to have a fricking degree from Santana Tech and know exactly what bullshit overplayed song is from which bullshit elderly band to say that I am sick of it. Stop it already.
Jeez, now who is touchy? I guess it is me.
When people say that planes are safer than cars they are comparing driving a certain distance vs. flying a certain distance. When you compare fatality rates per passenger mile, planes are much safer than cars. The comparison is not exact. For example, we do not know how many fatalities involve long distance trips vs. short in-city driving.
Time is not relevant.
I disagree. A fast horse on good terrain could make 100 miles per day. A car is just like a somewhat faster horse. A plane, not requiring roads and able to travel anywhere on the planet in a day is a several order of magnitude increase.
Are you insane?!
I think wasting 24 hours, going through airport security multiple times, sitting in an uncomfortable stuffy hot screamy cabin for 8+ hours, all the waste and waiting and bullshit and potential delays, all in order to attend a 1 hour meeting is the height of byzantine ridiculousness.
It's so strange. About 40k traffic fatalities in the US last year. That is over 100 per day. A 9/11 every month. Nobody cares, it doesn't even make the news. Yet people can't shut up about 9/11 even a decade later. People freak out about swine flu. People are up in arms about airline safety.
I guess lots of people are bad at math. Look at the popularity of gambling!
Maybe people should be encouraged to take a probability and statistics course in high school.
The author never claimed that Google invented webmail.
I was glad when gmail came out. All the other free webmail providers I had used either didn't provide free POP access anymore, got spammy, put retarded ads on my email, or went under. The web client had good integration and features. The mobile interface was nice. The only price you pay is your privacy, and that's arguably already been paid.
I think dating is more expensive than hookers. A nice dinner and a movie is easily $100. No guarantee of sex. A $200 hooker is cheaper if you bat less than .500 on your dates.
The only reason I don't use prostitutes is because there is a small risk of legal trouble and maybe some residual shame about openly paying for sex.
There are amoebas and toads that make humans look simple.
You know about XKCD and not the big room?! Kids these days...
Big Room: n.
(Also Big Blue Room) The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations. "He can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room."
If you set off a chlorine bomb in your lunchroom it would affect different people differently. Maybe the guy closest to the bomb wouldn't be affected but others would. Everyone has different body chemistry and health. On bad air quality days some people you wouldn't expect end up in the hospital. It isn't always highest exposure or poorest health.
Baby monitors are video now.
Life expectancy in India is in the low 60s. That may sound low to westerners but it is much better than in the past.
There is welfare in India. Public healthcare and food assistance are credited with the life expectancy gains. There continue to be problems with starvation and the healthcare system is near collapse, but that is typical for many countries.
UcnDnsfyEngTxt2 It just sucks to read.
Why such an idiotic arrangement? What if I only want to send a few or a dozen a month? I don't want to spend $.25 each, and I don't want to spend $4 whether or not I send any. Also, if you go over 400 you probably are back at the $.25 price again.
Imagine buying power or water that way. Oh, kWH are $2.50 each unless you buy the 100 plan for $50. Go over 100 and they are $2.50. Better get the 200 plan for $70.
Oh well. They're trying to sell internet that way. They already sell minutes and TV that way.
What provider are you using? I am with virgin mobile right now and am pretty happy. I get $.18 minutes but I need to add $20 every 90 days, making it cost about $6.66/month minimum. The money accumulates, so if I go on a trip I can blow $50 talking and not worry about it.
Back on topic, mobile phone companies aren't a very good example of a pure capitalist market. There is the artificial (but necessary IMHO) monopoly of spectrum, the large barriers to entry, not to mention the dominance of carriers that started out in the even-less-pure land telecom markets and still benefit from those arrangements.
I don't follow the market closely, but it seems there are only a few major players left and they all have suspiciously similar offerings and price structures.
My biggest complaint about mobile phones in the US is the handset subsidy that you pay whether or not you upgrade all the time. I would rather use a carrier where you buy your handset at full price on an open market and then can change carriers at will. This artificial lock-in seems to inhibit competition.
Jesus? No, he was a filthy hippy who fought the system. Maybe there aren't any REAL conservatives at all!
It reminds me of the christians who weasel out of any criticism of any christian by saying "Oh, so-and-so wasn't a REAL christian!"
Valid prescriptions are trivial to obtain. Ask your doctor what you can do about having low energy and difficulty concentrating. If you don't get a script ask another doctor. It usually takes less than 3.
This easy access fuels a booming black market. For people who don't have insurance or don't want to go to the doctor it is simple to buy pills from students with prescriptions. Another common source is their parents medicine cabinets. Most students don't think of adderall as an illegal drug, probably because many of them have valid prescriptions.
You mean an apostrophe doesn't mean "OH NOES HERE COMES AN S?"
Preposterou's!