Can Veeky Forums explains how the placebo effect works?

can Veeky Forums explains how the placebo effect works?
how it's able to cure disseases and cause what christians calls miracles?

Other urls found in this thread:

collective-evolution.com/2015/05/17/the-top-5-medical-miracles-that-science-cant-explain-or-can-it/
therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/engl_mir.htm
jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184119
catholicnewsagency.com/news/miracle-could-allow-canonization-of-first-colombian-born-saint/
nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMbkrev0810816#t=article
nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMbkrev0810816
iflscience.com/brain/man-tiny-brain-lived-normal-life/
psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

the mind is a powerful thing
since it controls so much shit, it can easily fuck your body intentionally and unfuck it depending on random shit

Maybe it causes epigenetic changes that somehow rewire the nerves that are sending pain signals when they shouldn't.
Placebo pretty much only works on stuff like back-pain, migraines and the like. Vague conditions without a clear cause involving abnormal pain. It doesn't actually work against stuff like infections and cancer.

>and cause what christians calls miracles?

Mr. Theologian sup.

Christians are social constructs.

The drugs of these treatments are compared with placebos, not just controls. There is a difference between placebo and controls even "against stuff like infections and cancer"

Drugs are a social construct.

>Maybe it causes epigenetic changes that somehow rewire the nerves that are sending pain signals
Wrong.

>how it's able to cure disseases
No.
Placebo doesn't DO anything. It just makes you feel better.

>cause what christians calls miracles?
Thats just retarded.

how do you explain christian miracles then?

>inb4 they don't exist

They don't exist.

how do you explain some of their miracles where people cure magically after praying?

>that doesn't exist
google some modern miracles that has been accepted by scientists as real.

They don't exist.

>magically
There is huge difference between "impossible" and "improbable". Living organisms are so complex that it is safer to believe it fixed itself than prayer. Also, lots of those people forget to mention actual medication that was given to them.

>google some modern miracles that has been accepted by scientists as real.
[citation fucking needed]

collective-evolution.com/2015/05/17/the-top-5-medical-miracles-that-science-cant-explain-or-can-it/

seriously nigger, at least try to look at them.

Thats 5 of how many billion? It is safe to assume those are statistical abnormality or incorrect data.

I didn't mean they're normal.
I'm talking they exists.
There has been some crazy shit if you read christian miracles.

My best bet is that placebo shit is some crazy shit.

>There has been some crazy shit if you read christian miracles.
Yeah. Because those are made up.
Wouldn't be surprised if that article was too mostly fabrication.
And this has nothing to do with placebo.

>Case #1
>god saves an implicitly yet obviously european child

>meanwhile in africa

If this case really was the result of a miracle, then your god is the biggest troll of all possible interchans

>fabrication
not all of them.

some of them are recorded.
at least the catholic ones are real, since the catholic church takes them seriously.

I dunno.
I'm talking about the real ones.
It doesn't matter if they're staticticaly impossible, they still happens.
I just want to discuss the ones that are real.

>some of them are recorded.
Nope. NONE of them is recorded. [citation needed]

>at least the catholic ones are real, since the catholic church takes them seriously.
Just because some retards take them seriously doesn't make them anymore real.

they have the medical records.

>christians don't record them.
therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/engl_mir.htm

It's not even about being a believer, I'm agnostic.
miracles are real.

take your fedora elsewhere.

>Miracles don't exist
[citation needed]

>they have the medical records.
[CITATION FUCKING NEEDED]
That article obviously didn't have ones. And reading the comments, there were some changes to the anecdotes.

And just because you cannot explain it doesn't make it a miracle.

>agnostic
And you have no fucking idea what that word means.

Burden of proof is on the side making a claim.

nigger, I'm not talking god exists.
I'm not a christian.

I'm talking they must have some scientific explanation.

Something fishy is happening there.
I do think the placebo effect has more power than simply being some pain killer.

>I'm talking they must have some scientific explanation.
Yeah. "miracle" is not one.

>Something fishy is happening there.
Your feet?

>I do think the placebo effect has more power than simply being some pain killer.
No real biologist would link those cases with placebo. Placebo has been throughly tested and shown no real effect other than perception by the patient.

>I'm not a christian.
Doesn't make you less retarded.

there are recorded cases of people with fatal diseases that suddenly get better.
There must be some body mechanism that help their sudden recovery.

Each person is different. One person's fatal disease is other person's mild discomfort. It also takes few days for immune system to kick in. If you can survive till then, then you can have good chance.

You cannot draw any reasonable conclusions from few statistical outliers. It is best to suspend your judgement till more evidence is found. And saying "miracles happen" doesn't give you any ability to produce more evidence.

>Burden of proof is on the side making a claim.
Exactly, and you are claiming they don't exist.

I'm just talking there must be some condition that allows the brain to subconsiusly coordinate a sudden attack on the infection.

I'm not a christian believer, and I think there's a bigger chance for the mind duality problem to be real and that faith could affect other people bodies than for some giant tulpa to exist.

Hell, if the mind duality shit is real, maybe god is some kind of giant tulpa made real by millions of believers.

miracles don't exist and most stories involving them are simply made up. The rest are just hyperbole or a simple lack of information, and are often third hand explanations.

The Placebo Effect is just an example if how the brain can influence out physiology. It's not magic or special.

Take your spirituality and shove it.

>miracles don't exist
[citation needed]
>and most stories involving them are simply made up
Most and not all?
>The rest are just hyperbole
So the rest is made up?
>simple lack of information
What do you mean?
>and are often third hand explanations.
?????
>The Placebo Effect is just an example if how the brain can influence out physiology. It's not magic or special.
Science of the gaps. We don't know how it works.
>Take your spirituality and shove it.
No, and get out of here you uncivilized scum

I'm not a believer.

you're simply saying the hospitals and doctors are making things up and the medical records are simply made up.

you seem a militant atheist engage in some tirade againts religion like a fedora from reddit.

you seem angry.

I'm telling you those medical records exists, unless you can prove they're part of some conspiracy.

They don't exist.

[citation needed]

Citations are a social construct.

Why are miracles not possible?

define miracle

miracles are simply things that science can't explain or are impossible acording to science.

a fatal ilness suddenly being cured after a night of pray is a miracle.

that doesn't exist.

>top 5 article
>valid source to be taken seriously

see
they do exist, unless you're using a diferent definition that mine.

there's a will of god behind every action in the universe. Science only brings us closer to understanding his decisions.

>miracles are simply things that science can't explain or are impossible acording to science.

Your definition is faulty. If science can't explain it, then we either don't know how it happened, or they are impossible. In other words, we either don't know what physical law made this possible, or it's impossible due to the fact that we do know a physical law can't allow this to happen.

So if we define miracle as something science doesn't yet know, then the definition of a miracle is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance. Meaning there are no miracles, we just haven't discovered how it happened, yet.

That's my point, miracles are things we clearly still don't understand.
religious miracles could be evidence of some weird things that happen randomly or in some low chance.

I don't follow the naturalist meme.
There's clearly fenomena that still doesn't fall under the naturalist philosophy.
The mind body duality problem is one of them.
Unless you're a science fedora believer, it has not been solved yet.
Dreams have several explanations, but I haven't read one that can explain how a dream has prophetic meanings in average life.
I still think dreams seems to operate in some etherical world we can reach.
There's even phenomena of people being reborn while having memories of past lives.
All this shit is clearly documented and it's not fake.
Most of that shit is clearly under new age pseudoscience, but because it's pseudoscience doesn't mean the evidence is not real.
There's shit like ancient prophecies, many of which are clearly happening.
Even if they're fake, how could an ancient person had such vivid imagination to describe moral degradations that was impossible in their age.

Also the problem of the faith, how is even able to operate miracles? (they exist).

All the naturalist fags do is close their eyes and ears and scream it's not possible while ignoring the evidence is there.

I'm not talking about UFO shit, sorry.

>All the naturalist fags do is close their eyes and ears and scream it's not possible while ignoring the evidence is there.

I find it funny that you fail to see the irony in this.

this happens so little that it can be discounted as statistically insignificant

occasionally diseases get cured and cancer goes into recession without medicine for whatever reason, this is just that happening around the time somone was praying

there's clearly evidence that is impossible acording to the naturalist fags.
most of /x/ shit falls under it.

most of that shit can be discounted as statistically insignifant, I do agree.

but they keep happening.
saying it's something that has no value because it has a low chance, seems like closed minded.

I'm just telling you that naturalism is just another philosophy.

>there's clearly evidence
too bad the evidence is not all too clear

>this happens so little that it can be discounted as statistically insignificant

the same could be said about earth having life compared to the trillions of planets out there without

when something in the natural world happens that could not have happened through its own regularity, implying an agent outside the system is the cause

even if 99% of shit can be explained with a naturalism philosophy, there's a 1% that doesn't fall under the naturalism explanations.

by example faith.
It's been shown in experiments humans praying have some kind of force that affects the body.
It's even worse when you can affect other persons by praying.
It's even worse when you take into account the combined forces of millions of humans praying.

I'm not telling you it's some kind of vodoo shit, but I'm saying it's something worthy of studying.

>It's been shown in experiments humans praying have some kind of force that affects the body.
It hasn't under controlled conditions.
You're describing the placebo effect, which can be controlled for.

that's why I made this thread.
It seems the placebo effect has more power than simply being a pain killer.

If we don't know what caused it, then it's just implies that we don't know what caused it.

>It seems the placebo effect has more power than simply being a pain killer.
yeah, and? It's not magic.
You know there's a nocebo effect too right?

Fuck, this thread is full of shitty fedora-atheists.

Anyways, here's an hypothesis: the brain can influence the endocrine system which through different hormones can trigger a stronger immune response. This can be enough to fight off infections or cause spontaneous remission in cancer, given the right circumstances.

what im trying to say is a miracle doesnt "violate" any natural law, it only is evidence of an outside agent changing something or interfering with the system that the laws of nature would describe had normal operations taken place... so no laws are violated since something natural isn't what caused the effect, it's caused by something beyond the natural operations

>ask reasonable question about why placebos have an effect compared with no medication
>instead of trying to answer or address the important and difficult question, Veeky Forums instead goes for the low-hanging fruit of arguing that there are no miracles

shameful

Like the other user mentioned, it's not magic, and it's not a miracle. Assuming your hypothesis is true, then it's just an inbuilt protection system our body uses to get better. Not sure what's with all the 'its a miracle, it's a god' posts, if your hypothesis is that it it's a purely biological function

Except then they would get better just when they were prayed over...not just when they think they're being prayed over.
Unless God can't see everything.

Also the placebo effect works with more than just praying.
He started it

magic is based around the concept of the faith.
It seems you haven't spend time reading some basic introduction to real magic (not some shitty TV show astrology garbage).

real magic is based on the concept that concentrated faith can have real effects on the real world.

this is what I mean.
there's evidence to suggest there seems to be an alternate reality, it seems dreams and astral travel are evidence of this alternate reality.
Also postelgates, ghosts.

It's not something weird, most of the new age group seem to have some good explanations about it.

remember that pseudoscience is simply poorly done science, but this doesn't mean it can't be done in a better way.

Also remote vission and overall vissions of the future.

there's plenty of /x/ shit that keeps happening that simply dismissing it, is more a lack of imagination.

>real magic is based on the concept that concentrated faith can have real effects on the real world.
That's not how the placebo effect works.
When the placebo effect is controlled for, praying does as much as not praying.

I know.
I'm just giving you the definition of magic.
It's based around the belief that human faith can have effects on the real material world.

I do believe there's a science that study it.
Isn't it called noethics?

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is."
-Albert Einstein

Where are you from, wise old mage?

what do you mean?
I love science but I also read new age shit and /x/ for fun.

It doesn't.

You can convince yourself that you're actually feeling better when you're not.

For example I could give you drink and tell you there's a bunch of alcohol in it. Seeing as you have no reason not to believe there's alcohol in it you start feeling a buzz. Soon you'll start acting like you're drunk. However the second I tell you there's no alcohol in the drink you'll suddenly sober up and feel embarrassed.

tl;dr it's very possible to make yourself believe that you're doing something that you're not.

that makes sense, except there's people with fatal illness that were at the brink of death that magically cured suddenly after praying.

sure, it's just a few times, but it has happened.

Name one that occurred under controlled, verifiable conditions.

maybe there's a little chance it will happen you know.
like from 1 billion times it only hapens a dozen times.

Is that another way of saying you don't have one? Then there's no reason to take you seriously, and I can justifiably say you're full of shit. You're full of shit. You're so full of shit.

my argument is how do you explain miracles.
your argument is they're not real which is basically a lie.

actually it's more like this

you: how do you explain miracles?
him: I don't think miracles exist can you give me one example
you: they do exist you liar

>which is basically a lie
How so? Because some "miracles" that aren't just complete hearsay are recorded in isolated, unrepeatable and unverifiable conditions that could just easily be faked? Yeah, that's real fucking convincing.

"magic" is something that occurs and you are unable to explain why. An example would be showing an android/ipad/smartphone to a civilization who has only invented the wheel. Magic is science that you don't understand yet. know a few nuclear physicists who love to say things "magically" work the way they do in lectures because no one knows why, but they say it in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

"miracles" are events with infinitesimally low probability, but given an infinitely long lasting universe you could see it happen. I mean consider the successful assassination of archduke ferdinand. Think about how many things had to go wrong (or right) for that event to succeed. Now multiply that by a thousand and I'd call that a miracle.

no, you just stole Arthur C Clarke's quote and used it as a definition for magic.

and every defenition of the word miracle entails supernatural cause not statistical improbability

you can spend five minutes on google searching for medical cases of the last 20 years.

if I keep bringing every case with some link you'll keep telling me it's some shit website or it's fake.

there was some news reports in my country last year about one, because it allowed my nation to have another new saint.

The plasticity of the mind is a very real thing that we don't really understand.

>f I keep bringing every case with some link you'll keep telling me it's some shit website or it's fake.
That's because it is either some shit website or fake, usually both. Find me one example of a miracle from a respected medical journal, or any other relevant field of study and then I'll consider taking your nonsense seriously.

jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184119

I'm sure there's some shit on google scholar.

guilty as charged for the magic definition. But I saw it used by my professors before I learned about the quote.

I find them indistinguishable, and there are religious scholars who argue that the concept of "divine intervention" is a farce if they want to simultaneously believe in a perfect God. Why would a perfect, timeless God need to intervene in his own creation after it has started?

This is behind a fucking paywall, has zero citations, and as far I can tell is about advances in medical science, not actual miracles.

catholicnewsagency.com/news/miracle-could-allow-canonization-of-first-colombian-born-saint/

there's this one which was news in my country.
but you'll keep pretending is not real, is fake or some other BS.

>how it's able to cure disseases

The placebo effect doesn't cure diseases. People receiving placebos have spontaneous remission from their disease.

I said:
>respected medical journal, or any other relevant field of study
catholicnewsagency.com is not this.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMbkrev0810816#t=article

I've found this.

>inb4 is not a world class journal or some BS

>Links to top 5 article that's clearly biased and full of errors and spelling mistakes

This is a book review, and thereview says nothing about its validity from a medical standpoint.

nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMbkrev0810816

at least try to read the review.

you're literally saying miracles are not real.
this is a book about a historical study on them.

Miracles aren't real. This is still a book review. And this book is a historical study of miracles. This does not confirm the existence of miracles.

what's your definition of miracles, maybe we're using diferent ones.

Something completely unexplainable by science. Some sort of genuine paranormal phenomenon.

sorry, my definition is something that can't be explained by science, not something impossible.

like I said, there may be some explanation to all these miracles, maybe there's some kind way the brain can orchestrate a sudden recovery if it's an infection.

Hell, even shit like the soul could be explained if the mind works as some kind of anthena that receives input from some external field.

>can't be explained by science
>something impossible
Those are synonyms.

>maybe there's some kind way the brain can orchestrate a sudden recovery if it's an infection.
It's called the immune system.

>soul
There is no soul.
If you are going to try to convince me otherwise, the same criteria as miracles are to be met.

something that can't be explained doesn't mean it's impossible goofus.
most of natural shit was unexplained until people started doing science.
the sun was consireded a god back then.

we need to start doing science on /x/ shit, there's some weird shit going on.

Like I said, there may be some kind of spiritual reality where the souls reside, like some kind of ether and the brain is just a signal receiver.

iflscience.com/brain/man-tiny-brain-lived-normal-life/
there's medical cases where people can live normal lives without critical brain parts.

you seem unable to see there's some weird shit happening, but you keep making excuses as they're not in journals.

>most of natural shit was unexplained until people started doing science.
And then science was done, and was then subsequently explained by science, and thus, not a miracle.

>IFLScience
Regardless, a brain isn't necessary for life. Cells are alive, and they don't have brains. As such, people can still be considered alive whilst missing a proportion of their brain, however mental faculties and motor control may be, and likely are affected (further testament to any lack of a soul).

sorry, but a miracle is something that isn't explained yet by science.

>isn't necesarelly for a brain
those persons seems to have a normal life.
It's clear their minds have no conection with their existance of the physical brain.

So, it seems in those cases, the brain seems to be nothing more that an advanced antena.

psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives

There's weird shit like this, where kids remember memories from their past lives.

This is impossible according to current understandings.
Like I said, I follow the idea that the mind is separated from the body in some kind of aether.

Hell, it would be possible for the mind to inhabit some toddler body, since toddlers are not concious after some months (mirror test).

>It's clear their minds have no conection with their existance of the physical brain.
Yes, they do. Explain how drugs are able to influence perception, if this isn't the case. We also have every case for consciousness within the brain, and no cases for the contrary.

>kids remember memories from their past lives.
They don't. They are either lying, or are confusing some dream, delusion or something else to that effect with reality. The brain is a feeble thing, and is incredibly easy to fool.