From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Nov 26 1996 - 02:44:53 MST
On Mon, 25 Nov 1996, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
> >
> > Placebo can definitely do things like 3 days of insomnia or headaches (in
> > some cases it can kill or send cancer into remission, after all). It is a
> > surprisingly powerful force in some people (others are almost completely
> > indifferent to it).
>
> Well, nobody has ever been able to hypnotize me, and my parents despair
> ever my actually taking their advice.... so I think I'm one of the
> indifferent types.
Well, hypnotizability and placebo has not much in common. Hypnotism seems
to be linked with concentration abilities, imagination and allowing
oneself to "let go", although there are large individual variations. The
placebo effect seems to be closely related to the creation of
self-reinforcing positive schematas (gullibility or an open mind helps a
lot) and works best in people who are somewhat depressed, anxious or
otherwise on the "negative side" - they don't help positive people as
much.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:35:51 MST