Seeing the word TED in a title makes my brain release endorphins when I push the ^ arrow.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Humans believe a lot of crazy sh*t. (Alien abductions, ghosts, the yeti, the Loch-Ness Monster, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, The Secret, Amway, and countless absurd 911 conspiracies to name a few.) I don't think that a natural desire to believe in any of these things provides any evidence that these things exist. (IMO) The same goes for God.
not everyone has a natural desire to believe in the Easter Bunny. God is different. Universal. Across cultures, even if they never met.
You're just poking fun at genuine religious belief and feeling, by using a ridiculous comparison that doesn't actually compare.


Why do humans want to believe in the supernatural? Because the supernatural is exiting, mysterious, different and most of all AWESOME, but that doesn't make it real. We are imaginative creatures.

and also we FEEL the supernatural.. but some people aren't listening and don't count it as evidence.

Why do people NOT want to believe the supernatural? Because they were taught in school in a certain restrictive way that cut off their imagination. Then they get all excited about being superior to the "stupid" religious people.
They turn their back on god and then say "i can't see god! so he doesn't exist!"


I think your animosity towards science in misguided. Religion and science aren't mutually exclusive, in fact, if religion is to be believe, they are one in the same.

what animosity? I just don't think science will ever "prove" atheism, that's studpid, and i don't think the scientific method is compatible with investigation of the spirit, i think science will progress until it discovers God.
then maybe there will be a big shiny display of wonder, nintendo style and then everything explodes and we start again hahaha.


If religion is to be believed, then science would be the best way to understand how God put this universe together. Rather than judge science by intangible assumptions about God, perhaps it would be better to use science as a way to better understand God.

yes. that is what i do. but there are limits. there is no "happiness meter" just theories about endorphins. science has to get a lot more advanced before we understand these things. In the meantime, why not refer to religion and art, which describes the human condition much better than science does.

and you call it "intangible assumptions" whereas i call it "things i feel in my heart and in my gut, which is generally much more reliable than my head or wikipedia"


I like and agree with your 'fuck it' definition of faith, but most people who share that definition don't bother to argue about science, because it is irrelevant to their world view. You, on the other hand, seem to be genuinely bothered by the fact that science contradicts some of your personal beliefs. I think you have an internal conflict to work out here. (IMO) This inner conflict means you are a thoughtful person.

no. you just hear "anti science" in my writing somehow, you are pushing the polarisation on me, not me on you.

science does NOT contradict any of my beliefs, in fact i would say in the last century science started to prove my beliefs... think fractals, quantum mechanics, string theory, that kind of thing. Science isn't currently capable of contradicting my beliefs, and i believe it never will be.


Minor distinction. You see God as time/space/etc.; I see God as a euphemism for time/space/etc..

euphemism scheuphemism. makes very little difference to me. you just use the word euphemism in an attempt to degrade the idea. God is Love. God is a euphemism for Love. What's the difference? It's all abstract.


FWIW, I was baptized Catholic and believed in God until I was 12 or 13 years old.

Ahh the catholic church.
FWIW i quit going to (anglican) church when i was about 8, because church is a waste of time. I remember we had to draw round our hands and write "Thankyou God for giving me hands". I thought this was absurd, because that implies that god is some kind of asshole who denies some people hands for no reason and i am supposed to be grateful he didn't deny me MY hands? Horrible.

I studied physics and maths till i was 18. Then i realised that was probably a waste of time as well

In summary, i think you are allergic to the concept of god, because you have been exposed to so much god related bullshit. But you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Science and God together in your brain (and heart) helps you understand the world a lot better than science alone. Maybe science will catch up, but if science can explain love, then you will say it "disproved" god and i will say it "discovered" god.

hope that makes some kind of sense.

That must be it, DC. The buzz coming off the endorphine rush keeps you eating it even though you're in extreme pain already. My husband lovingly sings Cash's Ring of Fire the next day.

rembar -- the real question is not whether *you* can cause your prefrontal cortex to get rearranged, raise dopamine levels, pump out endorphins by using your trust of science, but whether everyone can. There are studies that show that placebo effect works through the expectation effect (the anti-depressant study I mentioned), so pulling "wool over the eyes" is an important component of how it works

"rembar -- can you rely on your "respect of science" to induce your pituitary to pump out endorphins when drinking tap water? That's essentially what pain-killer homeopathic remedies do."

Short answer, YES, that's what I've been trying to tell you all along. My trust in scientifically-proven methods of treatment will cause my body to react in the same ways that the bodies of people who think homeopathic remedies work do. (It's not just the addition of endorphins, there are other mechanisms involved in the process.)

Everything else you said is moot after this point, especially after I've responded several times in the same manner. Properly educated people will gain the same benefits as people who have had the wool slipped over their eyes, the only difference is the properly educated people will be more knowledgeable.

As for the acupuncture, it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that it's irrelevant to determine what fraction of the benefit comes from the placebo effect, because the fraction not coming from the placebo effect is what's important, especially when determining how effective the treatment is and if whatever is working in the acupuncture can be isolated. That's exactly why clinical medical trials exist in the first place. Korean acupuncturists being collectively stupid has nothing to do with this.

rembar -- can you rely on your "respect of science" to induce your pituitary to pump out endorphins when drinking tap water? That's essentially what pain-killer homeopathic remedies do.

1. A large part of the placebo effect is the expectation that a pill will work. In one study, depressed people who expected the anti-depressant drug to help them fared significantly better than those who didn't.

2. This power of expectation can quite powerful, beyond what people can induce by "willing" themselves to get better. In addition to helping with pain, there are studies that showed placebo helped with Parkinson's, by increasing level of dopamine in the brain, and with depression, by causing significant changes in the brain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42930-2002May6

My point is that if homeopathic medicine is cheap, and works for someone through the "power of expectation" effect, why not use it?

3. There's a kind of knee-jerk reaction in US against using this effect. In Denmark and Israel, 50% of the doctors admitted prescribing placebos regularly. Is their health-care much worse? So why is US different in this respect? I would guess that a strong pharmaceutical lobby has something to do with it. Sometimes both a traditional course of treatment and an equivalent placebo treatment are effective at treating the symptoms, but who has better marketing staff?

As far as acupuncture goes, my point was not that it's untestable, but that it can be hard (and perhaps irrelevant?) to determine which fraction of the benefit comes from the placebo effect. Here's an anecdote I came across in NY Times journal

"""r. Howard Brody, a professor of medicine at Michigan State University who is the author of a coming book on placebos, tells a story of two Korean acupuncturists who met at a conference of alternative practitioners and chatted amicably until they discovered that each practiced a slightly different form of acupuncture. They then viciously accused one another of purveying a placebo."""

"can be replicated WITHOUT the use of placebo" -- my point is that placebo effect should not be replicated with alternative means, not that it can't be. Natural release of endorphins due to placebo effect *could* be simulated by Oxycotin, but if the placebo effect does the job, why bother with the extra risks/side-effects?

Sure, some people would rather suffer from pain than "be lied to". But also, I'm sure many people are happy in their ignorance by being able to take advantage of the healing power of the placebo effect.

If someone benefits so much from the placebo effect that they are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on such medicines, why should we try to take it away from them? Placebo effect induced by expensive homeopathic medicines is not something you can replace by giving people generic sugar pills because the marketing of the product has a large role in enhancing the effect.

As far as acupuncture goes, there are many different forms of acupoint therapy, which all basically come down to some form of skin stimulation. You can't trick a person into thinking his skin is stimulated when it isn't really, so you can't test for the placebo effect. You are probably thinking of some study which gauges the relative importance of some particular aspect of acupuncture, like point placement, skin penetration, use of electricity, etc

If it helps someone like persephone, why call it a waste of money? Placebo effect can be quite powerful and superior to any active ingredients in some cases. For instance the article below shows that placebo effect stimulates release of natural endorphins, which are better than morphine for many reasons (for instance, you can't overdose on them)

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20050725232410data_trunc_sys.shtml

A related issue is the debate over acupuncture. Some people argue that the reason acupuncture works is because of a placebo effect. But the influence of extend of placebo effect isn't really something you can test in acupuncture. My question is -- if it works, who cares what you call it?

the fish knows exactly what is happening and is indifferent...he is much thankful for the release of blissful ichthyo-endorphines in to his scaleless body.....the bear's way is, so unnatural, and tank fishies prefer this to dirty claws and bear drool.....pray for this fish tonight bl968, and his soul will swim for ever in paradise.....tempuratic nirvana!!!

My wife and I are laughing ourselves SICK! We've had to stop it a couple of time so far to pee! It's the little things that are so perfect...all the bits like "Huh?" Maybe we just have a weird sense of humor, but this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I'm laughing so much I've had a massive endorphin rush.

chemicals, absolutely...a soup of chemicals is all we are....adrenaline, pheromones, and endorphin,my three favs......oh, a course, thc.....

The game uses NaturalMotion's new euphoria software. I don't see why anyone would knock this as "simplistic" when a) nobody's actually seen euphoria working inside a finished game, and b) it's been developed by the same company responsible for the endorphin dynamic motion engine. This should mean that future titles built using the technology will have no need for pre-programmed animations.

endorphin rrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuusssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!