Tata1 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 1:31 am
mahabuddha wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:45 pm
Two words: Pla Cebo
Placebo is a really stupid term. It sort of attributes the cause of healing to the only thing we are sure its not doing the healing. The placebo.
What he’s referring to is the
placebo effect.
A placebo, used in a blind study, is something which has no effect.
For instance, suppose there is a new medicine being tested that would help to relieve muscle tension. To test whether this medicine is effective or not, you use a test group. Let’s say, 100 people who have the same medical problem. You give 50 of them the potential new medicine and you give the other 50 a’sugar pill’ or placebo. It has no medicine in it. It’s called a blind test because no patient knows which type of pill he’s getting.
They used to tell every test patient that it was the actual medicine they were testing. But now, for ethical and legal reasons, the test patient must be informed that they may or may not be getting the real deal. 50-50 chance.
The doctor knows which patients got which pills. If the results are that the 50 who took the pill show measurable improvement, and the other 50, who got the placebo, didn’t improve, then you can determine that the results are from the new medicine.
But if 25 people from each group show improvement and 25 from each group don’t, you can’t say that the improvement is the result of the medicine, because just as many people got better without the medicine as those who did.
The reason the 25 who got placebos show improvement is the “placebo effect”. This means that, in this example, the 25 who didn’t get the medicine felt their muscle tension relax and improve simply because they
thought they had taken the real medicine.
What this means in the context of this discussion. Is that the patient experiences the intended and hoped for results from this phurba thing, because he
thinks it works. He is already convinced that the lama has social healing powers. Spitting out a mouthful of red juice only helps convince the patient that it’s real.
The placebo effect doesn’t work where an actual imposed source of the illness, such as a parasite or virus or fracture is the cause. But there are many documented examples of a sort of “mind over matter” scenario, where the patient really does almost think themselves back to health. It will piss off a lot of people when I say that this is all Reiki healing is.
But every doctor will tell you that a positive attitude helps speed up recovery time after an operation. That’s why, statistically, people tend to do better after an operation when they think others are praying for them, or hod us watching out for them or whatever.
The biggest problem with faith healing is when people avoid or postpone seeking proven methods of treatment for themselves or their children until irreversible damage is done. So, even if a spiritual healer isn’t doing it for money, it can still have very negative consequences.
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.