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Comment by debacle | Hacker News Reader

Humans are innately imaginative outside of the bounds of reality. Most people I know believe in things that aren't real, whether it be crystals, chakras, essential oils, random mythologies about random things.

Most interestingly, these are generally weak beliefs strongly held. You'll never convince these people that they've divorced themselves from reality, and you have nearly nothing to gain from trying.

Psychologists, doctors, lawyers, sitting congresspeople, etc. This isn't something that Facebook moms have a monopoly on.

We are really bad at recognizing our own flights of fancy (and, of course, recognizing what we're really bad at).

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Most people I know believe in things that aren't real, whether it be crystals, chakras, essential oils, random mythologies about random things.

You're using known pseudo-science, magic examples.

Do you want to have real fun? Try using computer science fads or political ideologies. For every new age belief, there's an even more ridiculous one, based on the same evidence (none) and hurting people and businesses. Compared to those, crystals are harmless.

Well said. For me, a person who admittedly has some pretty far-out beliefs/theories, it’s because there is generally no penalty for having these beliefs. Sure, at work where things count, I make sure my theories adhere to reality. But when I’m out chilling in nature? My goal then is to have fun, and entertaining crazy ideas is my idea of a good time. People who have to be correct all the time are kind of missing out and expending a lot of useless energy.

Plus, the universe is so wild that even modern science probably doesn’t cut as deep as we think it does.

But surely there's a difference between entertaining crazy ideas, which can be fun and an exercise in creativity, and elevating them to beliefs?

I wonder if it stems from discomfort at the admitting, even to ourselves, that there are things we don't know.

For me, it's not so much about being correct all the time, as just avoiding being wrong.

I noticed that generally, people who describe themselves like you don't use the "believe/not believe" phrasing, at least not with so much intensity.

At the same time, a lot of cargo cultists are looking to relax and turn on the "just believe in something whole-hog" autopilot.

They don't even like exploring details that are interesting, because it muddies the waters around the big Belief question.

In the book Sapiens it builds on this idea for myths lots of people believe in, or "shared fictions" or artificial truths or whatever you want to call it. Like money for example, it's only worth anything as long as people believe it has purchasing power, even if really it's just collections of 0s and 1s or symbols printed on textiles. Extrapolate that idea to many other things people collectively believe in, and that let's us build stable societies.

Uh, placebos work, and different placebos may work better for different people!

So we hook up ChatGPT to procedurally generate medicine sounding names to sugar pills, and then figure out which name gives the best placebo effect in patients? Then we just rotate some of the better ones in patients to maximize the placebo effect, when they say the effect wears off they get a new name on the pill they take.

Yep. And given a significant problem and a placebo, would you rather:

1) Not use the placebo, because even though it seems to work for you, it's been scientifically shown in trials to do nothing

2) Use the placebo, because it seems to work; somehow get good results

A huge number of people will choose #1. They are extremely close to cargo cult without even realizing it.

I'd say that if there's a pos/neg polarization to cargo cult, they are on the negative side, looking for things to reject in culty ways. But whether you're consuming product or rejecting it, the same shaky mindsets apply.

> 1) Not use the placebo, because even though it seems to work for you, it's been scientifically shown in trials to do nothing

This is the opposite of a placebo. A placebo is a treatment that has been scientifically shown in trials to do something even though it shouldn't. For example, taking a pill or drinking a cup of "medicine" might make your headache feel better even though the pill is just sugar and the medicine is just colored water, and just eating a spoonful of sugar or drinking the same amount of water doesn't have the same effect if you don't believe it's medicine.

We use placebos as the comparison in clinical trials precisely because placebos do something, and we want to show that taking the pill with the actual medicine does more than just taking a sugar pill does. Because of it doesn't--might as well just take the sugar pill.

Placebos do something, and if that something is beneficial then by all means take them. If I can take a sugar pill that makes me feel better I don't really care whether it's psychosomatic or pharmacological. The FDA cares, because they want to encourage real treatments and discourage quackery.

That's interesting, I see the term has multiple definitions, to include contradictory definitions around the tested value of the placebo itself.

It reminds me of some other terms in my own areas of specialty, and the meaning they "properly" carry, vs. the meaning they generally carry when used by the public.

But they're generally not actually beliefs, in the sense that they wouldn't stake any substantial value on them. They are "performative" beliefs that are indicative of belonging to a certain subculture. What's interesting is when those performative beliefs collide with factual consequences (eg, COVID deniers dying of COVID). Nobody has died of "belief" in astrology as far as I know. I imagine most astrology fans would cop out if there were real consequences involved.

I thought essential oils were just concentrated versions of the original? Eg I use orange essential oil to make my own air freshener spray.

When people talk about essential oils in contexts like these, they're most likely referring to some people having the belief that they have medicinal properties; can cure autism etc.

Lots of people believe essential oils can cure cancer. Any big oncology center has stories about people who show up presenting horrible symptoms well beyond what's normally seen. They spent 2 years just doing essential oils or whatever (often encouraged by some a quack) on some readily treatable thing and when they do finally give in and come to the ER it's basically too late.

Tragedies like these make me very hesitant about "harmless" falsehoods.

I also wonder what cancer survival rates look like if you filter people who self select out of conventional healthcare for a period of time like your example above.

I wonder if belief in alternate medicine correlates with unaffordable healthcare. It is much easier to believe that there is a better way if the correct procedure would ruin you financially.

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