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Comment by fhnjh | Hacker News Reader

If this is a real effect, it does not necessarily involve magic. I find it quite easy to imagine an organism evolving to subtly alter it's physical state according to the function of it's nervous system. Why is it so hard to believe that the mind controls the body at a cellular level? Even if this is a magical effect, it can still be codified and brought within the bounds of scientific discourse.

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>> Why is it so hard to believe that the mind controls the body at a cellular level?

Because modern medicine (and science) does not like to believe anything that it has no explanation for. You can show not only correlations, but causative action and a lot of people will reject the finding if it is unintuitive and has no known mechanism. IMHO this has become a problem.

Even though we claim science starts with observation, people still don't believe what is in front of them unless they have something conceptual to hang it on.

An important remark, but let me remind you that scientists are used to the 90% of the times where the current models are correct but observations/experiments are erroneous, specially when things deviate so much from known models. Of course, the 10% of times the models can't explain the observation are indeed crucial to science.

It is well known that stress can alter hormone levels as well as many other negative physiological effects. That seems like the mind controlling the body. Every movement you make is the mind altering the body via the nervous system if you want to be pedantic about it.

You would think that if a person's perceptions and belief could grant a much longer life span, at least one crazy person would have provided this by living to something like 200.

> Why is it so hard to believe that the mind controls the body at a cellular level?

It does, obviously. Contracting a voluntary muscle requires work that is done at the cellular level. A signal travels from the brain and ends up translated into a chemical message at the cellular level which contracts muscle fibers.

The brain is even able to address a specific set of cells that correspond to a bundle of specific nerve fibers for that muscle.

Nervous-system signaling involves the cellular level: changing electric potentials, ions flowing across cell membranes, and and such.

Yes I had this in my mind when I wrote the above post. I was trying to draw your attention to the fact that we already believe such things. (Two different accounts, two different pcs, lost password)

First of all, "evolving" happens by selective pressures and over generations on a population level. But I see what you mean, you mean changing to accommodate to the environment. But here we are not talking about tanning to compensate for increased UV exposure, we are not even talking about changing to match our environment, we are talking about reducing an illness by evoking memories of the past by physical objects.

Unless this past environment was one that actually kills cancers cells (I don't know how the Big Lebowksi might do that) or perhaps reduces tumor growth I can't imagine any way how this can work.

What I can imagine is going on a time out, reducing stress and thus biological stress responses does have an influence on a tumor. I hope they are compensating for this effect. They should have a control group in a reduced stress environment (or something that mimics all evironmental variables of the back-in-time room but for the back-in-time aspect) perhaps with a bluray disc of Lucy.

Hey or perhaps dumbphones induce less stress. Perhaps you get better sleep in the 2003 environment, light/circadian rithm is known to influence cancer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_factors_for_breast_cancer#...

Et cetera et cetera, et cetera

Evolve is a word much older than Darwin. It means "develop gradually". My opinion can evolve. My code can evolve. My body can evolve.

It does not now, nor has it ever, meant strictly the biological notion you limited it to above. The GP post used the word correctly.

If I assert that a man runs, I might mean that he flows under pressure, but you would probably interpret me to mean that he moves quickly on his feet. "An organism evolving" similarly tends toward one particular meaning. When you then say you mean to be "within the bounds of scientific discourse," how can you blame someone for thinking you are using the scientific definition?

When you then say you mean to be "within the bounds of scientific discourse,"

I said no such thing. I am not the person who used the word "evolve". I merely am capable of understanding that sometimes pedantry doesn't actually help anything.

So why did you respond to pedantry with more pedantry?

Evolve means gradual change to me. For the more sophisticated amongst us, we are able to take the root meaning of the word and understand it's implication in different contexts.

My statement sometimes pedantry doesn't actually help anything implies that sometimes it does help things. IMO this was one of those occasions.

"(The other group at San Miguel will have the support of fellow cancer patients but will not live in the past; a third group will not experience any research intervention.)"

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