Reality is one honey badger. It don’t care. About you, about your thoughts, about your needs, about your beliefs. You can reject reality and substitute your own, but reality will roll on, eventually crushing you even as you refuse to dodge it. The best you can hope for is to play by reality’s rules and use them to your benefit.
Reality is one honey badger. It don’t care. About you, about your thoughts, about your needs, about your beliefs.
Reality cares about your beliefs.
People who don’t believe in ego depletion don’t get as much ego depleted as people who do believe in it. People who believe that stress is unhealthy have a higher mortality when they have high stress than people who don’t hold that belief.
I would expect that if you have more ego depletion than other people it would result in you being more likely to believe in ego depletion. Similarly, if you’re suffering health problems due to stress, it would make you think stress is unhealthy.
Your point still stands. Reality does care about your beliefs when the relevant part of reality is you.
The placebo effect has little relevant effect. People who believe they can fly don’t fare better when pushed of cliffs. A world where you believe x is different from a world where you believe not-x, and that has slight physical effects given that we are embodied, but to say ‘Reality cares about your beliefs’ sounds far to much like a defence of idealism, or the idea that ‘everyone has their own truths’.
I’m not sure whether that’s true, the last time I investigated that claim I don’t found the evidence compelling. Placebo’s are also a relatively clumsy way of changing beliefs intentionally.
People who believe they can fly don’t fare better when pushed of cliffs.
How do you know? If you pick a height that kills 50% of the people who don’t believe that they can fly, I’m not sure that the number of people killed is the same for those who hold that belief. The belief is likely to make people more relaxed when they are pushed over the cliff which is helpful for surviving the experience.
I doubt that you find many people who hold that belief with the same certainity that they believe the sun rises tomorrow. If you don’t like idealism, argue based on the beliefs that people actually hold in reality instead of escaping into thought experiments.
A world where you believe x is different from a world where you believe not-x, and that has slight physical effects given that we are embodied,
I would call 20000 death Americans per year for the belief that stress is unhealthy more than a slight physical effect.
‘Reality cares about your beliefs’ sounds far to much like a defence of idealism
I don’t think that the fact that you pattern match it that way speaks against the idea.
I think the original quote comes from a place of Descartes inspired mind-body dualism. We are embodied and the content of our mind has effects.
I doubt that you find many people who hold that belief with the same certainity that they believe the sun rises tomorrow. If you don’t like idealism, argue based on the beliefs that people actually hold in reality instead of escaping into thought experiments.
The original quote is taken from an article about the vaccine controversy. People who don’t vaccinate because they believe that God will protect them or whatever actually exist, and they may be slightly less likely to fall ill than people who don’t vaccinate but don’t hold that belief but a lot more likely to fall ill than people who do vaccinate.
I think that there are few Christians who believe that no Christian who doesn’t vaccinate will get Measles.
Many Chrisitan’s do believe that there’s evil in the world. They believe that for some complicated reason that they don’t understand sometimes God will allow evil to exist.
God is supposed to be an agent who’s actions a mere human can’t predict with certainity.
According to that frame, if someone get’s Measles it’s because God wanted that to happen. If on the other hand a child dies because of adverse reaction of a vaccine that the doctor gave the child then the parent shares responsibility for that harm because he allowed the vaccination.
I also don’t now how the example of Japan is supposed to convince any Christian that his supposed belief in God preventing Measles of believing Christians is wrong.
While we are at the topic of the effect of beliefs, I don’t think there good research about how beliefs that people hold effect whether they get illnesses. Part of the reason is that most doctors who do studies about the immune system don’t think that beliefs are in their domain because they study the body and not the mind.
Mark Crislip—Science-Based Medicine
Reality cares about your beliefs.
People who don’t believe in ego depletion don’t get as much ego depleted as people who do believe in it.
People who believe that stress is unhealthy have a higher mortality when they have high stress than people who don’t hold that belief.
I would expect that if you have more ego depletion than other people it would result in you being more likely to believe in ego depletion. Similarly, if you’re suffering health problems due to stress, it would make you think stress is unhealthy.
Your point still stands. Reality does care about your beliefs when the relevant part of reality is you.
I’d guess that there is causation in both directions to some extent, leading to a positive feedback loop.
How high is your confidence that the effect can be completely explained that way?
Not that high, but it does throw into question any studies showing a correlation, and it seems strange to site an example there’s no evidence for.
What does that mean in numbers?
The placebo effect has little relevant effect. People who believe they can fly don’t fare better when pushed of cliffs. A world where you believe x is different from a world where you believe not-x, and that has slight physical effects given that we are embodied, but to say ‘Reality cares about your beliefs’ sounds far to much like a defence of idealism, or the idea that ‘everyone has their own truths’.
I’m not sure whether that’s true, the last time I investigated that claim I don’t found the evidence compelling. Placebo’s are also a relatively clumsy way of changing beliefs intentionally.
How do you know? If you pick a height that kills 50% of the people who don’t believe that they can fly, I’m not sure that the number of people killed is the same for those who hold that belief. The belief is likely to make people more relaxed when they are pushed over the cliff which is helpful for surviving the experience.
I doubt that you find many people who hold that belief with the same certainity that they believe the sun rises tomorrow. If you don’t like idealism, argue based on the beliefs that people actually hold in reality instead of escaping into thought experiments.
I would call 20000 death Americans per year for the belief that stress is unhealthy more than a slight physical effect.
I don’t think that the fact that you pattern match it that way speaks against the idea. I think the original quote comes from a place of Descartes inspired mind-body dualism. We are embodied and the content of our mind has effects.
The original quote is taken from an article about the vaccine controversy. People who don’t vaccinate because they believe that God will protect them or whatever actually exist, and they may be slightly less likely to fall ill than people who don’t vaccinate but don’t hold that belief but a lot more likely to fall ill than people who do vaccinate.
I think that there are few Christians who believe that no Christian who doesn’t vaccinate will get Measles.
Many Chrisitan’s do believe that there’s evil in the world. They believe that for some complicated reason that they don’t understand sometimes God will allow evil to exist. God is supposed to be an agent who’s actions a mere human can’t predict with certainity.
According to that frame, if someone get’s Measles it’s because God wanted that to happen. If on the other hand a child dies because of adverse reaction of a vaccine that the doctor gave the child then the parent shares responsibility for that harm because he allowed the vaccination.
I also don’t now how the example of Japan is supposed to convince any Christian that his supposed belief in God preventing Measles of believing Christians is wrong.
While we are at the topic of the effect of beliefs, I don’t think there good research about how beliefs that people hold effect whether they get illnesses. Part of the reason is that most doctors who do studies about the immune system don’t think that beliefs are in their domain because they study the body and not the mind.