What People Saw: Acupuncture* being correlated with health, and [building things according to theories developed using the scientific method] being correlated with [having things that work very well]
What People Thought Happened: Acupuncture causing health and [building things according to theories developed using the scientific method] causing [having things that work very well]
What Actually Happened: Placebo effect and Placebo effect (in the former case, involving whatever mechanisms we think cause the placebo effect these days; in the latter case, involving e.g. God.)
people were completely and totally wrong about beliefs affecting reality before
Filtering out all the selection bias etc., the relaxation and evolutionarily-based allocation of bodily resources seem to work fine for my purposes. They are analogous to theism-based allocation of technological power.
No, the analogy I had in mind was this:
What People Saw: Acupuncture* being correlated with health, and [building things according to theories developed using the scientific method] being correlated with [having things that work very well]
What People Thought Happened: Acupuncture causing health and [building things according to theories developed using the scientific method] causing [having things that work very well]
What Actually Happened: Placebo effect and Placebo effect (in the former case, involving whatever mechanisms we think cause the placebo effect these days; in the latter case, involving e.g. God.)
Filtering out all the selection bias etc., the relaxation and evolutionarily-based allocation of bodily resources seem to work fine for my purposes. They are analogous to theism-based allocation of technological power.