This explanation is neat, tidy, and in my opinion, altogether unsatisfying.
There are certainly psychological effects that can be quite significant. There’s a ton of literature on placebos and related psychology. They’ve done brain scans. At this point, it is tied to too much other psychology and too many every day experiences for it to be wrong. It’d be like learning that the laws of physics apply except for on prime days of leap years, when physics like human intuition says it should.
There is no reason to posit another mechanism unless you’d expect it to be significant a priori.
There are certainly psychological effects that can be quite significant. There’s a ton of literature on placebos and related psychology. They’ve done brain scans. At this point, it is tied to too much other psychology and too many every day experiences for it to be wrong. It’d be like learning that the laws of physics apply except for on prime days of leap years, when physics like human intuition says it should.
There is no reason to posit another mechanism unless you’d expect it to be significant a priori.
(Note to self: replicate double-slit experiment on January 3 of next year.)
(Note to self: replicate double-slit experiment on January 3 of next year.)
Edit: An upvote, really? I immediately thought no, that’s way too silly, it’ll be downvoted to oblivion.
Wait, you can edit retracted comments?