I noticed an article about the placebo effect in New Scientist recently. Today I found an article about the phenomenon in the Guardian and apparently there’s been a programme about it on BBC Radio 4 as well.

Four weeks later the researchers measured everything again. The group who had been tutored about the health benefits of their work now perceived that they did more exercise than before - unsurprisingly - while the group who were left alone didn’t change. Neither group had changed their actual levels of activity.But amazingly, despite no change in actual exercise levels, in the intervention group, simply being told about the value of what they were already doing caused a significant change for the better on every single one of the objective health measures recorded: weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure.

Read the rest here: Healthy mind, healthy body

Here’s a blog post with links so that you can listen to the show online. My Placebo programme on BBC Radio4

Scientists are exploring the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD to treat a range of ailments from depression to cluster headaches and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Interesting to see the mainstream research into hallucinogenic drugs starting again. LSD is said to be really useful for treating depression and alcoholism. I’d always prefer to go down a route that uses our bodies own capacity to create feel good substances (endorphins etc.) but don’t think it should be illegal for people to alter their consciousness in any way they want to.

It’s always funny to see people relying so much on substances to change their mood. For example caffeine and alcohol in the combination of Vodka – RedBull (RedBull is a brand of ‘energy’ drink based on
sugar and caffeine amongst other things).

It’s a popular drink in clubs and pubs. I guess the alcohol is there to lower your inhibitions and the caffeine and sugar to get you to feel energised and happy.

In my opinion the same effect can be reached by jumping up and down for a couple of seconds or dancing. And that’s usually how I do it when I go out.

Read the article at the Guardian: Clinical trials test potential of hallucinogenic drugs to help patients with terminal illnesses

I can’t explain it any better than this.

Lance Armstrong motivates Vince Vaughn in the film Dodgeball by invoking negative emotions that Vince feels a compulsion to move away from. Or maybe it’s just silly and funny.

Now this is actually a technique that some people use to get themselves moving in the direction they want to. It seems that for many people the lure of something better isn’t actually enough to get them taking action. In this case really imagining what they don’t want (broadly defined as pain) can give them the initial spur to move towards what they do want (broadly defined as pleasure).

Be careful however as this way of motivation has two problems. The first is that you need something compelling to move towards otherwise you will only move forward until you are no longer feeling pain, then you fall back into your old habits and don’t take action again until you’re experiencing pain again. (This is the classic pattern of the yo-yo dieter. Diet until you are thin, no pain from being overweight, start eating again, feel pain, start diet again, etc.)

The second issue with this way of motivating yourself is that it’s not a good thing to focus on things you don’t want as that’s inevitably what you’ll end up with. So use this sparingly!

My friend Magnus (creator of Tapping.com) has created an EFT Practitioner Directory, judging by his other popular web sites it will soon be the best place to find an EFT Practitioner in your area.

EFT Practitioner Directory

My apologies for continually harping on about money and economic matters, but the reason why the western economies are in such as mess is down in part to confused ideas about money and wealth. A good example is the terms we use to describe certain kinds of money or ways that money or wealth are represented.

For example; why is it that credit cards (credit has positive connotations if you look it up in a dictionary) actually put you in debt to the bank? While debit cards (with which you can pay with your own money) actually use your own credit.

Even from the banks point of view, using a credit card leaves you indebted to them while using your debit card allows you to use the credit that you have stored with them.

And does owning a large amount of mortgages mean you have accumulated many assets (yes, if you keep collecting interest) or a liability (when people start to default on their mortgages).

So when you buy a house, have you invested in property as an asset (when house prices increase), or have you taken on a liability (maintenance, bills and increasing cost of mortgage repayments)?

The answers aren’t black and white, it’s up to you to make up your mind depending on the circumstances. It’s just more evidence that you have to question the prevailing ways of describing the world.

To explain: black swans were discovered in Australia. Before that, any reasonable person could assume the all-swans-are-white theory was unassailable. But the sight of just one black swan detonated that theory. Every theory we have about the human world and about the future is vulnerable to the black swan, the unexpected event. We sail in fragile vessels across a raging sea of uncertainty. “The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.”

Shit happens, we just don’t know how and when? Everyone know this right? Well everyone except the experts that work in banks such Bear Stearns, Bradford and Bingley and Northern Rock. They predicated a lot of their investments on the idea that they could calculate the risks in the market and the world at large.

It seems blindingly obvious that humans are imperfect and that any models we will come up with are imperfect as well. So why bet he whole house (or should I say other peoples houses) relying on your imperfect models. I guess if your greedy and stupid you would. So they did, hence the credit crunch, house price crash, recession and who knows even a full scale depression.

The philosopher / trader Nass Nicholas Taleb (together with every 19 year old philosophy undergraduate) understood this and he has written a book about our human falibility when it comes to predicting the future called the Black Swan. It’s named on the fact that people used to use the image of a black swan as a metaphor for the impossible (there are black swans in Australia).

The Times Online has an interview with Taleb. Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom

In this new regular feature I’ll investigate some popular memes that I think need to be questioned or critically examined.

Today I’ll take a look at the Property Ladder meme. In the UK we are experiencing the beginning of a house price correction / crash, supposedly there one already underway in the US. Now the reasons and consequences of this are varied but I believe the Property Ladder meme has played some part in it, at least on the consumer side of things.

Here’s how Wikipedia defines the term:

The property ladder is a term widely used in the United Kingdom to describe an individual or family’s lifetime progress from cheaper to more expensive housing. According to this metaphor, cheap houses for first-time buyers are at the bottom of the property ladder, and expensive houses are at the top. ‘Getting on to the property ladder’ is the process of buying one’s first house, in the hope of leaving it for progressively better houses as one’s salary rises.

The above paragraph explains the crux of the matter. These two words are just a metaphor for a reality. The metaphor isn’t necessarily an accurate description of what is really going on.

First of all ‘Property’ in this phrase implies that the average person signing a mortgage owns that house. But an investment is something that puts money into your wallet. Like a business you own or a stock that pays dividends. A house is a liability, it takes money out of your wallet.

Most people don’t own they house they think they do. The bank owns the house. When you take out a mortgage ( mortgage means ‘a pledge till death’ in French) you are taking out a loan with the bank to pay for the house. The bank owns the house, they’ve invested in it and it puts money into their wallet in the form of your mortgage payments.

The second part of the phrase is even more insidious. What else are ladders for other than climbing higher of course. See how all the associations you have with ladders are brought to your false idea of owning property. You are tricked into thinking that you own something and that it is a normal thing to try and get bigger and better property when you can.

So a couple of years ago someone came up with the term Property Ladder to describe what they were doing. It has a nice ring to it and seems to describe succinctly what people were doing and wanted to do, so it caught on. But here’s where the real memetic effect takes place. It started spreading and affecting peoples behaviour. All of a sudden everyone wanted to be a property investor, and hold a property portfolio. UK TV was flooded with programs about becoming property and buy to let investors.

This deluded idea that everyone could become a property millionaire overnight (and the availability of cheap credit to those that couldn’t really afford it) is causing a massive financial problem in quite a few countries. This isn’t an isolated problem, the credit crunch, commodities bubble and inflation are all related.

Now these issues have been going on for years, but as long as everyone thought they were benefiting no one really seemed to care. It’s incredible but I have friends that studied economics and business that just parroted the term ‘getting on the property ladder’ like mindless automatons, without thinking what it actually means. They just assumed that because everyone else was trying to get onto this property ladder then it must be a good thing to do right?

When the Matrix first came out in the cinemas some people enjoyed the philosophical questions and ideas of the film. Soon essays and books appeared discussing those concepts. It surprised me that so much of what was written focused on the, in my mind, relatively inconsequential questions; to what extent is what we experience ‘real’ and is there such a thing as free will. This is the material of introductory philosophy courses looking to introduce students to Plato and Descartes.

Now I accept that films have many layers of meaning and ways to interpret them, there is no right or wrong explanation. But I was surprised that most of the mainstream commentary seemed to miss one of the most obvious interpretations. The Matrix described is a metaphor for the consensus reality that we humans live in. A reality consisting of social conventions, the language that we use to describe the world and our experience, our beliefs and emotions. All these things filter what is out there in the world before we experience it subjectively. It’s pretty obvious from the following dialogue:

Morpheus : The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

The advertisements on TV attempt to create associations between certain emotions and products. ‘Buy X to feel Y’ or ‘You can not be happy until you own X’. The world religions have instilled certain kinds of morality which have now been pervasive in our culture for so long that they are taken as given. Politicians keep telling us we live in democracies when it’s hard to reconcile that with what we experience day to day.

It’s scary once you realise how so much we take for granted in life is completely arbitrary and conventional. The great thing is, once you know it’s all a game you can start changing the rules.

Another animation by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, set to a little philosophical musing by Alan Watts.