Derek Thompson

We call this predictive processing.

It doesn't see what is, it sees what it expects to happen.

And so not only is that with our sense of perception of the outside world, it's just as true based on what's happening inside of us, based on our interpretation of how we feel.

So placebos are highly effective at some things, not at others.

It's the difference between sickness and illness.

Those are two separate things.

Sickness is in the body.

That's a physiological malady, right?

A broken bone, cancer.

That would be a sickness.

Illness is in the mind.

And you can be sick without being ill.

For example, if you have cancer, but you don't have any symptoms, you have a sickness without having an illness.

You can also have an illness without having a sickness.

you can have the perception, for example, chronic pain.

Chronic pain is defined as pain that has no physiological cause that we can find, but persists for more than six months.

And what happens here is almost a placebo effect in reverse.

We call it a nocebo effect.

That when I focus my attention on that painful signal and I anticipate it to increase and I begin losing agency around my ability to contain that pain, it amplifies and amplifies and amplifies until it becomes debilitating.

And so it turns out that we can heal these illnesses, these suffering in the mind, just as much as actually we can create these maladies as well.