nocebo

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Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance

classic study, fixed income, Frances Oldham Kelsey, hive mind, impulse control, Isaac Newton, meta-analysis, nocebo, personalized medicine, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, side project, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, Yogi Berra

Welcome to the dark and frightening world of the nocebo. Recall that placebo is Latin for “I shall please”; nocebo means “I shall harm.” Think of the nocebo as the placebo’s ugly, cantankerous stepbrother. The one no one wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving. Just as placebos ease pain through brain processes, nocebos cause it. Like placebos, nocebos can be induced in the laboratory through deception. And like placebos, they tend to track alongside dopamine and opioid systems, affecting conditions like pain, nausea, depression, and anxiety. Except nocebos make those conditions worse, not better. Nocebos can be found in almost all forms of disease.

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The difference is that (in the absence of horrible breaches of patients’ rights) there’s really only one way to study nocebos in a controlled environment: via pain. Imagine that every time a rat hears a bell, it gets an electric shock. Bell, shock. Bell, shock. Then eventually it just hears the bell; there’s no shock. The rat will react just as if it had been shocked. Arguably, it may even feel the pain of a shock. That, at its most naked essence, is the nocebo response. But humans don’t need conditioning the way rats do. Just a couple of words will do the trick. The case of the woman and the rose is one of the earliest documented examples of the nocebo effect, though the experiment took place long before the word had been coined.

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Except this time, the subjects felt better when the CCK was blocked. What opioids are for placebos, CCK is for nocebos: a mechanism giving expectation power in the body. And whereas blocking opioids killed the placebo response, and made patients feel worse, blocking CCK actually supercharged pain relief by allowing the brain’s internal pharmacy to run wild. While it’s helpful to think of nocebos as placebos’ evil twin, that view is not completely accurate. For instance, some studies suggest that the nocebo response is less an active process than simply the experience of pain without the buffer of a placebo response.

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Airbnb, Anton Chekhov, basic income, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, Broken windows theory, call centre, data science, David Graeber, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Easter island, experimental subject, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Garrett Hardin, Hans Rosling, invention of writing, invisible hand, knowledge economy, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, nocebo, placebo effect, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, tulip mania, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey

A broad review carried out by the British Medical Journal comparing actual surgical procedures with sham surgery (for conditions like back pain and heartburn) revealed that placebos also helped in three-quarters of all cases, and in half were just as effective as the real thing.19 But it also works the other way around. Take a fake pill thinking it will make you sick, and chances are it will. Warn your patients a drug has serious side effects, and it probably will. For obvious reasons, the nocebo effect, as it’s called, hasn’t been widely tested, given the touchy ethics of convincing healthy people they’re ill. Nevertheless, all the evidence suggests nocebos can be very powerful. That’s also what Belgian health officials concluded in the summer of 1999. Possibly there really was something wrong with one or two of the Cokes those kids in Bornem drank. Who’s to say? But beyond that, the scientists were unequivocal: the hundreds of other children across the country had been infected with a ‘mass psychogenic illness’.

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Which is not to say the victims were pretending. More than a thousand Belgian kids were genuinely nauseated, feverish and dizzy. If you believe something enough, it can become real. If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it’s that ideas are never merely ideas. We are what we believe. We find what we go looking for. And what we predict, comes to pass. Maybe you see where I’m going with this: our grim view of humanity is also a nocebo. If we believe most people can’t be trusted, that’s how we’ll treat each other, to everyone’s detriment. Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people. Because ultimately, you get what you expect to get.

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He split twenty orphans up into two groups, telling one that they were good, articulate speakers and the other that they were destined to become stutterers. Now infamously known as ‘The Monster Study’, this experiment left multiple individuals with lifelong speech impediments.7 The Golem Effect is a kind of nocebo: a nocebo that causes poor pupils to fall further behind, the homeless to lose hope and isolated teenagers to radicalise. It’s also one of the insidious mechanisms behind racism, because when you’re subjected to low expectations, you won’t perform at your best, which further diminishes others’ expectations and thus further undermines your performance.

I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That by Ben Goldacre

Aaron Swartz, call centre, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, Desert Island Discs, Dr. Strangelove, drug harm reduction, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, Firefox, Flynn Effect, Helicobacter pylori, jimmy wales, John Snow's cholera map, Loebner Prize, meta-analysis, moral panic, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), seminal paper, Simon Singh, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Fry, sugar pill, the scientific method, Turing test, two and twenty, WikiLeaks

p=56e7d0716ac94f00981ab7681baebb59&pi=17 in four countries: http://davidhammond.ca/Old Website/Publication new/ITC Light Mild%28Tob Control 2008%29.pdf street-interception survey: http://davidhammond.ca/Old Website/Publication new/Cigarette Pack Design%28JPH 2009%29.pdf tobacco companies know this: http://davidhammond.ca/Old%20Website/Publication%20new/2010%20Malrbor%20Alchemy%20TC%20%28Thrasher%20et%20al%29.pdf Marketing New Products: http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?if=avpidx&DOCID=2044762173/2364 ‘brand imagery’ studies: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mdb51f00 six hundred adolescents: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1529094 All Bow Before the Mighty Power of the Nocebo Effect All Bow Before: http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/all-bow-before-the-mighty-power-of-the-nocebo-effect/ looked into the evidence: http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/parliamentary-science-and-technology-select-committee-on-homeopathy-today/ Pain: http://www.painjournalonline.com/article/S0304-3959%2809%2900399-6/abstract study in 2006: http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/68/3/478 paper in 2004: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15301298 paper from 1987: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3621780?

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POST-MODERNISM Archie Cochrane: ‘Fascist’ IRRATIONALITY The Golden Arse-Beam Method Illusions of Control Empathy’s Failures Blind Prejudice Yeah, Well, You Can Prove Anything with Science Superstition Evidence-Based Smear Campaigns Why Cigarette Packs Matter All Bow Before the Mighty Power of the Nocebo Effect So Brilliantly You’ve Presented a Really Transgressive Case Through the Mainstream Media BAD JOURNALISM Asking for It Jab ‘as Deadly as the Cancer’ Health Warning: Exercise Makes You Fat The Caveat in Paragraph Number 19 Why Don’t Journalists Link to Primary Sources? A Fishy Friend, and His Friends MMR: The Scare Stories Are Back Prevention Is Better than Cure When It Comes to Health Scares Dodgy Academic PR Suicide Roger Coghill and the Aids Test BRAINIAC Ka-Boom!

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If you don’t care about this evidence, or you think jobs are more important than people killed by cigarettes, or you think libertarian principles are more important than both, then that’s a different matter. But if you say the evidence doesn’t show evidence of harm from branded packaging, you are simply wrong. All Bow Before the Mighty Power of the Nocebo Effect Guardian, 28 November 2009 I’m fine with people wasting their money on sugar pills, but I have higher expectations of government bodies. The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority has decided to let homeopathy manufacturers make medical claims on their sugar pill bottles, without any evidence of efficacy, and the government funds homeopathy on the NHS.

The No Need to Diet Book: Become a Diet Rebel and Make Friends With Food by Plantbased Pixie

Albert Einstein, confounding variable, David Attenborough, employer provided health coverage, fake news, food desert, meta-analysis, microaggression, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, sugar pill, ultra-processed food

The fact that leading researchers in the field of addiction say there isn’t enough evidence to suggest sugar is addictive, and that calling it addictive isn’t helpful on a public health level,77 is irrelevant and holds little power in the face of scaremongering. The nocebo effect Fearmongering tactics are so powerful that they can produce physical symptoms in people, despite a complete lack of allergy or any real issue with a food. This is the nocebo effect, and shows just how incredible the mind can be. We are all familiar with the placebo effect, whereby improvements in symptoms can occur even without any medical intervention. Give someone a sugar pill and tell them it’s a painkiller and it’s likely that their headache will improve.

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Place someone on the operating table, cut them open and sew them immediately back up again and they’ll report feeling better afterwards, despite a lack of actual surgery taking place. Of course, this doesn’t work 100 per cent of the time, but it works far more often than can be attributed to chance. While placebo has positive effects, nocebo is negative. Give someone a sugar pill and a list of side effects and there’s a chance they’ll report experiencing some of those side effects. In food, this can occur with a wide variety of foods, including lactose and gluten. When people who claimed to be gluten sensitive were fed a diet they thought contained gluten, they reported symptoms even though there actually wasn’t any gluten in the food.78 Similarly, when people who are lactose intolerant are given a sugar pill, some experience symptoms such as abdominal pain.79 To say this is ‘all in the mind’ is true, and in my eyes doesn’t dismiss these effects but just shows how dangerous fearmongering tactics can be.

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If someone has become convinced that a certain food will do them harm, then not only does it have psychological implications but these can manifest as physical symptoms that are painful and cause distress. Fearmongering makes it harder to distinguish who is actually allergic or intolerant to a food and who is experiencing a nocebo effect due to the misinformation they’ve been fed. The solution is not to eliminate the foods that are the source of anxiety, but to eliminate the myths and correct the misinformation around these foods that are responsible for inducing that anxiety in the first place – which is hard, considering a new diet guru spreading fear appears every day.

How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal From Your Past, and Create Your Self by Nicole Lepera

autism spectrum disorder, BIPOC, delayed gratification, epigenetics, fear of failure, global pandemic, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sugar pill, twin studies

It’s a testament to the power of the mind to affect the body with mere suggestion. But there is a flip side to this. It’s called the nocebo effect,16,17 and it’s the placebo effect’s “evil twin.” This occurs when our thoughts don’t make us better, they make us worse. To study this effect, researchers often tell participants that the drugs they are taking have terrible side effects, when they are really only taking a sugar pill. Believing they were taking an active medication, many people actually began to experience the warned-about side effects. One notable, and extreme, example of the dangers of the nocebo effect18 took place outside a lab in the 1970s, when a physician accidentally told a patient who had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer that he had three months to live.

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He died, it seemed, though it’s impossible to say for sure, because he believed he was going to die. His doctor later said in an interview, “I thought he had cancer. He thought he had cancer. Everybody around him thought he had cancer. Did I remove hope in some way?”19 In another documented case of the nocebo effect from 2007,20 a twenty-six-year-old man who was participating in a clinical trial on antidepressants was rushed to the hospital after an attempted overdose. On the heels of a fight with his girlfriend, he took twenty-nine of the pills that he’d been prescribed for the study. When he arrived at the hospital, his blood pressure dropped to dangerously low, near-death levels and he was sweating, shaking, and breathing rapidly.

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NEGATIVITY BIAS: The brain’s evolutionarily hardwired bias of prioritizing (and therefore valuing) negative information over positive information. NEUROPLASTICITY: The ability of the brain to form new connections and pathways and to change and adapt the way its circuits are wired based on our experiences. NOCEBO EFFECT: A scientifically documented phenomenon of when negative expectations of medical treatment or prognosis lead to negative results. NORMATIVE STRESS: Predictable and expected stressful events that are universally common throughout one’s life, for example, birth, marriage, and death. PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM: A division of the autonomic nervous system (sometimes called the “rest and digest” system) that is responsible for conserving energy, lowering heart rate, and relaxing the muscles of the gastrointestinal tract.

The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich

agricultural Revolution, capital asset pricing model, Climategate, cognitive bias, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, demographic transition, disinformation, endowment effect, experimental economics, experimental subject, Flynn Effect, impulse control, language acquisition, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, Nash equilibrium, nocebo, out of africa, phenotype, placebo effect, profit maximization, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, side project, social intelligence, social web, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, sunk-cost fallacy, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, ultimatum game

In fact, it’s about as effective as direct conditioning.23 The Biological Power of Witchcraft and Astrology A nocebo is the opposite of a placebo. It’s a “treatment” in which the “patient” or “victim” has an expectation of getting worse in some way. There is much less research on nocebos than placebos, probably due to the ethical issues surrounding making people sicker and the lack of (obvious) clinical applications. However, the writing is on the wall. Giving people a chemically inert “treatment” that the receiver believes will make them sick often causes a biological response that actually makes them experience negative biological effects. Pain-inducing nocebos activate cholecystokinin and deactivate dopamine in the brains of victims while bringing on anxiety via what’s called the hypothalamicpituitary adrenal axis (HPA).

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Of particular concern in many places is being envied by others, which is associated with the “evil eye” from Chile to the Middle East. The reason is often simple: people believe that being envied will negatively affect their health or luck. Because of concerns about envy, people hide their successes and avoid excelling too much or standing out. Of course, given what we now know about nocebos, they were quite sensible to behave this way, given their witchcraft beliefs. If they had excelled, other people would have experienced envy toward them. Accurately perceiving this envy from others while holding witchcraft beliefs could very well provoke biological responses in their bodies, potentially leading to illness and sometimes death in pathogen-rich environments.

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And each phase is associated with particular bodily organs or with specific symptoms. Fire, for example, is associated with the heart. Earth is associated with lumps, tumors, and nodules. Thus, a person born in 1908, an earth year, is (believed to be) more susceptible to tumors. If people believe these associations, then they may act as nocebos. David Phillips and his colleagues tested this idea by comparing the age at death for Chinese and Euro-Americans in California between 1969 and 1990. The prediction is that the combination of getting a particular disease and being born in a year that is believed to be associated with the relevant symptoms or organs of that condition will result in an earlier death.

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles by Bruce H. Lipton

Albert Einstein, Benoit Mandelbrot, Boeing 747, correlation does not imply causation, data science, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Isaac Newton, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, Mars Rover, nocebo, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, sugar pill

She insisted that the researchers double-check their records to make absolutely sure she wasn’t on the drug. Nocebos: The Power of Negative Beliefs While many in the medical profession are aware of the placebo effect, few have considered its implications for self-healing. If positive thinking can pull you out of depression and heal a damaged knee, consider what negative thinking can do in your life. When the mind, through positive suggestion improves health, it is referred to as the placebo effect. Conversely, when the same mind is engaged in negative suggestions that can damage health the negative effects are referred to as the nocebo effect. In medicine, the nocebo effect can be as powerful as the placebo effect, a fact you should keep in mind every time you step into a doctor’s office.

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I have cited the Discovery Health Channel’s 2003 program “Placebo: Mind Over Medicine” in this chapter because it is a good compendium of some of medicine’s most interesting cases. One of its more poignant segments featured a Nashville physician, Clifton Meador, who has been reflecting on the potential power of the nocebo effect for 30 years. In 1974 Meador had a patient, Sam Londe, a retired shoe salesman suffering from cancer of the esophagus, a condition that was at the time considered 100 percent fatal. Londe was treated for that cancer, but everyone in the medical community “knew” that his esophageal cancer would recur.

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What did Londe die of if not esophageal cancer? Had he died because he believed he was going to die? The case still haunts Meador three decades after Londe’s death: “I thought he had cancer. He thought he had cancer. Everybody around him thought he had cancer … did I remove hope in some way?” Troublesome nocebo cases suggest that physicians, parents, and teachers can remove hope by programming you to believe you are powerless. Our positive and negative beliefs not only impact our health but also every aspect of our life. Henry Ford was right about the efficiency of assembly lines, and he was right about the power of the mind: “If you believe you can or if you believe you can’t … you’re right.”

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane

airport security, Boeing 747, cognitive dissonance, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, hedonic treadmill, Jeff Hawkins, Lao Tzu, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, Parkinson's law, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, reality distortion field, risk tolerance, social intelligence, Steve Jobs

In the following chapters, we’ll fine-tune this skill and make more powerful the internal processes you already use. The mind-over-body effect also has a corresponding downside, called the nocebo effect.7 In this case, the mind creates toxic consequences in the body in reaction to completely fictional causes. In one experiment, people who knew they were extremely allergic to poison ivy were rubbed with a completely harmless leaf but told they’d been exposed to poison ivy. Every single one of them developed a rash where they had been rubbed. Both the placebo effect and the nocebo effect play a critical role in our ability to unleash our full charisma potential. Due to the fact that whatever is in our mind affects our body, and because our mind has trouble distinguishing imagination from reality, whatever we imagine can have an impact on our body language and, thus, on our levels of charisma.

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Urry, “Emotion Generation and Emotion Regulation: A Distinction We Should Make (Carefully),” Cognition and Emotion 25, no. 5 (2011): 765–81. doi:10.1080/02699931.2011.555753. 6. P. Ekman, R. J. Davidson, and W. V. Friesen, “The Duchenne Smile: Emotional Expression and Brain Physiology: II,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58, no. 2 (1990): 342–53. 7. R. A. Hahn, “The Nocebo Phenomenon: Concept, Evidence, and Implications for Public Health,” Preventive Medicine 26, no. 5, part 1 (September–October 1997): 607–11. 3. The Obstacles to Presence, Power, and Warmth 1. M. T. Gailliot, R. F. Baumeister, C. N. DeWall, J. K. Maner, E. A. Plant, D. M. Tice, et al., “Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source: Willpower Is More Than a Metaphor,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, no. 2 (2007): 325-36. 2.

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., 101, 112 Kipling, Rudyard, 118 Kosslyn, Stephen, 68 Krauss, Stephen, 70 Langer, Ellen, 25 language, 20, 136, 144, 186 Lao Tzu, 24 “lasts,” 177 leadership, 2, 3 compassion needed for, 83 Leahy, Robert, 32 lectures, 139–40 left frontal lobes, 88 life, enjoying, 17–18 limbic resonance, 146 Lincoln, Abraham, 74, 136 listening, 14, 17, 26, 100, 128–31, 142, 184, 231, 232, 241 Little Prince, The (Saint-Exupéry), 185 logic, 144, 163 lovable book, 90 love at first sight, 153 Lowndes, Leil, 185 Lurie, Bob, 40 Madonna, 98 Mao Zedong, 112, 220 marketing, 169 Martinez, Angel, 83 meditation, 12, 15, 16, 18, 45 meetings, 72–73, 96–97 memory cards, 189–90 mental discomfort, 31–41, 43, 44, 65 metaphors, 189, 190, 233 Method acting, 12, 68 Metta, 87–90, 239–40 Michelangelo, 27 microexpressions, 22, 182 mindfulness discipline, 15, 45 Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, The (Germer), 87 mindset shift, 15–16, 224 mind wandering, 16 mirror, 155 mirror neurons, 145 Miss Piggy, 92–93 MIT, 73 MIT Media Lab, 20, 126, 140 moms, 3 Monitor Group, 40 Monroe, Marilyn, 1, 4 Multiple Sclerosis Association, 203 Muppet Show, The, 92–93 music, 70–71, 95, 96, 174 Musk, Elon, 98–99 Mussolini, Benito, 104, 220 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 74, 201, 204 narcissism, 85 neediness, 75 Neff, Kristin, 86 negative associations, 131–34, 142 negativity, 37, 38–39, 40, 42, 46 neutralizing, 47–51, 58, 59, 65, 66, 202, 236 suppressing, 52 negativity bias, 48–49 negotiations, 100, 130 NeuroLeadership Institute, 38 neuronal connections, 68 neuroscience, 11 Newman, Paul, 68 New Scholars, 147–49 New York Times, 188 Ney, Marshal, 204 Nicklaus, Jack, 67 nocebo effect, 25–26 nodding, 10, 106, 149, 160, 161, 162, 164 numbers, 189–90 Obama, Barack, 109 Ochsner, Kevin, 22n OfficeMax, 184 Onassis, Aristotle, 153–54 open-ended questions, 123 Oracle, 119 oscillators, 146 outgoing personalities, 10 owning the stage, 193–94 oxytocin, 73, 170, 198 Paramount Equity, 109, 215 Parkinson’s Law, 55 patience, 100, 103 pauses, 10, 106, 130–31, 141, 234 pausing, 129 in presentations, 196–97 Pavlov, Ivan, 132 PayPal, 98 Penn, Sean, 68 performance, 53, 58 performance review, 174 Perot, Ross, 216 Persia, 132 personality, 10, 107–10, 113 personal magnetism, 6 personal space, 150–53 Peter Pan, 71 phenylethylamine (PEA), 153 phones, 183–85, 186 physical discomfort, 28–31, 42, 43, 59, 65, 66 physicians, 3 pictures, 136–39, 142 pitch, 140 placebo effect, 25, 26, 36, 55, 74 Play-Doh, 173–74 posture, 21, 91, 97, 147, 149, 150, 156–63, 164 authority charisma and, 106 in presentations, 198 Powell, Colin, 5, 104, 112 power, 5, 6, 13, 18–20, 21, 26, 27, 31, 67, 94, 100, 130, 139, 142, 162, 191, 224, 229–30, 231, 234 praise, 207–11 presence, 5–6, 12, 13–18, 26, 27, 31, 63, 129, 142, 154, 224, 229–30, 235 anxiety and, 32 appearance of, 191 body language and, 21 focus charisma and, 100, 231 techniques for, 15 presentations, 7, 72, 187–200, 215, 232, 233–34 charismatic message in, 188–90 colors at, 191 mid-course corrections, 197–99 Q&As at, 190 rehearsals of, 192–93 supporting points in, 189 warmth in, 194–95 Rao, Srikumar, 53n rationalization, 170–71, 186 reality: mind’s view of, 47–49, 50 rewriting, 51, 52–58, 59–60, 65, 66, 202, 236–37 reassurance, 161, 162, 164 resentment, 57, 58, 75, 130, 207–11 resilience, 64–65 responsibility, 210 responsibility transfer, 34–37, 42, 45, 60, 100, 202, 235–36 Rice, Condoleezza, 5 Riggio, Ronald, 143–44 Rock, David, 38 Rocky III, 71 role-playing, 96 romance, 2, 174 Rome, 120 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 136, 194 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 185 sarcasm, 56 satisfaction, 58, 237 Schiro, Tom, 83 Schnabel, Arthur, 130 seating choices, 152–53, 242 Seinfeld, Jerry, 192, 193 self-acceptance, 85 self-compassion, 84–90, 103, 181, 239 self-confidence, 84, 85–86, 94–95 self-consciousness, 199 self-criticism, 38–39, 40, 42, 50, 86–87, 90 self-doubt, 39–41, 42, 43 self-esteem, 84–85, 94–95 self-evaluation, 85 self-warmth, 84 separation distress, 154 shame, 45–46, 50, 90 Sicilienne, The, 196 Sinatra, Frank, 198, 216 situations, 107, 110–13 smiling, 24, 141–42, 184 social comparison, 85 Social Intelligence, 146 social situations, 3 social skills, 23 social smile, 22 soft focus, 155 sounds, 15, 235 Southwest Airlines, 146 space, 158–59 speaking, 131–39, 142, 241 see also presentations Stalin, Joseph, 104, 220 Stanford Business School, 40 Stanford University, 157, 159 statistics, 189–90 status, 134, 160, 232 authority charisma and, 104–7, 231 stories, 189, 190, 233 Streep, Meryl, 68 stress, 2, 38, 41, 52, 53, 154–55 visualization and, 71 stress hormones, 38, 52, 170 stress system, 170, 174, 202 students, 3 suicide, 73 sympathy, 82 Tan, Chade-Meng, 45–46 teachers, 116 technical skills, 23 tempo, 140, 141, 142 tension, 59–60, 61 Teresa, Mother, 88, 112 Tesla Motors, 98–99 Texas, University of, 116 Thatcher, Margaret, 112 Thich Nhat Hanh, 44 threat response, 38 tone, 140 apologies and, 181 criticism and, 179 Tonight Show, The, 192 Top Gun, 71 traffic, 56 true smile, 24 trust, 2, 152 uncertainty, 32–37, 42, 101, 167 Uslan, Michael, 40 Vangelis, 71 vision, 203–5, 231, 234 visionary, 210 visionary charisma, 98, 101–2, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 136, 167, 231 visualization, 67–74, 96, 231, 238 body language and, 68, 69, 73, 97 of funeral, 78–79, 83 of goodwill, 81 of historical counselors, 74 of invisible angel wings, 81, 158, 171, 174, 194 kindness charisma and, 103 before meetings, 72–73 of Metta, 88–89 for phone calls and e-mails, 183 practice for, 69 before presentations, 72 voice, 21, 139–42, 182 volume, 140–41, 193–94 vulnerability, 216–18, 221, 243 Walmart, 198 Walton, Sam, 198, 216 warming up, 93–97, 103, 172 warmth, 5, 6, 13, 18–20, 26, 27, 67, 74, 81, 92, 94, 97, 101, 106, 109, 123, 130, 139, 142, 150, 155, 156, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 172, 176, 182, 224, 229–30, 231, 232 anxiety and, 32 body language and, 21, 234 criticism and, 179 focus charisma and, 100 handshakes and, 121 kindness charisma and, 102–4, 231 on phone, 185 in presentations, 191, 194–95, 197 self-, 84 vocal, 141–42 Weiss, Alan, 144 white knights, 120 Williams, Redford, 170 willpower, 94 Winfrey, Oprah, 75, 108, 109, 110–11 Wise Brain Bulletin, 73 Wiseman Institute, 80 worst-case scenario, 50, 51 writing, 54, 56, 57

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

airport security, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, autism spectrum disorder, Drosophila, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, framing effect, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, language acquisition, longitudinal study, luminiferous ether, meta-analysis, nocebo, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Shai Danziger, Skype, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, systems thinking, TED Talk, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions

When you are expecting pain, like the moment just before an injection, your brain regions that process nociception change their activity. That is, you simulate pain and therefore feel it. This phenomenon is called the nocebo effect. You’re probably more familiar with its counterpart, the placebo effect, which relieves pain using a medically ineffective treatment like a sugar pill. If you believe you’ll feel less pain, your beliefs influence your predictions and tune down your nociceptive input so you do feel less pain. Both placebos and nocebos involve chemical changes in the brain regions that process nociception. These chemicals include opioids that relieve pain and work similarly to morphine, codeine, heroin, and other opiate drugs.

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These chemicals include opioids that relieve pain and work similarly to morphine, codeine, heroin, and other opiate drugs. Opioids increase during placebo and turn down nociception, and likewise decrease during nocebo effects, earning them the moniker of “your internal medicine cabinet.”18 I watched my daughter experience the nocebo effect when she was a baby and had thirteen ear infections in nine months. The first time we visited the pediatrician’s office for treatment, she wailed in discomfort as he peered into her ears (though he is a caring and careful physician). The second time, she cried in the waiting room. The third time, she began sobbing in the building lobby, and the fourth time, as we entered the parking garage.

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Novato, CA: New World Library. Benedetti, Fabrizio. 2014. “Placebo Effects: From the Neurobiological Paradigm to Translational Implications.” Neuron 84 (3): 623–637. Benedetti, Fabrizio, Martina Amanzio, Sergio Vighetti, and Giovanni Asteggiano. 2006. “The Biochemical and Neuroendocrine Bases of the Hyperalgesic Nocebo Effect.” Journal of Neuroscience 26 (46): 12014–12022. Berent, Iris. 2013. “The Phonological Mind.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (7): 319–327. Bergelson, Elika, and Daniel Swingley. 2012. “At 6–9 Months, Human Infants Know the Meanings of Many Common Nouns.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (9): 3253–3258.

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, autism spectrum disorder, British Empire, colonial rule, dark matter, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, global pandemic, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, invisible hand, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, placebo effect, social distancing, trade route, urban renewal

If a patient loses confidence in his doctor, or if he perceives that the doctor has lost respect for him, the beneficial effects of the placebo shrink–and that shrinkage doesn’t necessarily stop at zero. It can enter negative space, giving rise to a harmful or ‘nocebo’ effect. Some of the therapies prescribed in 1918 are described as having aggravated the symptoms. They may have actually done so, for biochemical reasons, or they may have been acting as nocebos–and this applied to western and traditional remedies alike. The term ‘nocebo’ did not enter the conventional medical lexicon until the 1960s, yet some healers may have instinctively grasped the concept. There are reports of shamans fleeing when they saw that their ministrations were having no effect.

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.: Nosferatu (film) 266 Mushanokōji, Saneatsu 264 Love and Death 264 music, post-flu 261, 265–6 Muslims see Islam mustard gas 161, 194 N see neuraminidase N1 antigen 196 Nairobi, Kenya 44 ‘Naples Soldier’ 63, 81, 95 Napoleon, Harold 233 Yuuyaraq 233 Napoleonic Army 67 National Academy of Medicine, US 275 National Institute for Medical Research, London 181 National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland 193–4 Native Americans 21 natural selection 17, 29 naturopathy 121, 235, 236, 238 Nava, José 49 Nazi Party 238–9 abortions 244 eugenics 244, 246 healthcare 243–4 ‘sterilisation law’ 244 Necker Hospital for Sick Children, Paris 208 Nemolovsky, Alexander, Archbishop 148 Netherlands: horse flu 199 neuraminidase (N antigen) 184, 185, 186 New Idria mercury mines, California 124, 145–6 New Orleans 102 newspapers 54, 79, 81, 82, 83, 102, 108–11, 203–4, 259, 260 New York City 41, 43, 44–5, 92, 103–5, 164, 176 Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan 107 Calvary Cemetery 110–11 Church of Our Lady of Pompeii, Greenwich Village 110 first public housing project 112 funerals 110–11 Italian-Americans 7, 105–12, 126, 202, 203, 222, 236 Jewish ‘black wedding’ 126 Mount Carmel Hospital 222 Mount Hebron Cemetery 126 public health campaigns 105, 109 schools 104, 108–9 New York Times 38, 234–5, 236 New Zealand 93, 94, 205, 253 Nicolle, Charles 179, 180 Nigeria: the Igbo 65 NIH see National Institutes of Health Niña, La 276–7 Niño, El 276–7 Nirala (poet) 270–71 ‘Beggar’ 271 Nkwenkwe, Bungu 223 Nkwenkwe, Nontetha 221, 222–7, 237 Nobel Prize winners 26, 30, 95, 136–7, 175, 215, 270 ‘nocebos’ 125–6 North China Herald 170 North Manchurian Plague Prevention Service 242 Norway/Norwegians 24, 103, 202 baby boom (1920) 216 melancholia 219–20 Nosferatu (film) 266 Nushagak, Alaska 148 Odessa, Russia (Ukraine) 7, 38, 126–7, 129, 130–31, 133 Bacteriological Station 128, 129 cholera 130, 131, 132 Jewish ‘black weddings’ 131–2, 133 Jewish cemeteries 131–2, 135 Jewish community 126, 127, 128–9, 131–2, 134, 135 Jewish Hospital 129, 130, 132, 168 Old City Hospital 167–8 plague cemeteries 127 University 129, 135 see also Kholodnaya, Vera olive tree disease 282–3 O’Neill, Eugene: The Straw 263 orphans 4, 5, 12, 147, 149, 212–13, 229, 230–31, 232, 283, 294 Osler, William 45 Oslo, Norway 202 osteopathy 121 Ottoman Empire 113, 250, 267 Outbreak (film) 275, 282 Owen, Wilfred 161 owls 75, 277 Oxford, John 162, 189 P, Rolando 221, 222 Pacific Islands/Islanders 21, 205 Pakistan 115, 202 palaeoclimatology 21, 22 Palestine 267 Palma, Majorca 28, 209 Pan American Health Organization 246 ‘pandemics’ 3, 4, 5–6, 21, 22, 182, 275 as acts of God 292 flu 6–9, 182, 185–6, 275, 276, 293 predicting 276, 277–9 Paranhos da Beira, Portugal 75 Parikh, Shankarlal 258 Paris, France 3, 31, 45, 48, 63, 123–4, 175, 203 Apollinaire’s funeral 3–4 flu 250–51, 294 International Office of Public Hygiene 92, 245 peace conference 45, 245, 250 see also Pasteur Institute Park, William 176, 177 Parkinson’s disease 221, 222 Parral, Chile 68 Pasteur, Louis 25, 26, 27, 29, 97, 98, 128, 129, 175, 210 Pasteur Institute, Paris 97, 175, 176, 178, 179, 245 see also Tehran; Tunis Patterson, David 167, 168, 169, 170 Paula Rodrigues Alves, Francisco, President of Brazil 52, 53 Paustovksy, Konstantin 129–30, 135 Pedro II, Emperor Dom 52 Peking (Beijing) 38, 69, 170 Union Medical College 245 penicillin 238 Perinthus, Greece 13, 14 Pershing, General John ‘Black Jack’ 37 Persia (Iran) 30, 116, 119, 202, 245 and British–Russian ‘Great Game’ 43, 113, 116 railways 30 see also Mashed; Tehran Peru 22, 44, 45 Pfeiffer, Richard 27, 38, 176, 180–81 ‘Pfeiffer’s bacillus’ (Haemophilus influenzae) 27, 38, 66, 97, 98, 176, 177, 180–81, 238 phagocytosis 26 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 198, 236 Philippines, the 80, 94, 202 Picasso, Pablo 3 pigs 18, 189, 194, 197, 199 see also ‘swine flu’ Pirandello, Luigi 262 Six Characters in Search of an Author 266 Pizarro, Francisco 22 placebos 122, 125 plagues 62, 67, 70, 76, 92, 139, 154, 164, 290 Black Death 4, 8, 31, 75, 139–40, 228, 290, 291 bubonic 8, 21, 31, 73, 292, 293 Great Plague (1665) 136 Plague of Justinian 21, 290 pneumonic 8, 72, 73, 153, 155–6, 169, 188, 291–2 Planck, Max 30 Plata, La (ship) 49–50 pneumonia 23, 45, 46, 78, 98, 104, 166, 176, 187–8. 193–4, 217, 239, 242, 265 pneumonic plague 8, 72, 73, 153, 155–6, 169, 188, 291–2 Poland 38, 42, 64 music 265–6 polio 107, 242; vaccine 183, 243 Porter, Katherine Anne 264 Pale Horse, Pale Rider 48, 264, 266 Portugal/Portuguese 75, 78–9, 94–5 post-viral depression 24, 218–20, 264, 265, 283 post-viral fatigue 263, 265 Pound, Ezra 44 Prague 42, 267 Praja Bandhu (newspaper) 259 pregnant women 47, 76–7, 217, 218 Premchand, Munshi 270 The Price of Milk 270 Price-Smith, Andrew: Contagion and Chaos 249 Prideaux, Sue 219–20 Primo de Rivera, General Miguel 252 ‘prions’ 209 Progresso Italo-Americano, Il (newspaper) 108, 109–10, 111 psychiatric symptoms 218, 219, 220 psychoanalysis 265, 266 public health/information campaigns 29, 53, 75, 92, 96, 97, 99–103, 104, 105, 109, 117, 205, 281–2 Puerto Rico 80 Pune, India 99–100 purgatives 123 ‘purulent bronchitis’ 161–2, 221 Puzo, Mario: The Fortunate Pilgrim 107–8 Pyle, Gerald 167, 168, 169, 170 Qavam al-Saltaneh, Ahmad 112, 114, 117–18, 120 Qing dynasty (China) 69, 73, 125, 154, 156, 157 quarantine 89, 90–91, 96, 98, 101, 281 Alaska 143, 144 Australia 44 China 74, 155 Iceland 93 of Jewish refugees 245 Mashed 116 Odessa 127 Persia 116, 242 Philippines 94 Switzerland 40 Vancouver Island 159 Venice 90 quinine 122–3 rabies vaccine 98, 128 railways 30, 43, 77, 154, 170, 204, 231 Rand, Walter Charles 100 Rand gold mines, South Africa 77, 78, 204, 225 Ranger, Terence: The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 3, 5, 8 rats 100 Ray, Rhoda 146–7 Recife, Brazil 41, 50 Red Cross 38, 44, 104 American 145 International Committee of the Red Cross 168–9, 245 Swiss 139 Reid, Ann 190, 191, 283 reportable diseases see disease surveillance systems Reza, Imam: shrine 112 Reza Khan, Shah of Persia 120, 242 Riggs, Thomas 143, 145 Rio de Janeiro 7, 49, 50–56, 139, 140, 202 1919 Carnival 268 RNA, flu 184–5, 190, 191 Rockefeller, John D. 244, 246 Rockefeller, John D., Jr 244 Rockefeller Foundation 244–5, 246 Rodrigues, Nelson 54 Roediger, Henry L. and Abel, Magdalena: ‘Collective memory…‘ 292–3 Rolland, Romain 136–7 Romanticism 8, 25, 261, 262, 268 Rome 20, 22, 198 Lincean Academy 238 Roosevelt, Franklin D., US President 41 Roosevelt, Theodore, US President 74 Rosenau, Milton 176–7, 180, 181 Ross, Ronald: ‘theory of happenings’ 95–6, 279 Rostand, Edmond 294 Roth, Fritz 39 Rouen, France 162 Roux, Émile 97, 128, 178, 184, 238, 245 Rowlatt, Justice Sidney 259 Rowlatt, Act (1919) 259 rubella 17 Ruddiman, William 277 Runitsch, Ossip 133 Ruska, Ernst 184 Russia/Russians 142, 154 and Brest-Litovsk Treaty 38 the Cheka 127 and Chinese labourers 158 doctors and scientists 67; see Bardakh, Yakov; Ivanovsky, Dmitri; Mechnikov, Ilya; Smorodintseff, A.

100 Years of Identity Crisis: Culture War Over Socialisation by Frank Furedi

1960s counterculture, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, behavioural economics, Brexit referendum, Cass Sunstein, classic study, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, epigenetics, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, knowledge worker, libertarian paternalism, lockdown, New Urbanism, nocebo, nudge theory, nudge unit, scientific management, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, work culture

Unlike children who went to school 40 or 50 years ago, today’s schoolchildren readily communicate their problems in a psychological vocabulary, using words like ‘stress’, ‘trauma’ and ‘depression’ to describe their feelings. Robert Merton elaborated the concept of ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ to describe the way that initial assumptions and beliefs about a situation can play a significant role in its outcome.659 Justman writes of the ‘nocebo effect’; the way that the expansion of medical diagnosis invites people to feel ill.660 The representation of existential problems as medical ones has an important influence on the way individuals perceive their health. The relationship between the medicalised narrative of well-being and its impact is a dialectical one, in that it does not simply frame the way people are supposed to feel and behave; it also constitutes an invitation to being ‘not well’.

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. → Jordan, W.D. (1976) ‘Searching for adulthood in America’, Daedalus, 105(4), 1 – 11. a, b, c, d Jotterand, F. (2011) ‘Will post-humans still need the virtues?’, AJOB Neuroscience, 2(4), 3 – 9. → Justman, S. (1998) The Psychological Mystique, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. a, b, c, d, e Justman, S. (2010) ‘Bibliotherapy: literature as exploration reconsidered’, Academic Questions, 23(1). → 125 – 135. Justman, S. (2015) The Nocebo Effect: Overdiagnosis and Its Costs, New York: Palgrave. a, b Kaplan, S. (1956) ‘Social engineers as saviors: effects of World War I on some American liberals’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 17(3), 347 – 369. → Kardiner, A. (1946) ‘Western personality and social crisis: a psychiatrist looks at human aggression’, Commentary 2, 436 – 442. → Keck, C. (1908) ‘The socialization of the child’, Journal of Education, 67(4), 91 – 92. → Keniston, K. (1963) ‘Social change and youth in America’, in Erikson, E.H.

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Keniston, Kenneth Kessen, William Kett, Joseph Key, Ellen Kirkpatrick, William Koops, Willem Korsgaard, Christine Krug, Jessica LaBarre, Weston Ladies’ Home Journal, The (Bok) La Nouvelle Heloise (Rousseau) Lasch, Christopher Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Lemert, Charles Lewin, Kurt Liquid Society Literature and Revolution (Trotsky) Locke, John Luther, Martin Lynd, Helen MacKinnon, Rachel Mandler, Peter Marx, John Maslow, Abraham Mazzini, Giuseppe McLaughlin, BethAnn McMillan, Margaret Mead, Margaret medicalisation of education of everyday life of human existence of human experience of personhood of self of socialisation of society medical moralization Medium website Mental Hygiene and Preventive Medicine (Miller) Mental Hygiene movement mere acquisition of knowledge Methodist Magazine ‘MeTooSTEM’ Meyer, Adolph Meyerowitz, Joanne mid-life identity crisis Miller, Hugh Crichton Mintz, Steven moral agency, devaluation of moral authority authoritarian personality psychology’s displacement of psychology’s promise of traditional form of moral engineering backlash against described raising awareness of socialisation moral experts moral identity moralisation medical Moran, Marie Multiple Personality Disorder National Education Association national identity Native American identity Navratilova, Martina Nazi ideology New Class (Djilas) New Machiavelli, The (Wells) New Man New Modernity New York Times Nexis Nicholson, J.H. Nixon, Cynthia nocebo effect nonmoral psychology normative foundation of society normative gap normative identity crisis normative lag normativity acculturation of anti-cultural moral identity problem of Ogburn, William ‘The Online Identity Crisis’ Organization Man, The (Whyte) Orlando (Woolf) overcivilization Packard, Vance paedology parenting identity Park, Robert Parsons, Talcott Peace Manifesto pedagogy Perry, Lord Eustace Personality Identity Disorder personhood re-engineering of towards a new validated Plato Plumb, John H.

The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health by David B. Agus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, autism spectrum disorder, butterfly effect, clean water, cognitive dissonance, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, fake news, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Marc Benioff, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, microcredit, mouse model, Murray Gell-Mann, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, nocebo, parabiotic, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, publish or perish, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Salesforce, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Thomas Malthus, wikimedia commons

In this cartoon, James Gillray drew a scene at the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital at St. Pancras, showing Jenner’s cowpox vaccine being administered to frightened young women, and cow parts emerging from the subjects’ bodies. The cartoon was inspired by the controversy at the time over administering materials from animals to humans. The Nocebo Effect and the Limits of Nutritional Studies In 2015, while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I found myself in an uncomfortable position while on a panel about nutrition called “Let Food Be Thy Medicine.” I was once again reminded of the limits and pitfalls of our own belief systems.

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In the words of Gibson: “In contrast to our first study . . . we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten.”8 Although this was also a small study, another larger one published later on confirmed the findings. How do we explain this unexpected result? This is where the science gets interesting. It could be that people expected to feel worse on the study’s diets, so they did—a phenomenon called the “nocebo” effect, a wordplay on the placebo effect. After all, they did have to pay close attention to how their tummies felt, which alone might entail some psychosomatic response. Moreover, it’s been suggested that gluten may be the wrong villain and that these other potential triggers, especially the FODMAPs, are to blame.

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., 28, 116 New York Academy of Medicine, 2 New York Cancer Hospital, 28 see also Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York University, 204 New Zealand, 45, 46 Nexium (esomeprazole), 86 night blindness, 235 NIH Human Microbiome Project, 120 Nike, 199 Nobel Peace Prize, 232 Nobel Prize, 33, 34, 102 “nocebo” effect, 165 noncommunicable diseases, premature deaths from, 130, 131, 132 Northeastern University, 68 Northwestern University, 41 Norton, Larry, 60–61, 62 Nottingham, University of, 87 Nurses’ Health Study, 142–43, 216–17 nursing college, 235 nutritional studies, 161–69 honesty and, 162 lack of reliable data from, 162–63, 164 Nyhan, Brendan, 157, 158, 160 Obama, Barack, 11, 114, 115, 117 obesity and overweight, 22, 47, 121, 122, 123, 147, 188, 194, 215 breast cancer and, 133 chronic disease and, 141 honesty about, 132–34 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 122 Obstetrics & Gynecology, 132–33 Olser Library of Medicine (McGill University), 73 omega-3 fatty acids, 182–83 omeprazole (Prilosec), 86 “On Lines and Planes of Closest Fit to Systems of Points in Space” (Pearson), 95 Only the Paranoid Survive (Grove), 7 open-access model, 179 opioids, 145 optimism, health and, 65–69 Oregon, University of, 199 Oregon Health & Science University, 109 Ornish, Dean, 166–68 Osler, William, 15, 37, 71–73, 72, 73, 75, 126, 145, 153, 223 Othello (Shakespeare), 202 Ottawa, University of, 183 overweight, see obesity and overweight Oxford University, 216 oxidative stress, 175 oxytocin, 211 p53 gene, 57–58 pain relievers, risks of, 145–46 Paleo diet, 142, 163 parabiosis, 1–4, 3, 21 parasites, spread of, 103 Parkinson’s disease, 59, 108, 163 pattern recognition, 227 PD-L1, 29–30 Pearson, Karl, 95 Pediatric MATCH, 117 Pediatrics, 133 pelvic bone cancer, 176 Pennington Biomedical Research Center, 192 Pennsylvania, University of, 73, 75 Perelman School of Medicine at, 208 perceptual intuition, 228–29 personalized medicine, see precision medicine Peto, Richard, 57 Peto’s paradox, 57 PET (positron-emission tomography) scan, 230 pharmaceutical industry, 166 drug prices and, 56–57, 115–17 public distrust of, 18, 19, 69, 157 pharmacogenomics, precision medicine and, 115 phenylalanine, 12 phenylketonuria (PKU), 12 Philosophical magazine, 95 physical activity, 140 physicians: house calls by, 80 public distrust of, 17–19, 157 pit latrines, 234 Pittsburgh, University of, 196, 214 placebos, 53 plaques, 183 plasma transfusions, 4–5 plate discipline, 204 Plato, 185 PLOS Medicine, 178 pneumonia, 161 polio virus, in immunotherapy, 30, 31 Pope, Frank, 2 population growth, technology and, 27 portable electronic devices, health care and, 79, 90–91 Post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, 156 precision medicine, 8, 20, 36, 102–25 art vs. science in, 112, 118 cancer treatment and, 115 context and, 114–15, 117 cost of, 56–57 historical roots of, 113 pharmacogenomics and, 115 technology and, 37–70 Precision Medicine Initiative, 114, 117 “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, anti-pattern, Anton Chekhov, Apollo 13, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, business process, butterfly effect, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, fake news, fear of failure, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Goodhart's law, Gödel, Escher, Bach, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, housing crisis, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, incognito mode, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lateral thinking, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, LuLaRoe, Lyft, mail merge, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, nocebo, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, p-value, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, Potemkin village, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, premature optimization, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, publication bias, recommendation engine, remote working, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, school choice, Schrödinger's Cat, selection bias, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Streisand effect, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systems thinking, The future is already here, The last Blockbuster video rental store is in Bend, Oregon, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uber lyft, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse robotics, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, When a measure becomes a target, wikimedia commons

As an example, placebo “pain relievers” can produce brain activity consistent with the activity produced by actual pain-relieving drugs. For all the parents out there, this is why “kissing a boo-boo” actually can help make it better. Similarly, anticipation of side effects can also result in real negative effects, even with fake treatments, a phenomenon known as the nocebo effect. One of the hardest things about designing a solid experiment is defining its endpoint, the metric that is used to evaluate the hypothesis. Ideally, the endpoint is an objective metric, something that can be easily measured and consistently interpreted. Some examples of objective metrics include whether someone bought a product, is still alive, or clicked a button on a website.

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., 91 Kodak, 302–3, 308–10, 312 Koenigswald, Gustav Heinrich Ralph von, 50 Kohl’s, 15 Kopelman, Josh, 301 Korea, 229, 231, 235, 238 Kristof, Nicholas, 254 Krokodil, 49 Kruger, Justin, 269 Kuhn, Thomas, 24 Kutcher, Ashton, 121 labor market, 283–84 laggards, 116–17 landlords, 178, 179, 182, 188 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 132 large numbers, law of, 143–44 Latané, Bibb, 259 late majority, 116–17 lateral thinking, 201 law of diminishing returns, 81–83 law of diminishing utility, 81–82 law of inertia, 102–3, 105–8, 110, 112, 113, 119, 120, 129, 290, 296 law of large numbers, 143–44 law of small numbers, 143, 144 Lawson, Jerry, 289 lawsuits, 231 leadership, 248, 255, 260, 265, 271, 275, 276, 278–80 learned helplessness, 22–23 learning, 262, 269, 295 from past events, 271–72 learning curve, 269 Le Chatelier, Henri-Louis, 193 Le Chatelier’s principle, 193–94 left to their own devices, 275 Leibniz, Gottfried, 291 lemons into lemonade, 121 Lernaean Hydra, 51 Levav, Jonathan, 63 lever, 78 leverage, 78–80, 83, 115 high-leverage activities, 79–81, 83, 107, 113 leveraged buyout, 79 leveraging up, 78–79 Levitt, Steven, 44–45 Levitt, Theodore, 296 Lewis, Michael, 289 Lichtenstein, Sarah, 17 lightning, 145 liking, 216–17, 220 Lincoln, Abraham, 97 Lindy effect, 105, 106, 112 line in the sand, 238 LinkedIn, 7 littering, 41, 42 Lloyd, William, 37 loans, 180, 182–83 lobbyists, 216, 306 local optimum, 195–96 lock-in, 305 lock in your gains, 90 long-term negative scenarios, 60 loose versus tight, in organizational culture, 274 Lorenz, Edward, 121 loss, 91 loss aversion, 90–91 loss leader strategy, 236–37 lost at sea, 68 lottery, 85–86, 126, 145 low-context communication, 273–74 low-hanging fruit, 81 loyalists versus mercenaries, 276–77 luck, 128 making your own, 122 luck surface area, 122, 124, 128 Luft, Joseph, 196 LuLaRoe, 217 lung cancer, 133–34, 173 Lyautey, Hubert, 276 Lyft, ix, 288 Madoff, Bernie, 232 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 291 magnets, 194 maker’s schedule versus manager’s schedule, 277–78 Making of Economic Society, The (Heilbroner), 49 mammograms, 160–61 management debt, 56 manager’s schedule versus maker’s schedule, 277–78 managing to the person, 255 Manhattan Project, 195 Man in the High Castle, The (Dick), 201 manipulative insincerity, 264 man-month, 279 Mansfield, Peter, 291 manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), 15 margin of error, 154 markets, 42–43, 46–47, 106 failure in, 47–49 labor, 283–84 market norms versus social norms, 222–24 market power, 283–85, 312 product/market fit, 292–96, 302 secondary, 281–82 winner-take-most, 308 marriage: divorce, 231, 305 same-sex, 117, 118 Maslow, Abraham, 177, 270–71 Maslow’s hammer, xi, 177, 255, 297, 317 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 270–71 mathematics, ix–x, 3, 4, 132, 178 Singapore math, 23–24 matrices, 2 × 2, 125–26 consensus-contrarian, 285–86, 290 consequence-conviction, 265–66 Eisenhower Decision Matrix, 72–74, 89, 124, 125 of knowns and unknowns, 197–98 payoff, 212–15, 238 radical candor, 263–64 scatter plot on top of, 126 McCain, John, 241 mean, 146, 149, 151 regression to, 146, 286 standard deviation from, 149, 150–51, 154 variance from, 149 measles, 39, 40 measurable target, 49–50 median, 147 Medicare, 54–55 meetings, 113 weekly one-on-one, 262–63 Megginson, Leon, 101 mental models, vii–xii, 2, 3, 31, 35, 65, 131, 289, 315–17 mentorship, 23, 260, 262, 264, 265 mercenaries versus loyalists, 276–77 Merck, 283 merry-go-round, 108 meta-analysis, 172–73 Metcalfe, Robert, 118 Metcalfe’s law, 118 #MeToo movement, 113 metrics, 137 proxy, 139 Michaels, 15 Microsoft, 241 mid-mortems, 92 Miklaszewski, Jim, 196 Milgram, Stanley, 219, 220 military, 141, 229, 279, 294, 300 milkshakes, 297 Miller, Reggie, 246 Mills, Alan, 58 Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Dweck), 266 mindset, fixed, 266–67, 272 mindset, growth, 266–67 minimum viable product (MVP), 7–8, 81, 294 mirroring, 217 mission, 276 mission statement, 68 MIT, 53, 85 moats, 302–5, 307–8, 310, 312 mode, 147 Moltke, Helmuth von, 7 momentum, 107–10, 119, 129 Monday morning quarterbacking, 271 Moneyball (Lewis), 289 monopolies, 283, 285 Monte Carlo fallacy, 144 Monte Carlo simulation, 195 Moore, Geoffrey, 311 moral hazard, 43–45, 47 most respectful interpretation (MRI), 19–20 moths, 99–101 Mountain Dew, 35 moving target, 136 multiple discovery, 291–92 multiplication, ix, xi multitasking, 70–72, 74, 76, 110 Munger, Charlie, viii, x–xi, 30, 286, 318 Murphy, Edward, 65 Murphy’s law, 64–65, 132 Musk, Elon, 5, 302 mutually assured destruction (MAD), 231 MVP (minimum viable product), 7–8, 81, 294 Mylan, 283 mythical man-month, 279 name-calling, 226 NASA, 4, 32, 33 Nash, John, 213 Nash equilibrium, 213–14, 226, 235 National Football League (NFL), 225–26 National Institutes of Health, 36 National Security Agency, 52 natural selection, 99–100, 102, 291, 295 nature versus nurture, 249–50 negative compounding, 85 negative externalities, 41–43, 47 negative returns, 82–83, 93 negotiations, 127–28 net benefit, 181–82, 184 Netflix, 69, 95, 203 net present value (NPV), 86, 181 network effects, 117–20, 308 neuroticism, 250 New Orleans, La., 41 Newport, Cal, 72 news headlines, 12–13, 221 newspapers, 106 Newsweek, 290 Newton, Isaac, 102, 291 New York Times, 27, 220, 254 Nielsen Holdings, 217 ninety-ninety rule, 89 Nintendo, 296 Nobel Prize, 32, 42, 220, 291, 306 nocebo effect, 137 nodes, 118, 119 No Fly List, 53–54 noise and signal, 311 nonresponse bias, 140, 142, 143 normal distribution (bell curve), 150–52, 153, 163–66, 191 North Korea, 229, 231, 238 north star, 68–70, 275 nothing in excess, 60 not ready for prime time, 242 “now what” questions, 291 NPR, 239 nuclear chain reaction, viii, 114, 120 nuclear industry, 305–6 nuclear option, 238 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 305–6 nuclear weapons, 114, 118, 195, 209, 230–31, 233, 238 nudging, 13–14 null hypothesis, 163, 164 numbers, 130, 146 large, law of, 143–44 small, law of, 143, 144 see also data; statistics nurses, 284 Oakland Athletics, 289 Obama, Barack, 64, 241 objective versus subjective, in organizational culture, 274 obnoxious aggression, 264 observe, orient, decide, act (OODA), 294–95 observer effect, 52, 54 observer-expectancy bias, 136, 139 Ockham’s razor, 8–10 Odum, William E., 38 oil, 105–6 Olympics, 209, 246–48, 285 O’Neal, Shaquille, 246 one-hundred-year floods, 192 Onion, 211–12 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Darwin), 100 OODA loop, 294–95 openness to experience, 250 Operation Ceasefire, 232 opinion, diversity of, 205, 206 opioids, 36 opportunity cost, 76–77, 80, 83, 179, 182, 188, 305 of capital, 77, 179, 182 optimistic probability bias, 33 optimization, premature, 7 optimums, local and global, 195–96 optionality, preserving, 58–59 Oracle, 231, 291, 299 order, 124 balance between chaos and, 128 organizations: culture in, 107–8, 113, 273–80, 293 size and growth of, 278–79 teams in, see teams ostrich with its head in the sand, 55 out-group bias, 127 outliers, 148 Outliers (Gladwell), 261 overfitting, 10–11 overwork, 82 Paine, Thomas, 221–22 pain relievers, 36, 137 Pampered Chef, 217 Pangea, 24–25 paradigm shift, 24, 289 paradox of choice, 62–63 parallel processing, 96 paranoia, 308, 309, 311 Pareto, Vilfredo, 80 Pareto principle, 80–81 Pariser, Eli, 17 Parkinson, Cyril, 74–75, 89 Parkinson’s law, 89 Parkinson’s Law (Parkinson), 74–75 Parkinson’s law of triviality, 74, 89 passwords, 94, 97 past, 201, 271–72, 309–10 Pasteur, Louis, 26 path dependence, 57–59, 194 path of least resistance, 88 Patton, Bruce, 19 Pauling, Linus, 220 payoff matrix, 212–15, 238 PayPal, 72, 291, 296 peak, 105, 106, 112 peak oil, 105 Penny, Jonathon, 52 pent-up energy, 112 perfect, 89–90 as enemy of the good, 61, 89–90 personality traits, 249–50 person-month, 279 perspective, 11 persuasion, see influence models perverse incentives, 50–51, 54 Peter, Laurence, 256 Peter principle, 256, 257 Peterson, Tom, 108–9 Petrified Forest National Park, 217–18 Pew Research, 53 p-hacking, 169, 172 phishing, 97 phones, 116–17, 290 photography, 302–3, 308–10 physics, x, 114, 194, 293 quantum, 200–201 pick your battles, 238 Pinker, Steven, 144 Pirahã, x Pitbull, 36 pivoting, 295–96, 298–301, 308, 311, 312 placebo, 137 placebo effect, 137 Planck, Max, 24 Playskool, 111 Podesta, John, 97 point of no return, 244 Polaris, 67–68 polarity, 125–26 police, in organizations and projects, 253–54 politics, 70, 104 ads and statements in, 225–26 elections, 206, 218, 233, 241, 271, 293, 299 failure and, 47 influence in, 216 predictions in, 206 polls and surveys, 142–43, 152–54, 160 approval ratings, 152–54, 158 employee engagement, 140, 142 postmortems, 32, 92 Potemkin village, 228–29 potential energy, 112 power, 162 power drills, 296 power law distribution, 80–81 power vacuum, 259–60 practice, deliberate, 260–62, 264, 266 precautionary principle, 59–60 Predictably Irrational (Ariely), 14, 222–23 predictions and forecasts, 132, 173 market for, 205–7 superforecasters and, 206–7 PredictIt, 206 premature optimization, 7 premises, see principles pre-mortems, 92 present bias, 85, 87, 93, 113 preserving optionality, 58–59 pressure point, 112 prices, 188, 231, 299 arbitrage and, 282–83 bait and switch and, 228, 229 inflation in, 179–80, 182–83 loss leader strategy and, 236–37 manufacturer’s suggested retail, 15 monopolies and, 283 principal, 44–45 principal-agent problem, 44–45 principles (premises), 207 first, 4–7, 31, 207 prior, 159 prioritizing, 68 prisoners, 63, 232 prisoner’s dilemma, 212–14, 226, 234–35, 244 privacy, 55 probability, 132, 173, 194 bias, optimistic, 33 conditional, 156 probability distributions, 150, 151 bell curve (normal), 150–52, 153, 163–66, 191 Bernoulli, 152 central limit theorem and, 152–53, 163 fat-tailed, 191 power law, 80–81 sample, 152–53 pro-con lists, 175–78, 185, 189 procrastination, 83–85, 87, 89 product development, 294 product/market fit, 292–96, 302 promotions, 256, 275 proximate cause, 31, 117 proxy endpoint, 137 proxy metric, 139 psychology, 168 Psychology of Science, The (Maslow), 177 Ptolemy, Claudius, 8 publication bias, 170, 173 public goods, 39 punching above your weight, 242 p-values, 164, 165, 167–69, 172 Pygmalion effect, 267–68 Pyrrhus, King, 239 Qualcomm, 231 quantum physics, 200–201 quarantine, 234 questions: now what, 291 what if, 122, 201 why, 32, 33 why now, 291 quick and dirty, 234 quid pro quo, 215 Rabois, Keith, 72, 265 Rachleff, Andy, 285–86, 292–93 radical candor, 263–64 Radical Candor (Scott), 263 radiology, 291 randomized controlled experiment, 136 randomness, 201 rats, 51 Rawls, John, 21 Regan, Ronald, 183 real estate agents, 44–45 recessions, 121–22 reciprocity, 215–16, 220, 222, 229, 289 recommendations, 217 red line, 238 referrals, 217 reframe the problem, 96–97 refugee asylum cases, 144 regression to the mean, 146, 286 regret, 87 regulations, 183–84, 231–32 regulatory capture, 305–7 reinventing the wheel, 92 relationships, 53, 55, 63, 91, 111, 124, 159, 271, 296, 298 being locked into, 305 dating, 8–10, 95 replication crisis, 168–72 Republican Party, 104 reputation, 215 research: meta-analysis of, 172–73 publication bias and, 170, 173 systematic reviews of, 172, 173 see also experiments resonance, 293–94 response bias, 142, 143 responsibility, diffusion of, 259 restaurants, 297 menus at, 14, 62 RetailMeNot, 281 retaliation, 238 returns: diminishing, 81–83 negative, 82–83, 93 reversible decisions, 61–62 revolving door, 306 rewards, 275 Riccio, Jim, 306 rise to the occasion, 268 risk, 43, 46, 90, 288 cost-benefit analysis and, 180 de-risking, 6–7, 10, 294 moral hazard and, 43–45, 47 Road Ahead, The (Gates), 69 Roberts, Jason, 122 Roberts, John, 27 Rogers, Everett, 116 Rogers, William, 31 Rogers Commission Report, 31–33 roles, 256–58, 260, 271, 293 roly-poly toy, 111–12 root cause, 31–33, 234 roulette, 144 Rubicon River, 244 ruinous empathy, 264 Rumsfeld, Donald, 196–97, 247 Rumsfeld’s Rule, 247 Russia, 218, 241 Germany and, 70, 238–39 see also Soviet Union Sacred Heart University (SHU), 217, 218 sacrifice play, 239 Sagan, Carl, 220 sales, 81, 216–17 Salesforce, 299 same-sex marriage, 117, 118 Sample, Steven, 28 sample distribution, 152–53 sample size, 143, 160, 162, 163, 165–68, 172 Sánchez, Ricardo, 234 sanctions and fines, 232 Sanders, Bernie, 70, 182, 293 Sayre, Wallace, 74 Sayre’s law, 74 scarcity, 219, 220 scatter plot, 126 scenario analysis (scenario planning), 198–99, 201–3, 207 schools, see education and schools Schrödinger, Erwin, 200 Schrödinger’s cat, 200 Schultz, Howard, 296 Schwartz, Barry, 62–63 science, 133, 220 cargo cult, 315–16 Scientific Autobiography and other Papers (Planck), 24 scientific evidence, 139 scientific experiments, see experiments scientific method, 101–2, 294 scorched-earth tactics, 243 Scott, Kim, 263 S curves, 117, 120 secondary markets, 281–82 second law of thermodynamics, 124 secrets, 288–90, 292 Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S., 228 security, false sense of, 44 security services, 229 selection, adverse, 46–47 selection bias, 139–40, 143, 170 self-control, 87 self-fulfilling prophecies, 267 self-serving bias, 21, 272 Seligman, Martin, 22 Semmelweis, Ignaz, 25–26 Semmelweis reflex, 26 Seneca, Marcus, 60 sensitivity analysis, 181–82, 185, 188 dynamic, 195 Sequoia Capital, 291 Sessions, Roger, 8 sexual predators, 113 Shakespeare, William, 105 Sheets Energy Strips, 36 Shermer, Michael, 133 Shirky, Clay, 104 Shirky principle, 104, 112 Short History of Nearly Everything, A (Bryson), 50 short-termism, 55–56, 58, 60, 68, 85 side effects, 137 signal and noise, 311 significance, 167 statistical, 164–67, 170 Silicon Valley, 288, 289 simulations, 193–95 simultaneous invention, 291–92 Singapore math, 23–24 Sir David Attenborough, RSS, 35 Skeptics Society, 133 sleep meditation app, 162–68 slippery slope argument, 235 slow (high-concentration) thinking, 30, 33, 70–71 small numbers, law of, 143, 144 smartphones, 117, 290, 309, 310 smoking, 41, 42, 133–34, 139, 173 Snap, 299 Snowden, Edward, 52, 53 social engineering, 97 social equality, 117 social media, 81, 94, 113, 217–19, 241 Facebook, 18, 36, 94, 119, 219, 233, 247, 305, 308 Instagram, 220, 247, 291, 310 YouTube, 220, 291 social networks, 117 Dunbar’s number and, 278 social norms versus market norms, 222–24 social proof, 217–20, 229 societal change, 100–101 software, 56, 57 simulations, 192–94 solitaire, 195 solution space, 97 Somalia, 243 sophomore slump, 145–46 South Korea, 229, 231, 238 Soviet Union: Germany and, 70, 238–39 Gosplan in, 49 in Cold War, 209, 235 space exploration, 209 spacing effect, 262 Spain, 243–44 spam, 37, 161, 192–93, 234 specialists, 252–53 species, 120 spending, 38, 74–75 federal, 75–76 spillover effects, 41, 43 sports, 82–83 baseball, 83, 145–46, 289 football, 226, 243 Olympics, 209, 246–48, 285 Spotify, 299 spreadsheets, 179, 180, 182, 299 Srinivasan, Balaji, 301 standard deviation, 149, 150–51, 154 standard error, 154 standards, 93 Stanford Law School, x Starbucks, 296 startup business idea, 6–7 statistics, 130–32, 146, 173, 289, 297 base rate in, 157, 159, 160 base rate fallacy in, 157, 158, 170 Bayesian, 157–60 confidence intervals in, 154–56, 159 confidence level in, 154, 155, 161 frequentist, 158–60 p-hacking in, 169, 172 p-values in, 164, 165, 167–69, 172 standard deviation in, 149, 150–51, 154 standard error in, 154 statistical significance, 164–67, 170 summary, 146, 147 see also data; experiments; probability distributions Staubach, Roger, 243 Sternberg, Robert, 290 stock and flow diagrams, 192 Stone, Douglas, 19 stop the bleeding, 234 strategy, 107–8 exit, 242–43 loss leader, 236–37 pivoting and, 295–96, 298–301, 308, 311, 312 tactics versus, 256–57 strategy tax, 103–4, 112 Stiglitz, Joseph, 306 straw man, 225–26 Streisand, Barbra, 51 Streisand effect, 51, 52 Stroll, Cliff, 290 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn), 24 subjective versus objective, in organizational culture, 274 suicide, 218 summary statistics, 146, 147 sunk-cost fallacy, 91 superforecasters, 206–7 Superforecasting (Tetlock), 206–7 super models, viii–xii super thinking, viii–ix, 3, 316, 318 surface area, 122 luck, 122, 124, 128 surgery, 136–37 Surowiecki, James, 203–5 surrogate endpoint, 137 surveys, see polls and surveys survivorship bias, 140–43, 170, 272 sustainable competitive advantage, 283, 285 switching costs, 305 systematic review, 172, 173 systems thinking, 192, 195, 198 tactics, 256–57 Tajfel, Henri, 127 take a step back, 298 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2, 105 talk past each other, 225 Target, 236, 252 target, measurable, 49–50 taxes, 39, 40, 56, 104, 193–94 T cells, 194 teams, 246–48, 275 roles in, 256–58, 260 size of, 278 10x, 248, 249, 255, 260, 273, 280, 294 Tech, 83 technical debt, 56, 57 technologies, 289–90, 295 adoption curves of, 115 adoption life cycles of, 116–17, 129, 289, 290, 311–12 disruptive, 308, 310–11 telephone, 118–19 temperature: body, 146–50 thermostats and, 194 tennis, 2 10,000-Hour Rule, 261 10x individuals, 247–48 10x teams, 248, 249, 255, 260, 273, 280, 294 terrorism, 52, 234 Tesla, Inc., 300–301 testing culture, 50 Tetlock, Philip E., 206–7 Texas sharpshooter fallacy, 136 textbooks, 262 Thaler, Richard, 87 Theranos, 228 thermodynamics, 124 thermostats, 194 Thiel, Peter, 72, 288, 289 thinking: black-and-white, 126–28, 168, 272 convergent, 203 counterfactual, 201, 272, 309–10 critical, 201 divergent, 203 fast (low-concentration), 30, 70–71 gray, 28 inverse, 1–2, 291 lateral, 201 outside the box, 201 slow (high-concentration), 30, 33, 70–71 super, viii–ix, 3, 316, 318 systems, 192, 195, 198 writing and, 316 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 30 third story, 19, 92 thought experiment, 199–201 throwing good money after bad, 91 throwing more money at the problem, 94 tight versus loose, in organizational culture, 274 timeboxing, 75 time: management of, 38 as money, 77 work and, 89 tipping point, 115, 117, 119, 120 tit-for-tat, 214–15 Tōgō Heihachirō, 241 tolerance, 117 tools, 95 too much of a good thing, 60 top idea in your mind, 71, 72 toxic culture, 275 Toys “R” Us, 281 trade-offs, 77–78 traditions, 275 tragedy of the commons, 37–40, 43, 47, 49 transparency, 307 tribalism, 28 Trojan horse, 228 Truman Show, The, 229 Trump, Donald, 15, 206, 293 Trump: The Art of the Deal (Trump and Schwartz), 15 trust, 20, 124, 215, 217 trying too hard, 82 Tsushima, Battle of, 241 Tupperware, 217 TurboTax, 104 Turner, John, 127 turn lemons into lemonade, 121 Tversky, Amos, 9, 90 Twain, Mark, 106 Twitter, 233, 234, 296 two-front wars, 70 type I error, 161 type II error, 161 tyranny of small decisions, 38, 55 Tyson, Mike, 7 Uber, 231, 275, 288, 290 Ulam, Stanislaw, 195 ultimatum game, 224, 244 uncertainty, 2, 132, 173, 180, 182, 185 unforced error, 2, 10, 33 unicorn candidate, 257–58 unintended consequences, 35–36, 53–55, 57, 64–65, 192, 232 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 306 unique value proposition, 211 University of Chicago, 144 unknown knowns, 198, 203 unknowns: known, 197–98 unknown, 196–98, 203 urgency, false, 74 used car market, 46–47 U.S.

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski Ph.d.

cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, delayed gratification, meta-analysis, nocebo, placebo effect, Skype, Snapchat, spaced repetition, sugar pill, the scientific method, twin studies

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58, no. 2 (1990): 281–91. doi: 0022-3514/90/SO0.75. Feeney, Nolan. “Living Myths About Virginity.” Atlantic, February 7, 2014. www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/living-myths-about-virginity/283628. Flaten, Magne Arve, Terje Simonsen, and Harald Olsen. “Drug-Related Information Generates Placebo and Nocebo Responses That Modify the Drug Response.” Psychosomatic Medicine 61, no. 2 (1999): 250–55. www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/61/2/250.full. Foster, William Trufant. The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914. Fraley, R. Chris, Neils G. Waller, and Kelly A.

…

“Social Likeability, Conformity, and Body Talk: Does Fat Talk Have a Normative Rival in Female Body Image Conversations?” Body Image 6, no. 4 (2009): 292–98. Toulalan, Sarah. Imaging Sex: Pornography and Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Tracey, Irene. “Getting the Pain You Expect: Mechanisms of Placebo, Nocebo and Reappraisal Effects in Humans.” Nature Medicine 16 (2010): 1277–83. doi:10.1038/nm.2229. Tybur, Joshua M., Debra Lieberman, and Vladas Griskevicius. “Microbes, Mating, and Morality: Individual Differences in Three Functional Domains of Disgust.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97, no. 1 (2009): 103–22. doi: 10.1037/a0015474.

Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

cognitive dissonance, country house hotel, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, endowment effect, fear of failure, Google Earth, invisible hand, nocebo, placebo effect, profit motive, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)

The victim’s neck is supposed to be cracked like a whip – something that has never in fact been demonstrated and is probably fallacious. I used to see many of these patients every year in my outpatient clinic and it was clear to me that most of them were not consciously malingering – instead they were the willing, perhaps hapless, victims of a ‘nocebo’ effect, the opposite of the placebo effect. With the placebo effect, which is well understood, people will feel better, or suffer less pain, simply as a result of suggestion and expectation. With ‘whiplash injury’, the possibility of financial compensation for the victims, combined with the powerful suggestion that they have suffered a significant injury, can result in real and severe disability, even though it is, in a sense, purely imaginary.

This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help by New Scientist, Helen Thomson

Abraham Wald, Black Lives Matter, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, Flynn Effect, George Floyd, global pandemic, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lock screen, lockdown, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, TED Talk, TikTok, ultra-processed food, Walter Mischel

Yet many studies have shown that placebos can often bring about significant changes, triggering the release of natural painkillers and lowering blood pressure, for example – all because of people’s expectations. The mind is so mysterious that these effects can occur even when people are told they are taking a placebo. Not only that, the placebo effect also has an evil twin, the nocebo effect, whereby people can experience side effects such as nausea, rashes and emotional changes from inert treatments. The power of the placebo extends to our behaviours. For instance, in one study, golfers who thought they were using a professional’s putter perceived the hole to be larger and easier to putt, and were more accurate as a result.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Asperger Syndrome, classic study, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, disinformation, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, food desert, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, offshore financial centre, p-value, placebo effect, public intellectual, publication bias, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sugar pill, systematic bias, the scientific method, urban planning

When you go to a homeopath, he or she will try to match your symptoms to the ones caused by a remedy in a proving. There are obvious problems with this system. For a start, you can’t be sure if the experiences the ‘provers’ are having are caused by the substance they’re taking, or by something entirely unrelated. It might be a ‘nocebo’ effect, the opposite of placebo, where people feel bad because they’re expecting to (I bet I could make you feel nauseous right now by telling you some home truths about how your last processed meal was made); it might be a form of group hysteria (‘Are there fleas in this sofa?’); one of them might experience a tummy ache that was coming on anyway; or they might all get the same mild cold together; and soon.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biofilm, blood diamond, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Brownian motion, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fudge factor, George Santayana, global pandemic, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, intentional community, John von Neumann, Loma Prieta earthquake, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, nocebo, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, publication bias, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social contagion, social distancing, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, trolley problem, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Singer, “The Neural Basis of Empathy,” Ann Rev Nsci 35 (2012): 1. 13. A. Craig, “How Do You Feel? Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body,” Nat Rev Nsci 3 (2002): 655; J. Kong et al., “A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on the Neural Mechanisms of Hyperalgesic Nocebo Effect,” J Nsci 28 (2008): 13354. 14. B. Vogt, “Pain and Emotion Interactions in Subregions of the Cingulate Gyrus,” Nat Rev Nsci 6 (2005): 533; K. Ochsner et al., “Your Pain or Mine? Common and Distinct Neural Systems Supporting the Perception of Pain in Self and Other,” SCAN 3 (2008): 144; this is the source of the Ochsner quote. 15.

Engineering Security by Peter Gutmann

active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, Asperger Syndrome, bank run, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Brian Krebs, business process, call centre, card file, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, combinatorial explosion, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, domain-specific language, Donald Davies, Donald Knuth, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, false flag, fault tolerance, Firefox, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, GnuPG, Google Chrome, Hacker News, information security, iterative process, Jacob Appelbaum, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Conway, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, Laplace demon, linear programming, litecoin, load shedding, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Multics, Network effects, nocebo, operational security, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, post-materialism, QR code, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, random walk, recommendation engine, RFID, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, rolling blackouts, Ruby on Rails, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, semantic web, seminal paper, Skype, slashdot, smart meter, social intelligence, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain attack, telemarketer, text mining, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, Therac-25, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, Wayback Machine, web application, web of trust, x509 certificate, Y2K, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

[553] “Inoculating SSH Against Address Harvesting”, Stuart Schechter, Jaeyon Jung, Will Stockwell and Cynthia McLain, Proceedings of the 13th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS’06), February 2006, http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/ndss/06/proceedings/papers/inoculating_SSH.pdf. [554] “Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions”, RFC 4366, Simon BlakeWilson, Magnus Nystrom, David Hopwood, Jan Mikkelsen and Tim Wright, April 2006. 436 Design [555] “The Golden Hour of Phishing Attacks”, Amit Klein, 1 December 2010, http://www.trusteer.com/blog/golden-hour-phishing-attacks. [556] “The Nocebo Effect on the Web: An Analysis of Fake Anti-Virus Distribution”, Moheeb Abu Rajab, Lucas Ballard, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Niels Provos and Xin Zhao, Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET’10), April 2010, http://www.usenix.org/events/leet10/tech/full_papers/Rajab.pdf, reprinted in ;login, Vol.35, No.6 (December 2010), p.18. [557] “Perspectives: Improving SSH-style Host Authentication with Multi-Path Probing”, Dan Wendlandt, David Anderson and Adrian Perrig, Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ‘08), June 2008, p.321. [558] “Firefox Plug-in Offers Clarity on Web Site Security”, Brian Krebs, 2 September 2008, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/09/firefox_plug-in_offers_clarity.html. [559] “VeriKey: A Dynamic Certificate Verification System for Public Key Exchanges”, Brett Stone-Goss, David Sigal, Rob Cohn, John Morse, Kevin Almeroth and Christopher Kruegel, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA’08), Springer-Verlag LNCS No.5137, July 2008, p.44. [560] “SSL And The Future Of Authenticity”, Moxie Marlinspike, 11 April 2011, http://blog.thoughtcrime.org/ssl-and-the-future-of-authenticity. [561] “SSL And The Future Of Authenticity”, Moxie Marlinspike, Black Hat USA 2011, July 2011, https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Marlinspike/BlackHat-USA-2011-Marlinspike-SSL-Future-Authenticity-SlidesOnly.mov