Brilliant idea and I feel like I've already got what I pressed - "focus".
The first thing, of course, is to write a comment on HN and then I'll focus :)).
But the concept might just work.
People believe in crazy, irrational things and it actually seems to help them, so why not a button which does this ?
Here's a story. Last month I've travelled to Romania, which is a beautiful country and one of the main attractions there is the multitude of churches and beautiful monasteries on top of mountains. So I arrived at this monastery where a famous priest was buried and people from all over the country and the world come and visit his grave.
They wait for hours in line and eventually they get maybe 30 seconds in front of his grave and they kneel and kiss the cross and make all kinds of wishes.
From a rational perspective, what those people are doing is totally absurd - even if the dead priest could manipulate this world from 'the other world', why would people think that in order to be helped they have to kiss his grave ?
But I've heard countless stories of miracle cures - cancers, paralysis, etc, after people visited his grave so maybe there is a force at work which helps them, which I think is the force of placebo.
Stories like this are abundant all over the world so if you're in the Church of the Digital, a digital button might just be a trigger for some force inside our minds.
That's not entirely correct. What actually happened was that the button itself had a buffer which accounted for the possibility of people pressing the button, but the press registering 'late'. The buffer was 2 seconds I believe, and because of that even when the button hit zero, you could still press it for two seconds until it actually ends. So, it did hit zero more then once, but the click-buffer never expired until the time it actually ended - All the times before that, an account clicked the button before the click-buffer expired.
I was under the impression that each reset was in some way due to network issues, either reddit being down briefly or a valid press not resetting the timer. Either way, it's gone long enough. I am both surprised and not surprised there is a necro sub to keep it going.
I think that's what the admins claimed, but there was some disbelief, and external monitoring websites were showing the button as being at 0 for a few seconds each time. If it were an actual problem, I think it would remain at 0 until it got noticed, not just for a few seconds.
Noticed that the post never says anything like "it finally reached zero", it just mentions who the last presser was.
For what it was worth I saw one of the times it went down. The monitor started beeping so I went to the tab and watched it count down to zero. Hitting refresh presented me with the "reddit is down" logo and nothing on reddit worked so I believe them when they say everything simply went down. Just think about it, it was an april 1st gag, it wasn't suppose to have this type of uptime.
and Nocebo (the opposite) works, too. so i think it's possible that both works, it's just because it happens with our unconscious mind so it's hard to justify or falsify.
> That means, if I give you a placebo, and tell you it's a placebo, there's a 1 in 3 chance it will help alleviate symptoms of whatever I say it's for.
I've seen this avert bad trips.
"This is a coin. It's just a regular coin from my pocket, but I want you to carry, and know that as long as you carry this coin - for the rest of the night - you'll be safe."
I've heard of this idea before and it sounds great. But I can think of a hack for it that could make the trip even worse.
"This is a coin. It's just a regular coin from my pocket, but I want you to carry, and know that as long as you carry this coin - for the rest of the night - you'll be safe."
(lean in close to whisper into the recipient's ear)
"But if you lose the coin...if you lose the coin, you're doomed, mate. Completely f*cking doomed."
in pro audio equipment, there is often a flashy colored button on the panel, unmarked, that the documentation call the "client button". it does absolutely nothing, and the manufacturer suggest you press it when the client is annoying you for "more weight" or "more color" or some other nonsense.
This is brilliant, reminds me of the story I heard of how Michelangelo was working on a statue, might have been the David, and the patron walked in and said something along the lines of, "Looks good, but the nose is a little big, can you make it a little smaller?".
Michelangelo knew the nose was just right, so he grabbed a handful of marble dust, went up to the face and pretended to chisel it while slowly letting out his handful of dust.
When he was done, the patron said, "There! It's perfect."
Really wish I had had a button like that back when I was doing audio production.
Interesting article. In my experience, the converse is often true: Engineers want to solve the difficult issues, while the more trivial get relatively little attention and end up causing most of the issues.
This fake button digital nonsense does nothing for me; I need that fake knob analog placebo effect!
It sounds crazy but most sound engineers have accidentally done this to themselves. You tweak a knob, hear the difference, and then noticing the whole channel was muted and wonder what it was that you just heard change.
I was once debugging some issue with my laptop's multimedia buttons driver. I found some tweak which helped: enable the tweak, reboot - works fine, disable tweak, reboot - no go. Tested repeatedly several times.
I filed a bug report and received an answer that my tweak absolutely cannot work. The tweak was disabled at the time and the button didn't work. I pressed it again after reading this email and boom - it works.
I swear.
I figure my mind must have been believing so much in futility of pressing this button that it didn't even bother pushing it all the way down. Scary stuff.
Not to dismiss what you're saying, but in this case the 'client button' is for tricking the annoying client into thinking you're making a change when you've really done nothing.
This is kind of the same idea as throwing in a duck[1] or hairy arms[2]:
I heard a minor variation of that, in which the button just kicked the playback volume up, exploiting the effect that louder music often feels "better".
A different approach I've seen is often referred to as "hairy arms".
It's not the same as a placebo or client button but it addresses the issue of people who would otherwise diminish a project through nitpicking and wanting to put their own touch on everything.
The idea came from animation (Disney, I believe) where the art directors were always asking the artists to make changes just to feel like they had some input and control. The animators started adding hair on the arms of the characters as an obvious thing the directors could latch onto and demand the artists modify. The artists didn't want the hairy arms to begin with but it was a way to keep the directors from screwing up something "important" just so they could feel special.
Do you have any examples of this? My dad owns a recording studio and I've joked with him about turning up the "silver knob" which doesn't exist. Kind of an inside joke, but never seen anything like you're talking about. Certainly haven't seen it "often".
I agree. I will just to copy one sentence of the first comment of tokenadult:
> [...] In actual practice, placebos only look effective when the statistical tests in a study are poor, and most especially when the symptoms are self-reported by patients. Placebos are NOT effective in treating actual disease states or improving "hard endpoints" such as reduction of all-cause mortality or major morbidity from specific diseases with verifiable physiological signs. [links with support information]
I didn't bother to look up the primary literature, but check Scientific American, March 2015, article by Kevin Tracey, pp. 30-35. As always, don't blame the named author for all the fluff added for the general reader.
Reminds me of a brain hack I employ. Intentionally worshipping Placebo as a god makes me laugh, thus activating his miraculous healing powers: http://zencephalon.com/placebo
It's not the placebo effect working despite the user not having faith in it.
By providing the information you do on the web page, you are suggesting (and perhaps convincing) the user that the placebo will work despite being a placebo. Therefore, it might work by a placebo effect on the effectiveness of the placebo.
You are placebo-ing the placebo. Inception all over again, eh.
On the other hand there's http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106, a meta-analysis which shows that while placebos might make people feel better, you don't actually get better – which is about what you'd expect and probably not shocking to most of you... but you'd be surprised at the mystical powers that are sometimes ascribed to placebos.
Make the SEO play here. Create a static link for each button with the text that I type in, so I can link people right to it. Then, with proper title and headings, etc you can probably get some traffic for "random long tail term button"
My wife gets headaches. A linkable button text allows me to send her a magic "headache relief" button. Much bigger impact than a self-prescribed button.
But also not 100% the case. Where I live (Calgary, AB) most cross walk signals are only activated by pressing the button. If you don't press the button, you just get the orange hand the whole time.
Noting that some replies here are describing positive results, I wonder if atheist organizations could make use of the principal. Have an understanding that for the one hour every Sunday that you spend together in the while building, you will say things you all acknowledge as nonsense. But keep up the pretense for that hour and do the chants and make the incantations because we find that it makes us feel happier and more looked after. Then stream out the doors at the end to resume our devout denial.
I have always thought it would be a good idea to rationally take all the parts of religious and social societies and bring them together in a way that provides everything that religion provides without all the useless and bad ideas. Combine this with technology and you would have a hit.
That's what the Unitarian church is supposed to be, I think. I attended a few of their services out of curiosity, and they were similar to church services except there was no mention of religion. Instead of hymns there was classical and folk music, instead of bible readings there were readings from secular literature (Thoreau seemed to be a favorite), and so on. There was a lot of talk about self-improvement, doing volunteer work, etc.
Unitarian-Universalism is a big tent which includes both a (heterodox, from the perspective of mainstream Christianity, which is Trinitarian) branch of Christianity and a diverse array of non-Christian congregations.
Some time last year I read a bit of Religion for Atheists[0] which touched on some of the same contents. I came away with a certain sense of being condescended, but also some interesting ideas along these lines. If you haven't read it, it may be worth looking up at your local library.
The placebo effect is not a superstitious belief, however, if that's what you're trying to imply. This isn't a tarot card or horoscope button or something. Placebos are legitimate science.
This is great, but I have a feeling that it's not very well executed. For the placebo effect to work you still need to take the pill, which means that you suggest something might happen. Here the reaction time is way too fast, so it's obviously a fluke for the mind. Add a progress bar that simulates a long and non linear process, and I think the effect is going to be much greater.
So I had a similar idea a long time ago (when I worked at a gaming company) to put a large illuminated button right on the front panel of the machine, simply labelled:
[ LUCK ]
...that did absolutely nothing. It would have (by design) NOT been connected to anything other than lamp power. I'm convinced it would have been a great hit. My colleagues were not as convinced.
Many ailments have a stress-related component, as the purpose of our stress response is to handle an immediate threat, diverting energy away from long-term tasks like healing, fighting infection etc.
A placebo is a reassurance, that we don't need to worry, we are being looked after, protected, safe, and everything will be ok.
Thus, the immune system gets its resources back, and gets on with its job. We heal.
sorry, no references, just seems a simple explanation of the observed evidence (eg so strong that double-blind experimental design is required to prevent it confounding drug test results).
You think it has cured you even you know it is a placebo because there is a study that says it and you put your faith in it. The study itself is a placebo. A metaplacebo.
Doing it to yourself isn't so much the placebo effect, but rather autosuggestion. It was created by Émile Coué, who used to tell his patients to tell themselves every morning, "Every day, I am getting better" (in French of course).
I'm a phd student in marketing and my research is on the placebo effect. Not only does the research back up the idea of a "placebo" button, but also its evil cousin the "nocebo". That is, if you typed in something negative (I.e. This will make my head hurt) then if you are prone to suggestion (as many people are) the. You will feel worse.
Soon to be available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. Only $2.50 per month. You can opt out of marketing communications for an extra $3.95 per month.
Looks like it just puts HTML onto the page, you can do JavaScript as well at a glance (so long as you add <script></script> and an event to trigger, since pageload already happened)
When a friend of Niels Bohr (quantum theory) goes to his house in the country side he's bewildered by a horse shoe hanging on the great scientific genius's door. When Niels opens the friends asks : "but truly a rational man like you, how could you give any credit to such superstitions" and Niels Bohr answers : "Well I heard that superstition works even if you don't believe in it"
Yes I'm amazed by the power of placebo because "it works even if you know its a one/don't believe in it."
I actually wrote in the placebo field : "Give me a break". And my God it worked. I felt relieved. Like that weight on my chest just faded away. Although I suspect the fact the button/pill is blue has something to do with it.
That flashing background effect is a little off-putting. At first I thought something was wrong with the fluorescent lights in my office, then I realized I don't have any fluorescent lights in my office...
Could we have a red button, which would be better for "activating" suggestions like increased energy, in addition to the blue button, best for "inhibiting" suggestions like pain relief?
How about hint text in the edit box that changes for each page serve:
"I will become a better person"
"The neighbors will become less noisy"
"I will achieve my goals in life"
I seem to recall an application where the developer inserted a completely pointless delay after clicking the button before reporting completion, because people couldn't quite believe that a computer (or anything) could complete such a big important task in a fraction of a second.
Maybe this button should wait a random period of time. Its doing really important work.
I asked it to finish all my client work this week so I could spend more time with my family and also work on my neglected side projects. Looking in git, there are zero new commits, so I'm assuming this didn't work (or the fairies it invokes don't believe in version control, which is equally worrying). 1 star, would not click again.
I tried "make the work day go by faster" (I'm currently stuck at the sales desk -- again -- instead of getting real work done, because the lead rep is on vacation -- again). I've been browsing HN for the past 10 minutes of my afternoon break, and it's like the break was over way too soon. So...working, maybe?
This is normal human tendencies and I believe even placebo effect is part of daily routine...which could be changed just as habits...there could be certain chances that it will turn once individual brain to be addictive.....its funny that blackmajic is shifting its platform to software...serious upgrade...
it may be "magick", but how is it "black magick"? seems more like a "chaos magick" thing, and they've been exploring the digital side of this for a couple of decades already, since the 90s at least (that I know about).
I wonder if a reminder would work in the same way. Set a recurring reminder on your phone. Dismissing it is your Placebo. The act of swiping that notification off your phone just might fix what ails you.
Crazy as it sounds but as some/many/most illnesses are psychosomatic just by making yourself believe you'll be healthy you actually will be. This is solid science not some mumbo-jumbo.
Just at a glance, it doesn't seem to record the requests. This would be a great stealth survey for problems to solve if it saved the requests anonymously.
[0] http://oglaf.com/evensong/
Warning: Previous and Next Story pages of linked cartoon are NSFW (cartoon sex) and the linked page might even be NS depending on how prudish your workplace is about language.
Is that true? I wonder how the trueness of that has varied over time. At first, who knew what computers could do ("pray, Mr. Babbage..."), then the magic wore off and mechanical buttons were still what got things done, now we're headed for "what's a mechanical button"...
But the concept might just work.
People believe in crazy, irrational things and it actually seems to help them, so why not a button which does this ?
Here's a story. Last month I've travelled to Romania, which is a beautiful country and one of the main attractions there is the multitude of churches and beautiful monasteries on top of mountains. So I arrived at this monastery where a famous priest was buried and people from all over the country and the world come and visit his grave. They wait for hours in line and eventually they get maybe 30 seconds in front of his grave and they kneel and kiss the cross and make all kinds of wishes. From a rational perspective, what those people are doing is totally absurd - even if the dead priest could manipulate this world from 'the other world', why would people think that in order to be helped they have to kiss his grave ?
But I've heard countless stories of miracle cures - cancers, paralysis, etc, after people visited his grave so maybe there is a force at work which helps them, which I think is the force of placebo.
Stories like this are abundant all over the world so if you're in the Church of the Digital, a digital button might just be a trigger for some force inside our minds.