The Placebo Strategy – 2

The Placebo Strategy – 2
Andre Willers
16 May 2009

See:
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "The Placebo Strategy" ,
" Financial Crisis 30 Apr 2009" : "Hysterical Focus"
New Scientist 16 May 2009 p30 ."Beware Witchdoctors" . Nocebo effects .

Synopsis :
The Placebo strategy can and has been used to deletrious effect . (Nocebo)

Discussion :
Humans are a hysterical species .

I refer to the development of Mirror-neuron Networks .
You , know , small little things like Love , Compassion , Language , Culture , Pubs , Freedom of Information , Arts , War , Armies . All those endearing things that make apes Human . Also called the Theory of Mind .

The Hysterical Focus:
Hysteria here is meant in a very specific way : exclusion .
Once a course of action has been decided by the system , any further input is excluded .
Sounds familiar ?
Hysteria .

In a crisis situation , your mirror-neural networks can present any number scenarios ("The Hamlet Option") .
But only one course of action is open , RIGHT NOW! .
The number of options have to be squeezed down and many excluded . The exclusion mechanism is "either-or" . This is derived from the synapse-firing model of the brain .

This is known as the Hysterical Focus .

This model has been so successful that it is fractally represented in Human Societies .

The decision process is described in http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "The Placebo Strategy : The Logical Model"

Nocebo's
Harmful manipulations .
This is characterized by
1.Limitation of initial number of choices (information squeezing)
2.Probability steering at every iteration (also known as propaganda ,etc.)
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Cause and Effect"

It happens . The reason why it has not overwhelmed everything is that there is "Room at the Top"
Surpluses gets squeezed into abstract structures like castles , poems , art , etc ., and their maintenance .
Management does not encourage customers to hit each other on the noggin .

There is Room in the Middle .
The Piano .
A very subversive instrument .

A piano tune gives a backbone for fleshing out to the sides .
Any human can hear and compose music in their heads . (See previous posts).
This sideways creativity spills over into all sorts of spheres . Political , musical , scientific , etc .
Which was why it was required education .

Small music instruments and players (like iPod) became popular not because of their fidelity , but because of their lack of fidelity .
In order , 1/3 (33%) , 1/9 (11%) , 1/27(4%) , 1/(27*3) = 1% . 1/(27*3*3) = 0.4% .
Those scratchy things beloved by DJ's are liked exactly because of the uncertainty and creativity they engender .

There is room in the middle.

Cathedrals and Organs .
Those big pipes are not to add harmonics , but to subtract them .
If the whole audience hums at a certain pitch while inhaling and exhaling , and the stops are open , you would probably hear the equivalent of "Use OMO soap" or Greensleeves .
The old guys thought this was nifty , and got paid for it , too .

They even encoded the old tunes into the cathedrals . But sadly , all those have been incorporated into the Roman Catholic Church . Cheaper to buy a CD .

The Great Disturber .
And what has Napoleon to do with it ?
In his time , most of this information was still available . Organizations survived from Roman times , especially in the Netherlands . He used the Netherland's banking experience to strip all these organizations of their funding .
(Where do think his accountant hit teams came from ?)
This meant the end for all these comfortable gentlemen's clubs , funded by land-ownership going back to Roman days .

But why would the Netherlands change tack ? They had a sweet deal with England . Promise of protection and manpower in return for banking expertise an no hostilities . (See Niall Ferguson on the Great Merger.)

Because England reneged . They backed the Jacobines (in our terms , the most fundamentalist Communists) . A big mistake . This caused the French Revolution , and things went to hell in a handbasket from then . The Dutch saw this as a clear signal that the feudal system was dead . They made accommodations with Napoleon and subsequent European powers (like France and Germany.) .

The Netherlands have been surviving since 50 BC , uninterruptedly . Empires come and go .
Shopped at Spar lately ?
Is Brussels the head of the EU ? How many divisions does it have ?

Can you see that the placebo is preferable to the alternative : a horde of killers and slavers .

And the nocebo ?
"Ja , baas."

Andre