3 Things On My Mind This Week
Note: I’m focusing more of my writing on my Substack at the moment. You can subscribe to those updates here. The below was posted there first.
The Nocebo Effect
“Our minds aren’t passive observers simply perceiving reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. In other words, the reality we will experience tomorrow is in part a product of the mindsets we hold today.”
The placebo effect is well known. It’s been documented that when people believe the sugar pill they are taking is medicine, they have been shown to heal or get better.
The nocebo effect is lesser known but is the opposite effect. It occurs when you have a negative expectation about a future event. In the medical example, if a doctor tells you a medication you are taking may cause certain side effects, the nocebo effect can make these more likely to occur as your mind starts looking for these problems.
In David Robson’s The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World, he says the nocebo effect, “can exacerbate the symptoms of allergies, migraines, back-ache, and concussion; indeed, whenever we are unwell, a nocebo effect will make our sickness worse.” He documents how “a significant number of symptoms appear to have arisen from the doctors’ and drug companies’ warnings of certain side effects—suggesting a highly specific expectation effect.”
This isn’t a medical phenomenon, though.
A negative expectation in many circumstances can create negative symptoms. If you expect a conversation to go poorly, it will likely go poorly. If you expect a restaurant to be bad, it will take a lot for it to surprise you.
Robson discusses the semantics we use for different experiences each day. Anxiety is limiting because you believe it does you harm. If you can convince yourself that anxiety is a symptom that you are about to succeed, you can enhance your outcomes. If you choose to think of anxiety as excitement, the way an athlete might heading into a big game, you can use it as a tool for success.
In recognizing the impact of our mindset on our experiences, we gain the agency to shape our reality and enhance our well-being.
1883 and Throwing It All Away
Last weekend, I binge-watched 1883, the prequel to Yellowstone but a fantastic watch in its own right.
In the spirit of Lonesome Dove, the series is beautiful and moving, and dramatically portrays the roughness of pioneer life that existed just two lifetimes ago. I recommend you give it a watch, and will do my best not to spoil it. But there is a theme in the series that I wanted to highlight.
One of the characters encounters a Native American warrior and begins to ponder giving up their own culture to live in theirs. Of course, with the backdrop of beautiful, unexplored plains and wildlife, it’s a romantic idea that we have seen explored in other popular works, such as Dances With Wolves. However, this reminded me of something I read a while back that educated me that this is not a romanticized Hollywood phenomenon.
In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber, he tells the story of a Brazilian woman who was abducted by an indigenous tribe and lived among them for twenty years. When she returned to Western Civilization, she found herself in a state of “constant dejection and loneliness,” and chose to return to live with the native tribe.
The book notes, “Her story is by no means unusual. The colonial history of North and South America is full of accounts of settlers, captured or adopted by indigenous societies, being given the choice of where they wished to stay and almost invariably choosing to stay with the latter. This even applied to abducted children. Confronted again with their biological parents, most would run back to their adoptive kin for protection.”
Notably, the book quotes a letter written by Benjamin Franklin, who wrote:
“When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness.”
Apparently, throughout history, indigenous peoples and those of Western Culture, after being exposed to both lifestyles, tend to prefer the indigenous one.
Why is that?
It is a peculiar phenomenon that with all of the life luxuries that Western Civilization brought us, there is a beautiful appeal to returning to a different way of life.
I am now watching the follow-up to 1883, 1923, and the creators seem to double down on this theme.
There is a scene where the family is walking down the street and runs into a salesman for the electric company. The salesman is trying to lease the family a washing machine. After debating the need for such a machine, one of the characters presciently makes the point that, if they rent this contraption, they are effectively trading in their chores to work for the electric company.
Both of these themes raise the question of what trade-offs we are willing to accept under the guise of progress.
As 1883 vividly illustrates, the settler life was brutal. But in a modern era where we suffer from record-high levels of anxiety and depression, it makes you wonder if that lifestyle wasn’t more rewarding.
The Decline of Alcohol (?)
I was raised during the 90s when it was conventional wisdom that moderate amounts of red wine benefit your health.
I lived in France for a year when I was ten. When we moved there, I recall being told how much healthier the French were than Americans due to eating lesser portion sizes and their affinity for red wine.
I enjoy my wine and cocktails and am no foe of the rights of consumption. But since I first drank alcohol as a teenager and noticed the negative effects it has on your health and how you feel, I have always been interested in why it seems to get a pass while so many other vices do not. I referenced alcohol in my post on collective delusions as an example to demonstrate how often the masses can be wrong.
In that post, I noted the emerging scientific evidence that pushes back on the notion that alcohol is at all beneficial, or even that moderate consumption is ok. For instance, the World Health Organization says that no amount of alcohol is safe for our health. And it’s considered one of the top five addictive substances, alongside heroin and cocaine. Yet, it’s curiously mainstream in our culture.
I wonder whether alcohol, like cigarettes beforehand, is beginning to lose its luster in our society. The thought was sparked after recently seeing an article headline about the rise of the nonalcoholic drink industry. When I went back to find that article for this post, I noticed many others. I would consider market trends to be a more telling signal than political shifts, as these businesses have great incentives to change due to new demands. One of those demands being a new generation (Z) less inclined to booze.
But I have also been interested in recent years in the rise in popularity of a couple of prominent figures in the health arena. Drs. Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia have been gaining notoriety through non-traditional media. They have cult followings online and are experts in their respective paths. They both have spoken about the significant health toll alcohol takes.
Dr. Attia has said there is no good reason to have more than two drinks in a day, and seven in a week. Dr. Huberman has preached about the negative effects of very small amounts of alcohol, and says, “The data on alcohol seem clear: 0 is better than any and 2 drinks per week is the max (for adult non-alcoholics) beyond which some negative impact is observed.”
A little poking around for this post also introduced me to concept of the “Sober Curious” movement, which dovetails away from the traditional approach taken by Alcoholics Anonymous. “The movement refers to individuals becoming more mindful of their alcohol consumption without necessarily committing to complete abstinence. It’s about questioning the role of alcohol in one’s life and exploring a healthier relationship with drinking.”
There was a time, as anyone who has seen Mad Men recalls, when smoking was a ubiquitous habit among the masses. It once was also sold as a benefit for health. It took time for the general public to recognize how harmful it can be.
I wonder if we’re on the precipice of a similar recognition of alcohol.
Or to put it another way, knowing what we do about alcohol, how long can our culture treat it differently from the long list of substances we shun?