Who are the fire-tamers?
aeon.co28 points by Caiero 2 days ago
28 points by Caiero 2 days ago
My dad went to one when his cancer entered the terminal phase, I think he knew it was bullsh*t but it was a more human « treatment » than everything else he went through so he liked it. I still think it was a charlatan preying on him but I guess no more amoral than crystals moms and essential oils MLMs.
I don't get how anybody gets into essential oil MLMs. I have a $20 ultrasonic diffuser and buy $10 bottles of things like Lavender extract from my food co-op which will last me for years.
Lately I have been stirring the cauldron and getting to know quite a few witchy women and there are a lot of them who make and sell their own essential oil products that are like the MLM products but don't have the upline and all it entails. Still I think "just get a diffuser".
(Some people would disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734824)
Never forget:
For all the little bit of positive results for a placebo there are also negative effects due to noceboeffect.
Also it's very common in esoterica that if it works it was the healer if it didn't it was something you did wrong.
That nocebo effect is dangerous!
People in traditional cultures are inclined to believe that there is an evil influence involved whenever anything goes wrong. If you're in a culture like that and people believe you can throw curses, you can get material benefit through the threat of throwing curses or make a living throwing curses.
When people were [1] prosecuted for "practicing witchcraft" courts record testimony that promises were made, payments were made, all of that.
Effective curses are not an application of psi (you zapped someone with telepathy) or an evocation of evil spirits, but are loud, noisy, public and supported by the whole social environment, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_death
I can't say that any magic-user today should practice that sort of stuff, there is the "it gets returned you (3|10) times" bit and that you don't have the social support that the African "witch doctor", Chinese fox medium, Navajo skin-walker, or Italian Nonna who casts the "evil eye". But if you're looking for a social-scientific explanation of how magic works it is a dramatic example.
[1] and still are in some places
What is "noceboeffect"?
In drug trials if a person knows about the side effects of a drug (e.g. nausea, headaches) they may get them even if they were in the control group.
I'm not sure how it applies here though because alternative therapies rarely state expected negative effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo
Sometimes called non-cebo/none-cebo though I avoid that as starting with “nonce” can be a trigger for the easily befuddled and offended (“Could you be experiencing a noncebo type effect?”, “WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!”).
As the wikipedia page points out, this is not to be confused with knowcebo, which sounds the same. This is where information leaks break blinding measures and render test results less (or completely not) meaningful.
Just like something that has no direct physical/chemical/biological mechanism to improve your condition can still do so if you believe it will (the placebo effect), it can also worsen your condition if you believe it will - that's the nocebo effect.
> Questions inundate my mind: was it real?
No.
> Did Mme Abgrall cure the warts?
No, that was your daughter’s immune system.
Gaffa tape works wonders, especially on verrucas.
Genuinely. It's like magic.
I assume you meant Gaffer tape?
It is used interchangeably here in the UK - most tradespeople or theatre folk say is as gaffa, as in boss.
I was in France for a wedding recently and I saw traiteur on the side of one of the vans pulled up. I remarked to the staff that in Louisiana French, traiteur/traiteuse means folk healer, and they told me it was just the caterers.
Traiteur does mean caterer in France, but the way the word is constructed also implies “someone who treats”, to treat is traiter and traitement is treatment, so it’s weird that only traiteur lost that meaning.
Since data is now the plural of anecdote... Frenchman here. Someone I knew fell from his bike without appropriate gear and ended up in the burn ward. His wife was very into the fire tamer thing and sent him a few practitioners...
He took the morphine.
On another note, I had respect for Aeon as a publication, and now I got a lot less.
Praise the Sun \o/
apparently my granddad was afiretamer, but he dies before i got to know him
It's well known that realtors get better deals on their houses, doesn't seem to go like that for fire tamers it would seem.