I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person. After all, I have had a long life, following a Jesuit education, being married for 60 years, having five children and a career in high-level finance. I am confident that my decisions and choices are well founded. But I am aware that people have an inbuilt tendency to overestimate their intelligence. Why not me? Or you?
I have been looking at the placebo effect. It is a valuable source of knowledge about the way the human mind works. It has the great advantage of enabling us to measure our possible confusions in a reasonably precise way. For example, the effectiveness of a drug for a particular condition can be measured by giving it to some patients while others are given a substance known to have no effect. The health of those given the drug might improve; but so might that of some patients who, unknown to them, were given the replacement. This latter outcome is put down to the placebo effect: thinking that you have been given the correct drug is enough to bring about a degree of recovery.
