Healing and the Placebo effect

[BrightVoid he/him]

Would the placebo effect have any influence on F gold or stormlight healing, as it essentially changes how someone views them self?  For example, would a radiant who consistently takes a bogus weight loss supplement actually lose weight as they are healed to how they view themselves?

[+Extesian he/him]

33 minutes ago, BrightVoid said:

Would the placebo effect have any influence on F gold or stormlight healing, as it essentially changes how someone views them self?  For example, would a radiant who consistently takes a bogus weight loss supplement actually lose weight as they are healed to how they view themselves?

Healing in the Cosmere is based on using Investiture to restore your physical self to the form your spiritual self is in. Your cognitive self can affect this but i don't think it can transform it utterly. So in the case of a character who grows an arm back, that's because he never stopped thinking of himself as two armed so his spiritual self Bennett changed to become one armed, it was always two armed and given acres 3 to investiture he healed his physical self.

In the case of a placebo however, i think no matter how much you cognitively think it's true it won't change your spiritual self to match that without something more. It's the reason i think (though i don't know) that someone born with one arm would grow a second, because their spiritual self never had two arms. 

[Yata he/him]

4 hours ago, Extesian said:

In the case of a placebo however, i think no matter how much you cognitively think it's true it won't change your spiritual self to match that without something more. It's the reason i think (though i don't know) that someone born with one arm would grow a second, because their spiritual self never had two arms. 

Indeed I think this could work, to be honest I think this work all the time and the placebo is just an help.

The difference between a fit person and the same fat persone in the guy's aspects it's cognitive. So a little by little a person who saw himself better than how he is and have access to a form of healing (Surgebinding in this case) would become a bit more fit over the time for his own "healing".

PS: I think this is the reason for Jasnah's beauty over her age and habit...She see herself as the perfect Alethi's woman, the pinnacle of the Alethi's society...The Stormlight help her to maintain this standard (Honestly I am really doubtful she even know it)

[+Extesian he/him]

1 hour ago, Yata said:

Indeed I think this could work, to be honest I think this work all the time and the placebo is just an help.

The difference between a fit person and the same fat persone in the guy's aspects it's cognitive. So a little by little a person who saw himself better than how he is and have access to a form of healing (Surgebinding in this case) would become a bit more fit over the time for his own "healing".

PS: I think this is the reason for Jasnah's beauty over her age and habit...She see herself as the perfect Alethi's woman, the pinnacle of the Alethi's society...The Stormlight help her to maintain this standard (Honestly I am really doubtful she even know it)

Hmm this is interesting. I'd assumed because of TLR ageing issues that it depended fundamentally on your spiritual self and that cognitively there is only so much you can fool your spiritual self with. So with Lopen his spiritual self remained as it was pre-arm-loss because his cognitive aspect lined up with that, but with Kaladin the glyph stayed because, cognitively, he absorbed that feature into his spiritual aspect. But that in the case of someone born without an arm, or simply with the placebo effect for anything, you could only cognitively change your spiritual aspect to a reasonable level. For example you can't just believe your immortal and therefore be immortal. 

Here's a lengthy WoB making me rethink that, but not completely change my mind. 

Quote

Brandon:

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

 

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

 

The piece your missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw investiture. The soul, you might say.

 

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their cognitive aspect as well, and the cognitive aspect can interfere with the spiritual aspect trying to make the physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your physical self with your spiritual self--making the physical regrow. More powerful forms of investiture can repair the soul as well.

 

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

 

So the spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

 

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

 

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

 

Though this is the point where I ping /u/PeterAhlstrom and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

So clearly age is a different thing. It's harder to fool your spiritual aspect with age because of the other connections it has to other things, which provide a sorry of reference point for your spiritual age.

But, "(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their cognitive aspect as well, and the cognitive aspect can interfere with the spiritual aspect trying to make the physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your physical self with your spiritual self--making the physical regrow. More powerful forms of investiture can repair the soul as well". This makes it sound like you can't simply heal yourself with to your cognitive self, healing is based on your spiritual self filtered by your cognitive self, with your cognitive aspect not creating healing where your spiritual self doesn't demand it, instead limiting the healing your spiritual self is trying to do. 

To give an example, if you have no arm, never had an arm and your spiritual self has no arm, your cognitive self would not be enough to grown an arm. If you have a glyph on your head, your spiritual self has no glyph but your cognitive self does, your spiritual self would want to heal to have no glyph but your cognitive self would block that healing. Your cognitive self, in other words, will not cause a healing that your spiritual self doesn't match, it can only prevent a healing your spiritual self is trying to do. 

The big question is then how much your cognitive self changes your spiritual self. It can't do it with age, that's clear. It probably can do it with things like appearance, as demonstrated by Returned. Can it do it with an arm? That's the threshold question i have no answer to. I'm very surprised this doesn't seem to be a settled question, even with it being on the Questions for Brandon board in 2014. Unless someone can point me to a WoB that does answer it? It's basic realmatics and I feel we should know this and if we do, i feel i should too

[Calderis he/him]

@Extesian you Summed up pretty much everything I want to say and more. 

In response to the way healing functions though, it seems to me that the soul itself acts as a base "perfect" template (quotes, because perfect is relative in this instance, as your one armed example would be that person's "perfect") filtered through the Cognitive to manifest in the physical. 

So I agree, the Cognitive cannot create a healing effect that the Spiritual does not provide. It can only only interfere to maintain an accepted physical alteration like Kaladin's Brands or Kelsier's scars. 

The spiritual aspect contains certain things that cannot be healed like age, which we see in TLR and Miles Hundredlives.

Where I disagree is with the way the spiritual can be altered. The spiritual realm is described as a realm of ideals which is both location and time independent. We know that it can be damaged, and healed, but I don't think minor alterations can happen. 

We know that trauma can crack the spiritual allowing access to investiture in the right circumstances. These cracks are minor enough damage that they don't seem to effect healing though, or small areas that refuse to be healed would be seen in the physical. The only major spiritual damage we've seen has been through hemalurgy and Shardblades. We haven't seen an instance hemalurgic damage being healed, but we have seen the before and after of Shardblade wounds, which seem to essentially be other dead or whole. 

So TL;DR: As an "ideal" template, I don't think the spiritual aspect of healing can be altered beyond major damage. 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Calderis

[+Extesian he/him]

Cheers @Calderis. On the issue of spiritual aspect changing I'm thinking of the Returned appearing as perfect representations of the gods they're supposed to be particularly, though that could be a Cognitive Shadow thing. But I'm not committed to that without thinking of more examples. I need to look into this issue more, I feel like it should be clearer

[Just another guyn he/him]

On 5/11/2017 at 8:41 AM, Calderis said:

@Extesian you Summed up pretty much everything I want to say and more. 

In response to the way healing functions though, it seems to me that the soul itself acts as a base "perfect" template (quotes, because perfect is relative in this instance, as your one armed example would be that person's "perfect") filtered through the Cognitive to manifest in the physical. 

So I agree, the Cognitive cannot create a healing effect that the Spiritual does not provide. It can only only interfere to maintain an accepted physical alteration like Kaladin's Brands or Kelsier's scars. 

The spiritual aspect contains certain things that cannot be healed like age, which we see in TLR and Miles Hundredlives.

Where I disagree is with the way the spiritual can be altered. The spiritual realm is described as a realm of ideals which is both location and time independent. We know that it can be damaged, and healed, but I don't think minor alterations can happen. 

We know that trauma can crack the spiritual allowing access to investiture in the right circumstances. These cracks are minor enough damage that they don't seem to effect healing though, or small areas that refuse to be healed would be seen in the physical. The only major spiritual damage we've seen has been through hemalurgy and Shardblades. We haven't seen an instance hemalurgic damage being healed, but we have seen the before and after of Shardblade wounds, which seem to essentially be other dead or whole. 

So TL;DR: As an "ideal" template, I don't think the spiritual aspect of healing can be altered beyond major damage. 

I remember a WoB about F gold being able to heal hemalurgic damage. I also personally believe that the placebo efffect would work extreamly well on returned (and possibly their descendants)

[Calderis he/him]

1 minute ago, Just another guyn said:

I remember a WoB about F gold being able to heal hemalurgic damage. I also personally believe that the placebo efffect would work extreamly well on returned (and possibly their descendants)

F-gold heals the soul, restoring the damaged template that healing in the physical is based on. The placebo effect should only be able to effect the Cognitive. 

[Themasterhunter]

this is a cool idea. i want to also ask a similarly related question. 

 

Why wont kaladin's slave brands heal?

 

Anyway. i thought this had something to do with it. epecially the cognitive aspects of how the spiritweb affects the physical

[Yata he/him]

28 minutes ago, Themasterhunter said:

Why wont kaladin's slave brands heal?

Because Kal see himself as a Slave. The Brands are part of his cognitive self and not an anomalous state.

Lopen never accepted the arm lost. If he did It...It would be unable to heal his arm

Edited May 12, 2017 by Yata

[Themasterhunter]

Thanks yata