The Piss Effect

that weird yellow tint on AI cartoonish art

Person #1 I drew my own original character! Are you guys proud of me?
Person #2 that's obviously AI just look at the piss effect!

by Geographypickney January 25, 2026

Hard Problem of the Nocebo Effect

The ethical and clinical dilemma of how to inform patients of risks without inducing those very risks through the information itself. The principle of informed consent demands full disclosure of potential side effects. But the act of disclosure can dramatically increase the likelihood and severity of those effects via the nocebo pathway. This puts doctors in a Catch-22: withhold information and be unethical, or disclose it and potentially harm the patient through the power of suggestion. Medicine has no good protocol for navigating this.

Example: A doctor must prescribe a statin. The leaflet lists possible side effects: muscle pain, fatigue, cognitive fog. The patient, now anxious and hyper-vigilant, experiences all three. It's impossible to clinically distinguish between a genuine pharmacological side effect and a nocebo-induced one. The hard problem: How do you practice evidence-based, ethical medicine when the communication of evidence becomes a potent confounding variable that can generate its own adverse data? The diagnostic process can become pathogenic. Hard Problem of the Nocebo Effect.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026

Hard Problem of the Placebo Effect

Specifically, the challenge of harnessing, studying, or prescribing it without deception and thus destroying it. The effect depends on a belief in a genuine treatment. If a doctor knowingly prescribes a sugar pill saying "this is a powerful drug," it's unethical lying. If they say "this is a placebo, but it might help through your mind," the belief—and thus the effect—often vanishes. The phenomenon seems to require a kind of benevolent, therapeutic illusion that modern medical ethics cannot accommodate. Its very nature resists ethical integration into standard care.

Example: Open-label placebo studies, where patients are told "this is a sugar pill with no medicine, but placebo effects are powerful," still show significant therapeutic benefits for conditions like IBS and chronic pain. This adds another layer to the hard problem: How can belief persist and be efficacious even when the patient knows it's a placebo? This suggests a complex, non-conscious mechanism beyond simple conscious faith, operating even when higher cognition is "in on the trick." Hard Problem of the Placebo Effect.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026