>Sounds a lot like cognitive bias to me. It's ultimately a placebo if you still need to put the work in.

If you take a doping pill to run faster, you still need to train and to expand heavy personal effort during the race. Is the doping pill "placebo"?

Heck, if you have leg surgery after an accident, depending on the type of surgery, you often need (and are advised by the doctor, and asked to take it up with physiotherapist and such) to put in personal work and exercize properly for months, to be able to walk and regain use of your leg again. Is the leg surgery placebo?

Or how about a debugger. It wont solve your problem automatically. You still need to write the program yourself, to look into different places, and to know how to find a bug etc. Is the debugger a placebo?

Needing to put personal work to get a result is not what's the distinction between a placebo and a drug.

A placebo is not that which is only effective when combined with additional personal effort (that can hold for any regular drug).

A placebo is a neutral drug that does nothing at all itself (it's just water, or some neutral powder or saline solution, etc) and it's effectiveness is all about the belief that it helps.

Besides, psychedelics (even assuming what they do have no bearing at all to getting better from depression, etc, an assumption with which research disagrees), have huge immediate effects on mental state when taken. So they're not neutral in the way a placebo is even on that account.

Logical fallacy of composition/division. My comment isn't being applied to all these other scenarios, it is being applied to the topic at hand—psychedelics.

There is no logical fallacy. Your original comment is just wrong. If psychedelics improve the outcome, they are still worthwhile even if the therapy is still needed and not a placebo. You are just misplacing the bar. The analogy to performance enhancing drugs is actually quite good.

> My original comment is my opinion.

Not at all. "The sky is blue, therefore dogs are green" is not an opinion but a statement, factually incorrect, and annoyingly incomprehensible.

The idea that you presented, that if something doesn't solve everything then it is useless is just not true. Maybe you should keep this in mind.

I never said it was useless.

Logical fallacy of non seguitur.

The logic of the comment should hold for any analogous scenario.

You either have to argue why one or all of the above analogies doesn't hold (what element is crucially different, so that the same counter-argument can't apply to your psychedelics argument), or to argue that the points made for those other things are wrong.

Except if you believe that you've discovered some unique logic that only applies to a single specific case.

I don't have to argue, period. An analogy is unnecessary. We are talking about psychedelics, not doping in sports.

My opinion: people are likely commonly capable of working through things without the use of psychedelics, and we are crediting the substance and not the human being.

I'm not anti-drugs by any stretch, just feel like a lot more research needs to be done before we can start stating things like they're facts. Can you otherwise disprove that it wasn't placebo effect and the individual wouldn't have otherwise figured it out without a placebo or with a sugar pill he was told was a microdose of psychedelics that would unlock the secrets of the universe?

Well, during victorian times people got through surgery without anesthetics. What's your point?

Not sure why you think studies aren't controlling for placebo? Although it's obviously notoriously hard with psychedelics.

Just to be clear: I agree that more studies are needed, just disagree with the rest of your statements.

That over time, through time-proven hypothesis, we arrive at a modern understanding of our biology and psychology.

So you openly admit that this is difficult to assess? That much we can agree on at least.

In fact I'd go a step further and say that it's not only difficult but impossible to assess since it's pretty easy for the test subject to discern whether he was given a placebo or not, especially considering that the benefits are suspected to come from the induced experience itself and not the drug as a substance in isolation.

You can't control if exercising is placebo either, can you? But the consensus is that it's physically and mentally beneficial. I don't think controlling for placebo is of great use here although it obviously has to be taken into account.

I’m not sure I agree, because people might put in the hard work without the psychedelic and not experience the benefit.

Michael Pollan’s “How to change your mind” talks about psychedelic studies where the more effective, longer lasting changes are seen by the people who had more “mystic” experiences.

It’s not just about good intentions, or just taking psychedelics, but seemingly priming your mind to use the psychedelics to (temporarily) change fundamental thought patterns.

By that definition, getting therapy is also a placebo. You could go to therapy "recreationally" without wanting to get better or work on yourself. But that's not going to help you. You still need to put in work. Does that make therapy a placebo?

I think the parent conflates "non placebo" with "fixes everything all by itself".

This doesn't really make any sense, just because you still need to put in the effort doesn't mean it isn't highly affective at making it much easier for an individual to direct that effort positively.

> Sounds a lot like cognitive bias to me. It's ultimately a placebo if you still need to put the work in.

Say without drugs 20% of the depressed population gets better, and with drugs 80% of them. Why would you call this 'placebo' (which is an entirely different topic), and from this word deduce that it is bad? Nonsense.

Did I say that it was bad? Nope.

Cars don't drive themselves just because you put fuel in the tank.

Just because you still have to physically drive from A to B and could theoretically find your way without a map does not make the map a placebo.

Where does that willpower come from though?

Placebo? Situation changing day-to-day? Diet? All kinds of variables. But in this particular scenario, likely placebo.

If I tell someone that a tablet will make them able to do something and it's just a sugar pill, they'll likely be able to do it. The blocking factor is usually a confidence issue.