p.enthalabs

Who are the fire-tamers?

aeon.co · Read Story HN original

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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.
> 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?
Praise the Sun \o/
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.

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.

What is "noceboeffect"?
[delayed]
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.
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 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.