When I was working at Mount Zion, CSF, I was the consultant to the pain clinic there. And they had a medical anthropologist who did surveys on the people who came through it as a one-week intensive pain evaluation clinic. Now we know just historically that in any kind of pain treatment, you have to judge it against placebo and most people, except as a ballpark figure 30% placebo effect. Only 30.7. So they, this guy asked the question, did Mount Zion pain clinic help you? And you got a 60% positive response?"
Neurologist and author Robert Burton talks about his book, On Being Certain, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Burton explores our need for certainty and the challenge of being skeptical about what our brain tells us must be true. Where does what Burton calls "the feeling of knowing" come from? Why can memory lead us astray? Burton claims that our reaction to events emerges from competition among different parts of the brain operating below our level of awareness. The conversation includes a discussion of the experience of transcendence and the different ways humans come to that experience.