The Reality of Perception

Some of you Skeptics may have a hard time with certain claims made by true believers about the efficacy of pseudo scientific systems of belief , such as Feng Shui and Astrology
The term pseudoscience refers to any body of belief that cannot be subjected to the rigorous test of science.

Most believers in pseudoscience also believe in scientific facts, but they feel that traditional science does not answer enough questions satisfactorily.

My wife tells me that according to Feng Shui the flood was good for us, because it makes room for new things. Yeah, we had to take a lot of wet stuff to the dump and there is room for new things like sump pumps, dehumidifiers, water monitors, back-up generators. And our lives are so much richer with heightened awareness of the power of water to change everything, the increased fear of rain and nightmares of mold growing in dark corners....

Drip Drip Drip = bad, Flood = good, she tells me. And she believes it.
She seems to have a mystical belief in cosmic harmony. If you arrange physical things according to a prescribed thousands-year-old tradition, you create avenues for good energy (Chi) to flow. This is supposed to bring good luck.

I think that the Chi is disturbed by the glut of wireless signals, (especially tweets) because the Universe thinks most electronic gadgets are a huge waste of time. I don't see how ancient systems of belief can be applicable in a quantum physics era. Unless the Chi is traveling through some kind of worm-hole.

A few weeks ago, I was debating a friend about the efficacy of psuedo-scientific medical "cures." He cited anecdotal claims of certain patients who seemed to have benefited from "alternative" (usually a synonym for "psuedo-scientific")approaches to medicine. I argued that there have always been claims of faith healers and charlatans which have been bolstered by the testimony of true believers. Much of the cure was in the mind.
He argued that my position is - in essence - that if the cure was in the mind of the believer, then it follows that the disease is also created by the mind.
I was reluctant to jump on the "it's all in your head" bandwagon because I realize disease is much too complicated to have such a convenient explanation. Clearly, physical injuries are externally caused, and clogged arteries are not a figment of imagination. But studies in recent years show a strong correlation to certain emotional states and diseases. Anger and Heart attacks, neuroses and bowel issues, etc.
A recent article in the Boston Globe Ideas section summarize recent research into the Placebo effect. This is the name scientists give to the phenomenon that occurs where people who think they are getting medicine experience Cures even when the "medicine" is fake.

One of the findings is that the efficacy of placebo is much stronger in diseases that are actually a collection of symptoms that do not appear to have a physical cause, such as irritable bowel and chronic headaches. It seems there is an increasing body of evidence that the real power of the universe is somewhere up there - among the little gray cells. I notice that none of the faith healers on TV are able to grow a new leg for an amputee. Now that REALLY would be a miracle! Paraphrasing George Carlin, "God is all powerful. He has infinite power to cure you, but He draws the line at replacing missing parts!"

One of my old managers would settle disputes with the dictum "Perception is Reality." At the time, I thought it a feckless phrase, typical of the pronouncements of Ivy league B-school graduates. Now, I see the quantum truth of it.