this is about the increasing effectiveness of the placebo effect. I find the insert about "pill color effectiveness", on the left about 2/3 of the way down, to be very amusing.
placebos gaining effectiveness

Worked for me! Just after abdominal surgery, the morphine I was receiving was giving me roomspins and making me vomit (imagine trying to hold your guts in, and balance a basin at the same time). The surgeon told me that he would switch me to Dilaudid. I didn't hear him say "on request", just assumed I was on it, and never asked for any. At checkout, he and the hospitalist wanted to know why I never asked for any. I told them that I thought I had been on it, and that I must have been on Placebo® instead.

Hmmm, now how can I use this knowledge to my advantage...

-Blast, looking at his container of TicTacs

Wasn't "Mother's little helper" a yellow pill? I wonder if that what makes it so effective...

-Blast

Obecalp now in color?

An old medic's trick treating wounded soldiers when the morphine ran out was to talk up an experimental drug that was almost too powerful to use. They would them slip them an M&M or vitamin pill. In a considerable number of cases it worked. Humans tend to see what they expect to see and to feel what they think they should.

A related effect is seen when you heat up a piece of iron to red hot and make believe your going to brand someone. Keeping them into a position where they can't see the actual event you touch the spot where they are expecting a burn with a piece of ice. Wipe any water off the ice to keep from ruining the effect. Touching a bit of hair to the red hot iron adds smell and smoke to the effect.

The effect is quite convincing and it isn't unknown for the person to develop a significant welt. As if they had been burned. tossing them out of a helicopter that is on the ground with the engine running. A nice depiction of the method was in the movie "The God Must Be Crazy II".

Blindfolded, roughed up, 'branded', and tossed out of a helicopter at '5000 feet' makes for a accusations of torture, or a rousing initiation. Which moves to the drinking phase after the initiates get hosed off and change their shorts.

The human mind can be manipulated in many ways. Mostly we fool ourselves.

Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?!?!

In high school we had a new football coach institute a weight lifting program. He would give out a t-shirt if a player attained a certain goal.

One of the goals was bench-pressing 250 lbs. After a number of weeks, many of the players had reached that goal, but Craig, one of the biggest linemen on the team couldn't seem to break the barrier, despite being a huge, muscular guy. One day, he came in late and wanted to try max 250. One of the guys said, "warm up with that bar, its 185." So Craig did an eight repitition warm up. Doing simple addition in his head was never his strong point, but he eventually figured out that the bar actually had 275 pounds on it.

Thats precisely what I was thinking.

In the event of TEOTWAWKI it would be cool to have a supply of ... um... different colored pills to barter...

But, in bugout mode, I can see it really helping people you loved. Until you tried to pass the same milksugar pill for a different purpose.

Honestly, this thread was more for amusement than anything else...