Just looking on youtube, you can find binaural beats for pretty much anything: inflammation cure, pain relief, changing your eye colour, finding love and becoming rich. All the ones I’ve looked at feature comments from people claiming they’ve helped them.
They can’t possibly do all of the above and I don’t think there a studies proving anything but a placebo effect.
And, without truly believing in them, they never had any effect on me. I’ve tried them in my youth.
I wouldn’t say I “believed” but I tried it with an open mind expecting SOMETHING to happen. I borrowed some expensive headphones from the audio production department at school, got relaxed in my bed with a couple candles going, plugged into my nice DAC and…all I got was bored. I went through like 10 different tracks. Quite the disappointing experience.
What might be more useful would be to put it on in the background while you’re falling asleep if you’re in a situation where you can have noise while you’re going to sleep
My opinion is they are placebo but placebo actually can have effects because you believe they have effects.
I think about it, if you’ve been listening to binaural beats in order to find love don’t you think that you’re going to be more likely to find love and therefore you’re going to be looking for opportunities to validate your beliefs?
If you are listening to binaural beats to lose weight don’t you think that there’s a chance that you will intentionally and willfully act in ways that will increase the likelihood that you will lose weight?
And the best part about placebo is even if you know it’s a placebo effect it does not prevent it from actually working because humans are cool and weird and funny like that.
Placebo doesn’t work on me if I’m aware it’s placebo. Which sucks. One day I got a headache, took a pill and miraculously, within two minutes the headache stopped. Then I was like “wait, it can’t work that fast, it has to go through your stomach and whatnot”. Headache returned and the pill never worked as fast ever since.
I think you’re totally on point! I think that’s similar with other religious or spiritual practices, like specific meditations, spells, or rituals - you’re priming yourself to be more aware of opportunities to achieve that goal
Anecdotally, I believe they can induce relaxation or stimulation via entrainment. Like if you listen to something low and soft, I think that relaxes you and something high-pitched and loud stimulates
Right, but that’s exactly it. It’s still only just anecdotes and subjective claims. It might be that it’s indeed a valid form of treatment, but the evidence we have doesn’t seem to point to that as a rational conclusion.
Whatever you personally experience might in fact be a placebo effect or confirmation bias.
Just looking on youtube, you can find binaural beats for pretty much anything: inflammation cure, pain relief, changing your eye colour, finding love and becoming rich. All the ones I’ve looked at feature comments from people claiming they’ve helped them.
They can’t possibly do all of the above and I don’t think there a studies proving anything but a placebo effect.
And, without truly believing in them, they never had any effect on me. I’ve tried them in my youth.
I wouldn’t say I “believed” but I tried it with an open mind expecting SOMETHING to happen. I borrowed some expensive headphones from the audio production department at school, got relaxed in my bed with a couple candles going, plugged into my nice DAC and…all I got was bored. I went through like 10 different tracks. Quite the disappointing experience.
What might be more useful would be to put it on in the background while you’re falling asleep if you’re in a situation where you can have noise while you’re going to sleep
They’re good background music while studying, but not for any magical reason. Some just sound nice
My opinion is they are placebo but placebo actually can have effects because you believe they have effects.
I think about it, if you’ve been listening to binaural beats in order to find love don’t you think that you’re going to be more likely to find love and therefore you’re going to be looking for opportunities to validate your beliefs?
If you are listening to binaural beats to lose weight don’t you think that there’s a chance that you will intentionally and willfully act in ways that will increase the likelihood that you will lose weight?
And the best part about placebo is even if you know it’s a placebo effect it does not prevent it from actually working because humans are cool and weird and funny like that.
Placebo doesn’t work on me if I’m aware it’s placebo. Which sucks. One day I got a headache, took a pill and miraculously, within two minutes the headache stopped. Then I was like “wait, it can’t work that fast, it has to go through your stomach and whatnot”. Headache returned and the pill never worked as fast ever since.
I think you’re totally on point! I think that’s similar with other religious or spiritual practices, like specific meditations, spells, or rituals - you’re priming yourself to be more aware of opportunities to achieve that goal
I feel like as a staunch atheist that does his own research to be missing out on alot of placebo effects
Studies are currently inconclusive on the efficacy of Binaural Beats. According to this meta analysis, five corroborate BB, and eight do not.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286023
So it’s still woo until studies consistently fail to disprove that BB does anything.
Anecdotally, I believe they can induce relaxation or stimulation via entrainment. Like if you listen to something low and soft, I think that relaxes you and something high-pitched and loud stimulates
Right, but that’s exactly it. It’s still only just anecdotes and subjective claims. It might be that it’s indeed a valid form of treatment, but the evidence we have doesn’t seem to point to that as a rational conclusion.
Whatever you personally experience might in fact be a placebo effect or confirmation bias.