Idempotence is essentially an operation that, no matter how many times you do it, you’ll still get the same result, at least without doing other operations in between. A classic example would be view_your_bank_balance being idempotent, and withdraw_1000 not being idempotent. It’s a property that’s often handy as you can retry the operation without worrying about unintended effects.

Idempotence is a concept from mathematics and computer science but can be applied more generally. For example, simple on and off buttons are idempotent, a property that can be very useful in emergencies.

Idempotence

The nocebo effect is how the expectation of pain or negative effects of a treatment increases the chances people will feel them — even if they're aren't any. So, tell someone that a treatment will hurt or have side-effects and they're now more likely to feel that pain or find something wrong.

Taken together with the placebo effect I guess we might do well, for normal affairs, to let people know that what they will get will probably help them and not raise unnecessary expectations that something might hurt.

The nocebo effect

It took me many years to figure out that if you stand diagonally you brace yourself better for both front-back jolts and side-to-side jostles.

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Stand diagonally on transport