Magical Thinking

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Am a rationalist and a scientist but still
it rains every time I water garden

Please don't ever stop watering your garden. We couldn't afford the drought.





But seriously, I know what you mean. I think the same thing upon washing my car. But I think the proper place to file this fallacy is under Confirmation Bias, rather than Magical Thinking. Unless you really are watering your garden to ward off the drought that would happen if you stopped.

Watery wish topic

Take out the hose, turn it on, but only for a minute. The clouds will not know how long you spent watering(just hold the hose for a few minutes, but do not turn the water on). then if it rains, you will not need to water for a lest one day, and so no time or water wasted. I have tried this and it works--sometimes.

Failing this, do a "half" water. The clouds will take pity and finish your job for you.

I drive past ikea 10 times a week.

I'm a cheap bastard, so i like their as-is department. But lately there is nothing i actually really need.

A few weeks ago on my way home from work the voices in my head suggested that if i went to ikea that day i might find something awesome.

Ultimately, i did go. I did not find something awesome.

I tell myself that i went to ikea that day to quell the cognitive dissonance planted by that errant thought.

I wish everybody could be so willing to accept that sometimes the head-voices are wrong.

I would be at risk of buying something non-awesome and pretending it was awesome just so that the voices could continue their smug insistence of infallibility.

A. Minutes ago I was berating myself because I did NOT pick up an inverter to use in electrical emergencies, and by that omission guaranteed anolther power outage tonight.

B. But then I found the inverter I thought we no longer had, which SHOULD mean we will NOT have another power outage.

C. But this is not really how I think - it is a deep physical reaction with no mammalian brain involvement.

D. But this relates at least to Ikea: London, years ago. I dreamed. I visited a particulr book store, and found this serious treasure of a book [my drug of choice, book buying]. I picked it up, read some paragraphs, enjoyed the language [had to be a language text]. So vivid the next day I took myself to the bookstore - one I did not like, the proprietor was surly and resented browsets. Alas, the book was not there, IO dout it exists outside my dreams.

When I was a teen we lived half a block from a public swimmig pool.
In the depths of summer when it was too hot to go out side of the aircondtioned house I would just bury my face in a book and not even look outside.

But while reading in the afternoon I would sometimes get a head voice telling me to look out the window-"now is a good time to look out the front window".

I would give in, and sure enought I would see jane so-and-so, the hottest girl on the block, walking to the pool in her bikini. The voices would alwasys resume about 20 minutes later- just when she walked home. So I tend to be open to my head voices.

So are we talking about intuition here? I had this discussion the other day, my argument was that intuition for instance your tale of Jane and her bikini has nothing to do with the supernatural but can instead be explained by events that you are not consciously aware of eg dogs barking as Jane walks past, someone saying hi, even maybe cars slowing as the drivers rubberneck at the vision that jane presents, or it could be something as simply as a routine that your body clock is aware of. Also did you happen to record or remember the times when your inner voice was wrong, how many times did you go to the window and see nothing extraordinary. I watched a program debunking peoples beliefs that their dogs behavior changed when they were on their way home. The most common belief being that the particular dog would go to the door just before someone arrived. In fact the dog was going to the door continuously but the observers fooled themselves by only noticing this behavior in relation to an arrival.

Research shows that most of our decisions start with emotion; there is no guarantee the decisions will be rational, but if they satisfy the emotion magical thinking may ensue.

OCD is probably the most common form of magical thinking. The behavioral actions resolve anxiety, and the actions become necessary whether rational or not.

I've yet to find anyone, not affected by emotion, and not subject to magical thinking. However, medical conditions can cause people to lose emotion and the memory that is associated with emotion, and the subjects of that "reality" rarely function in life.

Obviously, there are degrees of magical thinking that can be harmful, but without the ability to assume B is the effect of A, there is no illusion of control, and chaos is certain.

Those that believe they have the most rational control of life, are often the ones that are subject most, to magical thinking. They can thank their behavior and resolved emotions for this illusion of control.