Just curious...so is there a such thing as 'black magic, vudu', palm reading....where do they fall? Why do ppl still follow it or are in a favour of it?
I am gona add Psychics, superstitions, astrologists, numerologists) to your list.
I would also add prayer to the list of things. Prayer in terms of asking God for something or praying for someone to get better.
Try this exercise before proceeding. This exercise illustrates how people start to believe in what psycologists call pseudoscience, the "supernonsense" like palm reading, superstitions, miracles, black magic, etc.
Exercise:There is a very strong positive correlation between the number of ice-creams eaten and deaths from drowning. Are ice-creams dangerous?
The reason people still follow that nonsense is because they are lazy and don't make the effort to think logically (or don't know how).
There is this phenomenon where if you repeat something over and over. Eventually, it becomes familiar to the listener and the listener is more likely to think that it is true. It is easy to see how this can be related to pseudoscience.
They are lazy because they'd rather wait for a miracle that will make "x" happen, instead of making "x" happen themselves.
x = could be anything
Example:
"Hey since I am too lazy to study for this upcoming test, why don't I use some magic to pass?"
Those who do study will also continue to believe in "magic" if they pass because human nature finds relationships between "random things". These relationships we make, affect our thinking. Superstitions, magic, etc arise from these relationships. The funny thing is that there might be more variables involved that might be affecting the two "random things", causing the relationship to occur. But we overlook those variables or don't know of them and continue to believe in the relationships we found.
Thinking logically will prevent that to a degree, beyond that we must look at evidence. People who believe in such things are almost never critical thinkers.
What do the lines on someone's palm have to do with who they are as a person?
We know that people develop different behaviours due to rewards, punishments , the way they think, and according to their genes. No strong correlations have been found between someone's palm and their character.
So that's palm reading that has to do with character, what about predicting someone's future?
Well, there is no support for this either. In fact, statistical evidence shows that Psychics are nothing but fakes. I read that there is a reward for $125,000, for a Psychic to prove he/she is a Psychic, from psycologists (in new zealand?).
Why don't these Pshyics predict their own future and get a better job so they can live a better life (make more money perhaps)??
Why don't they predict events like Hurricanes, tornadoes, so that we get a chance to prepare?!?
So people basically believe in palm reading, psychics, voodoo because they are too lazy and don't make the effort to think about things logically. People often support things with little evidence, leading to relationships between two unrelated things. Also there are very few people out there with critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(I know my post is very disorganized...
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