Thursday, June 06, 2002

i once saw, on tv, a professor that handed out horoscopes to his class. the class was to read them and say if the horoscopes fit them or not. the horoscopes fit them, and it turned out that everyone was reading the exact same horoscope. people ignored the things that didn't quite fit and focused on the generalities that are true about everyone. by doing this, the horoscopes fit.

you will also do this when it comes to "intuition". you will worry every time that your son goes out driving at night in his car but the one night that he does get into an accident you will use that as the proof that your intuition about him was correct. what about every other time that you were wrong and he did not get into an accident? you suddenly ignore that and focus in on the one time that your "intuition" about him getting into an accident was correct.

you have the bad feelings all the time so when it happens once you use that as the justification but ignore all those times you had bad feelings but nothing happened. you don't have a special intuition if you are wrong 99% of the time. also, some things are so obvious that of course you could see them coming.

get rid of the magic and replace it with sound logic and reason and you will be correct more of the time than if you rely on horoscopes and intuition.