I don't know your wife of course, but I feel that this might be a mischaracterization of the sentiment. Sometimes people's model of reality is incompatible with yours, and since communication requires shared context it is difficult to convey your true meaning in a way that can be readily understood. One solution to this is to build up all the context that person needs to understand what you're saying, but this is slow and because it may require them to destroy and rebuild their fundamental understanding of the world it can cause quite a lot of suffering. An alternative is to reframe what you're saying into terms that are compatible with their current model. Even though the understanding you convey may be less accurate, it is often good enough.
this is pretty grandiose. its beautiful, but if youre trying to help people communicate, "adjust your models of reality" isnt actionable advice.
the core problem you allude to is that communication is built on unexamined assumptions, but this does not require a cosmic realignment to get better at solving. a perfect example of this is trying to make your partner feel loved. if you tell your partner you love them but that doesnt make them feel loved, you are miscommunicating. i am regurgitating the words of "The 5 Love Languages", by Gary Chapman. it is a short, cheap, book that will change your life and upend your cosmos : )
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Languages-Secret-that-Lasts-eboo...
no affiliation, except that i bought and read it and it made me a better person.
Showing empathy is definitely an actionable advice and should be a prerequisite to any attempt at communicating with another human being.
It is completely actionable advice. It means simply that you will communicate better if the two parties communicating have more shared context. For each of us, reality is our perspective of it. Finding common ground between our perspectives is the first step in communication, expanding our common ground is the next. Understanding how another person sees the world and how they describe it goes a long way towards making yourself understood by them.
Truthfully, it would do everyone well to have such a card.
All models are fundamentally wrong. That is what is meant by the phrase "the map is not the territory", it is only a matter of degree and scope. Building a better model of reality is a difficult and painful process which manifests as depression [0]. In many cases, it is not worth the added suffering to force someone through this process just to understand what you're telling them.
> The psychic preys upon vulnerable people seeking advice about problems in their lives
One could say the same for therapists. There are quite a lot of bad therapists, trust me. Now, I'm not saying that psychics or astrologers are comparable to therapists in terms of overall efficacy, but if people are inclined to believe in that sort of thing anyway and the advice they get helps them, then fine.
Yes, it is a problem when fraudsters take advantage of people, but that goes for literally any practice including therapists, doctors, and scientists.
[0] This is more of a pet theory based on experience than anything I can back up through study.
There are good therapists (and doctors, and scientists...). And the vast majority are not fraudsters.
But all psychics are bad at their job, in that they are incapable of doing what they claim to do. Every one of them is a fraudster.
I read that depression is what the mind/body does when it needs to step back and re-assess the (life) situation, because whatever it's been doing so far obviously isn't working. I wish I could link to it.
However it's important not to generalise on this idea too much. Depression is a mental illness and that means it comes in great variations, including things that are just unique or go past theory. More importantly, it is very possible that the above described process is just a secondary or tertiary factor in the grand picture.
If you know what’s good for someone (presumably in some data-driven/evidence-based objective sense), and your goal is to get them to do it, sometimes the highest-ROI path is to give them an incentive that causes them to want to do the right thing for the “wrong” reasons, i.e. reasons that convince them, but which are either outweighed or entirely contradicted by facts they don’t have, with the “real” reasons being entirely orthogonal to the ones you gave.
In other words, you want to convince them to do something within their existing model, rather than first attempting to expand their model into one compatible with being convinced by the actual reasoning.
Struggling to make my point through similar scenarios your explanation hit me.
Do you have more resources so I can improve?
it's like saying gambling (or alcohol, or other vice) is just fine. most vices are fine in moderation. the problem is that some people can't moderate, and for those people the harm is quite bad.
the purveyors of such vices are absolutely knowingly taking advantage of these people will low self control. most prominently (but perhaps least acknowledged) in today's attention economy.
I believe this is an important problem in medicine (not only psychology): there is a good difference between knowing the solution for something, and convincing the patient to abide to that solution. Each of us has their own set of beliefs about where working solutions come from: professionals, the internet, fortune tellers, friends, self help books. If professionals do not have enough strength in this set, they will not work.
I am not saying that fortune tellers are the solution; I am just saying that this problem exists and that the fact that people believe in medicine professionals cannot be taken for granted.
The mirror image of this: the patient convincing the doctor that the problem is real and should be taken seriously. This is an absolutely huge problem for all sorts of chronic discomforts and minor mental health issues, or problems experienced by women.
Alternative medicine will always listen to you and take you seriously (so long as you pay them). That can be more helpful than being told there's nothing wrong with you or that you're faking it for attention. Even if the actual treatment is nonsense, the "consultation" is "real".
This, absolutely this. My fiance has chronic health issues and she has encountered a few unbelievably condescending and dismissive doctors. Those visits not only didn't help her improve her health, they actually made it worse by greatly increasing her stress levels.
I don't know how conclusive this is but I've read some research that suggests that alternative medicine can have a mildly positive effect on health in some cases. Not because homeopathy or whatever actually works, but because having a caring and empathetic provider listen to your issues can reduce stress.
This isn't meant to promote alternative medicine, but I can get why there is an appeal for some people. The real solution should be getting doctors be less awful to patients, especially women, who have physical symptoms without an easily identifiable cause.
This is an absolutely key observation in many facets in life, and I still struggle with it.
Whether presenting an IT solution to client; or something more mundane in real life, knowing or arriving at the "right answer" (let's leave that definition / certainty on aside for moment;) is only part of the battle - and not even necessarily the hardest one, requiring most of one's empathy/cleverness/skills. Making it happen, likely by convincing/persuading all the parties, is frequently the more difficult, and certainly for me the more frustrating, part of the process.
As a (historically) technical geek, I've (historically) been of the narrow minded "Here's the right, demonstrated, supported, proven answer; why are you not following it? I don't understand what's happening..." outlook. I'm getting a bit better in my old age... :->
Now to translate that into something comparable to the HN community:
We have rubber ducks ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging ), whilst they don't talk back, they force you to focus and in a way that lets you cut thru the fog and mist and listen to yourself.
With that, people really do talk to their plants and pets and better of for it. But whatever process allows you to cut thru the brain fog of whatever form, run with that.
However, I do not recommend pulling out a plastic duck upon public transport and talking to it, as society is just not advanced enough to handle. But we all have a dream.
[EDIT - ADD reference URL]
They aren't quacks!
The anxiety I used to feel when I or my therapist was going away and wouldn't see each other for a couple weeks to a month was harder to deal with than I thought it would be.
But we worked through that. A therapist is a cigarette that tries to get you to quit.
My wife says that her ultimate goal is to no longer be needed by a couple so she can move on to another.
I'd say that's absolutely the scientific, empirical approach!
Sounds like these psychics serve as a low key religion for these people. As a pretty hardline atheists, I have over the years had to admit that religion really works at giving many people hope and sanity.
We may even, as humans, be hardwired to require religion in our lives. I sometimes miss that I can't have that in my life, because I can see reality as it is...
Not at all.
The scientific approach would involve a sample size greater than one, double-blind studies, and at least one control group. All of which you obviously can't do for studying an individual. However, not being able to do those things does not suddenly make this approach scientific nor empirical.
More importantly, it's very difficult to tell whether it's actually helping. It may be helping her in the short-term, but could be severely hurting her in the long-term [0].
As OP stated, they are not empowering the friend with tools to fix their own problem. Instead, they are clearly trying to promote this learned helplessness and dependence [1]. Sadly enough, it sounds like external dependence is the very problem the friend is trying to solve.
Basically, they are substituting the friend's problem with a different problem in the short-term, which will likely compound with the original problem in the long-term.
Yes, religions can help, but that's not guaranteed like a lot of religions would have you believe [2]. This scenario is a perfect example.
[0]: Give a man a fish, etc. [1]: I realize psychologists are incentivized to do this as well, but a) I'm talking about in this particular case, and b) that's at least the intent behind the laws and regulations for having a medical license. [2]: Including atheism.
> so long as it is helping, it isn't necessarily bad
So it's about what you should think about this activity, IF it is actually helping.
OP thinks it should be avoided even if it's helping.
I'm arguing for the opposite.
You're arguing about something different: Does it actually work? This is an entirely separate question that I don't have much of an opinion on.
I would take issue with your (seeming) claim that you need a multi million dollar lab that does full scale double blind tests of every claim to have a scientific outlook.
That's an unfortunate "all or nothing" world view. Most of the great science in history was done without that, and a rational person can make empirical observation in everyday life without such a huge apparatus, and gain a lot from it.
The funny thing about it, is when I take a diazepam tablet, I instantly start to feel better, even though I realise from a pharmacological viewpoint the diazepam could not yet have been absorbed by my stomach and travelled through my blood to reach my brain yet.
Placebo effect happens even for therapies that actually really work.
The original implication is that short-term positive -> long-term positive, which is simply not true.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/placebo-can-work-even-kn...
I don't think that's exactly it, but this isn't the first time I've heard this.
Humans' (and other animals) brains are hardwired to find patterns in things. It's a survival instinct. Alice and Bob ate that mushroom and then died. That's a pattern, and I will now avoid that mushroom.
The bad part is this is so hardwired that we can see patterns in things that do not exist (animals in clouds, jesus in toast, etc) and this can occasionally be problematic for us. A few people got murdered on a full moon, and now everybody thinks that's a pattern. I think religion stems from the same thing. People really want to attribute things to patterns to make sense of the world, or otherwise explain that which is currently impossible for them to explain in an effort to feel safe.
At some level, yeah, it won't hurt much if it helps certain people get out of bed in the morning. And many religions do play a social role (which could easily be replaced, but nevermind that). However, that path leads to stagnation. If that's what they desire, then OK, but as a member of our race, I sure am glad some people don't settle for that and instead seek to know more about themselves and reality. That's when growth, both personal and for all humankind, can happen.
a) It works best, when doctors take their time to prescribe it, even if you know it's a placebo. There are studies about two groups where one receives a placebo and the other a placebo and a 10 minute talk. The latter had better outcomes.
b) The placebo effect works best, if used with symptoms of pain. This is the most-studied use-case for placebos. With a virus infection like a cold, not so much. See c)
c) Supplements like vitamin C generally speaking don't seem to really help when a cold is coming. As long as you have a healthy diet, supplements aren't required and don't really have a positive effect on your health. Maybe some stuff makes you feel slightly better, but it doesn't make the infection go away.
d) Not every cold breaks out. Sleeping helps a lot.
No consistent effect of vitamin C was seen on the duration or severity of colds in the therapeutic trials.
It might be best to think long and hard before saying something like that... we humans are not great at observing or recording unfiltered reality.
1: Yeah, and fixing that is what science is for!
2: Oh, I'm quite aware that as a human I'm a big "bias machine", and I wrote that a bit tongue-in-cheek.
I think that's a reasonable comparison, and I think both should be judged on the same basis- by the overall impact.
Psychics may be good for some people. Psychologist and social workers should also be (and are) prepared to help people without immediately forcing them to examine their traumas, but mistakes will happen and people may be pushed away by it. Even if psychics are inferior to psychologists as treatment, having a second line to catch people who got pushed away may also have value.
A lot of people, imo the large majority, of people who go to psychics are not doing something that will improve their lives. I'm 100% positive there are tons of people out there who would be helped by psychologists if they had not first been sucked into psychic woo and/or glued to that belief. If psychics are harming more people than they help, or doing larger harm than the benefit they provide, it has a negative impact on the collective public and should be pushed against.
And just so I don't sound vaguely like a moralizing authoritarian, I'm just talking in terms of like, public health projects. PSAs and outreach etc. I am of the opinion that it does get to a dangerous level (eg cults) that should be dealt with at a legal level, but some level of deception and grift must (unfortunately) be protected as natural freedoms.
I also miss that community I used to have at my subtly racist, across the street from the Grand Master of the KKK Baptist church. Hated the hate, loved the love.
Yeah Firefox is worth $50 if you have to pay for it, but it's still scummy for a third party to sell it like that.
It's really frustrating how some people can go from completely rational on something like astrology, to completely irrational when it comes to religion, when they are basically the same thing.
Now lets consider a proof for God's existence. Do most religions claim to have such proof in hard terms? I don't think so. The say it's a belief, a faith.
Not saying that the two not have many things in common, but I also see a strong contrast.
Do most people into astrology claim to have scientific proof in hard terms?
I know a lot of people casually (and some pretty seriously) into astrology, none of them claim that. It doesn't stop them from believing it. They just aren't thinking in a scientific mindset at all. They use confirmation bias to prove it to themselves anecdotally, and many also have a deep irrational distrust of science that has really not been thought through.
So I think holding astrology people to scientific standards is just as meaningless as holding religious people to scientific standards. And plenty of religious claims are eminently testable: the earth was created in 7 days, some holy book is the literal word of god and not written or even tampered with by humans, some religion is the one true path and all others are evil, etc. These things admit themselves to clear debunking scientifically and/or rationally.
To be both religious and scientific means retreating your religious beliefs to all but the most abstract and untestable ideas, something like "god is the universe itself" or other such ultra-generalizations that leave no trace of casual claim of interference with material reality. And the vast majority of religious people on earth do not do that.
Carl Sagan mentions this in his writings and on the Cosmos TV show.
For e.g., suppose you make a claim "strawberry tastes sweet", and I have never eaten strawberry before, I'll say "can you prove it?". You'll say "Sure, here just take a bite, and you'll know for yourself". And I respond "Nah, I don't want to do that. Can you still prove it? The burden of proof is on you".
No, the burden of proof doesn't always rest on the person making the claim. Once he outlines the method to verify it, his job is done. The burden of verifying the proof now rests on the skeptic.
There is a way to remember your past lives, if you do a certain penance for 12 years - not impossible, not complex, very simple, but very hard - do not utter a lie for 12 years consecutively. There are no loopholes - if you are born dumb, or lose the ability to speak, that doesn't count. you must be able and willing to speak, but still not utter a lie.
Do it for 12 years without a single break continuously, and on year 13 day 1, you can remember your previous births. Some have done it (hence the claim), but not many in the western 'modern scientific' world care to verify it, and just pooh-pooh it. Of course, it's not a loss for those who made the claim. Whoever wants it can go after it.
Well, religion has been studied for evolutionary advantages.
And of course religion has shaped and sustained whole civilizations, arts, philosophy, etc, in ways which astrology did not, and in many ways that people still identify as beneficial.
Many religions that have shaped civilizations were heavily based on divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects (i.e., astrology). Multiple Rome emperors had court astrologers, for example.
Yes, but not of the major religions are about that -- Christianity, Bhudaism, Jewism, Islam, etc.
Nor where the religions like the ancient Greek, Egyptian etc that did contain such rituals, predominantly about those.
So we can quite easily consider astrology as something either separate or a very small subset of any religion that shaped civilization...
The simile being that the various reglious Gods are also not real?
That's irrelevant, because religion, as a human practice, and the actions, practices, decisions taken based on them are actually existing and actually modifying the world. So that would be more like a placebo that made you do X (e.g. go on a diet) and you see effects from that. In that case, it's not a placebo anymore.
Or perhaps consider the possibility that it's a shortcoming of your understanding.
How do you choose to order your life? It's not a scientific question.
The black and white categorization serves to justify it's continued use, add to the fact, "feeling better" isn't a result of tackling deep-rooted issues in this instance but getting a fix. You can "feel better" after eating ice cream but your problems are still there. Taking a hit of pleasantries and affirmations might as well be free. She doesn't appreciate the fact that a therapist could be far better for real change.
I know a couple that is very involved in their church, and took it upon themselves to provide marriage counseling to members of the congregation. The couple has no background, training or certification for the "counseling" they provide.
I feel exactly the same way about the couple in my anecdote as you do psychics.
The help anyone could do is entirely dependent on the ability of the person to get access to the help. For example, suppose that person A has problem C. Person B has solution D. Now, even if solution D is the perfect solution, one must figure out the access path to that solution.
In this case, the problem is how to create a process whereby person A is most likely to get to the appropriate solution. My guess is that for the most part people will prioritize a) trust in the solution provider b) ease of access and c) cost, not necessarily in that order. There probably is some bias towards an easy solution (e.g. take this pill) as opposed to a complex solution (e.g. get a B.S. in computer science).
It could be that a phone psychic, simply by being immediately available and inexpensive, could provide a better throughput of low level psychological issues than the higher barrier to entry of the traditional psychiatric industry.
The fact that someone self-describes as a "psychic" is in some ways just another form of marketing, one with a certain target demographic. Admittedly, this demographic might hypothetically be better served by a different set of solution providers (in the same ways that the demographic most keen on faith healers might be better served by licensed physicians), but it's not clear that they would go to them for all of the reasons mentioned above.
All in all, this is one of these areas that is extremely difficult to judge, both because of the difficulty in evaluation solutions to psychological issues and all of the cost and marketing issues.
Compulsive shopping: works for some. It's not the final solution, but it may make you feel better. And some will profit from it.
The same applies to astrology.
One of the interview questions was, "What is a self-care ritual you currently have that would be made more difficult by moving here?" Its slightly morphed version of a common interview question in mental health around self-care.
Her answer was simple, and had an immediate echo from the other clinicians. "Target"
If you don't know Alamosa, Colorado, it is a decent sized town that is about 2.5 hours from civilization. It has a new Walmart Super Center and a Tractor Supply, but that is about it until you get to pueblo for a Target (2.5 hours away), or Colorado Springs (3.5 hours away).
All of the clinicians said their favorite part of the yearly meeting in Denver was going to Target.
Not to mention heroin being illegal...
You need a better example to refute the parent's example
Religious upbringing or being indoctrinated into not thinking for yourself as a child is probably a likely reason people turn to things such as psychics.
This is a pretty strange claim to me. I definitely agree there are some religious strands that are anti-intellectual. But then there are Augustine, Ambrose, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Francis Turretin, John Owen, etc., whose works most people are simply incapable of grasping, and fewer still can equal. Many of us are trained with these intellectual giants to show us not what, but how, to think.
Are you aware of these great thinkers and their contributions to your thought life?
To pick a random example among many, our concept of personhood relies heavily on a theologian named Turtullian, before whom person (Latin, "persona") merely meant an actor's mask (i.e, the role one plays). Tertullian explored the enduring "substance" of a person, regardless of what role they play in life -- concepts we now assume as a given, but were hotly contested at the time.
Your privilege is having a choice because you see above it. Many people don't have that privilege and can't function at that level. I have more than a few friends that can't see past their own emotional trauma and they are now approaching their 40s and some in their 50s. Does it matter if they see the world a different way than us, and in a way that makes them happier?
As long as they are happy than the alternative, does it matter?
Friends are untrained but can provide great advice because they understand the person and can see repeated patterns.
Believing in the power of planet movements can affect our lives is a religion not a science. Would you tell that person not to believe in God because based on science we can't prove they exist? Do you consider that harmful because they are basically the same thing?
Friends are great to talk to, but they are only as good at helping as we are at being completely open with them. There are things I'd tell my therapist LONG before I'd tell any friend.
As for religion, I believe it is a mixed bag. It can be used for good and evil. But most people are religious for the community more than the religion. When I used to go to church regularly, I went to see people, talk to people, feel loved by strangers. Know that if something bad happened, people in my community would help. Do I believe in God, a god, or gods? Probably? Maybe? No? Yes? I dont know, and day to day that changes. Day to day, passing kindness to neighbors and strangers doesn't change.
But your friends see you often; an astrologer sees you when you call her up and pay up. And they only see what you tell them; your friends get to observe you and see those patterns.
> Would you tell that person not to believe in God because based on science we can't prove they exist? Do you consider that harmful because they are basically the same thing?
If you're having serious emotional issues, and your priest's solution is to tell you to pray harder, then yeah, I'd tell them to consider that maybe their religion isn't helping and maybe actively harming.
Is there a term for a malapropism that still makes sense?
But psychics are like, the manifestation of that mentality in its purest form, and it feels like doublespeak to turn around and say, “hey, that’s not 100% rigorous, don’t sell naive randos on it!”
Let's say you are already behaving a little like the software developer you aspire to be. In case you hit a wall you put in evening time to read up, try harder, in order to keep up your appearance. This is what I mean by "fake it till you make it".
In case you are an astrologer or psychic, you pretend to know what's going on with your "patient", you pretend that you can help them with issues. If this is not working out you cannot (as I understand it) put in more of your time to get on top of things. This is the difference I think.
If I sell myself as the best Asp.Net developer in the world, and get hired to build a DotNetNuke eCommerce Site. Will my client kill themselves because I accidentally broke their website? Likely not.
A psychic could lead a person down a terrible path pretty easily, though.
A psychologist is trained, required, and regularly retested on their ability to spot potential troubling behaviors and report them.
I’d allow for untrained/regulated advice from family or friends, although this is considering you know these people and trust that some of them will give decent advice.
Psychology (like medicine and computer-science) is an ever evolving science. Just 50 years ago, we would try to shock the depression out of you - and it worked for a short period of time.
We haven't reached the final say in how the mind works, or who we are, and we probably never will, but every year we get closer.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/electroconvulsiv...
In the past it was the first or second answer to a LOT of illnesses from the made up (hysteria - read: horny wife and inexplicable weight gain) to the legitimate (depression, hyperactivity, bipolar disorders).
You have a point with giving untrained/unregulated advice, but when I think about it something seems odd. Like when you ask your friends, close ones, they aren't therapist, their advice isn't regulated and even they may have bad intentions. Talking to other people about your problems at all, no matter who they are seems helpful.
The psychologist would be the "do no harm" side, the psychic would be "try to cure" side.
The psychologist will assign you to a box. The psychic will let you float around.
The psychologist is convinced he isn't a crook. The psychic is not convinced he is a crook.
The thing is once any system is complex enough, it's quite hard to know what impact it may have. Many ways can be good, and some ways are definitely bad. Only when the two sides are balanced, is the path illuminated.
So like any other business these days, and considerably better than Facebook?
>I feel that the amount of good they could do is way less than the harm they could do. And that the dangers of allowing another person to give you untrained/regulated advise is a terrible path to go down instead of understanding yourself.
It's not like we have these things (personal life advice, mental health, etc), sorted out, and some "expert" can come and give solid advice because they studied the subject at university.
If anything experts in those fields are as much quacks as the astrologists, but with extra state power to boot.
Some of the worst advice has been given by doctors and specialists -- all the way to forced lobotomies and electric shock treatment.
If anything, the regular psycic (not a full on con-man) would be more careful with their advice/interventions, because they don't want to rock the boat too much, and knowing their trick, they don't have a "god complex" like many experts develop.
Heck, those "experts" are on the top of professionals committing suicide themselves, and on the top of professionals with mental issues:
"A high suicide rate among psychiatrists (58 to 65/100,000 compared with that of the general population, 11/100,000) has been reported by the following: Freeman, Blachly et al, DeSole et al, and Pond"
What is vicarious trauma, and why might it relate to psychiatrists?
My whole point is that people with vicarious trauma shouldn't be guiding others on how to deal with traumas or stressful situations, and as if they we have this "trauma" thing sorted out and their trained pros that know how to overcome it...
What gets me about astrologists and psychics, is they are preying on peoples innocent stupidity. At best they are reading their clients semi-accurately, at worst they are swindling them.
But in both cases they are not actually helping the client understand what is making them feel this way, and helping down on a path that leads to a healthier self-awareness.
We have a friend who doesn't not believe in psychology, but believes in psychics. She refuses to go back to a psychologist because the psychologist wanted her to actually think on and feel her past traumas, to discover why she has some self destructive tendencies. The psychic she eventually went with and still uses today (costing just as much as the psychologist -- more if you have mental health coverage on your insurance) just told her she sees why she is doing certain things, and to call her if she felt these tendencies coming back (charging her of course).
My wife thinks that so long as it is helping, it isn't necessarily bad. She feels that people shouldn't see psychics or read too much into the movement of planets and stars, but that whats the harm if it makes you feel better.
I feel that the amount of good they could do is way less than the harm they could do. And that the dangers of allowing another person to give you untrained/regulated advise is a terrible path to go down instead of understanding yourself.