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Show Books on psychic experience getting too much attention It's disturbing that the Time Life books that I respected and trusted as a child are now selling a set of books on psychic experiences. I'm sure they are entertaining, but they add legitimacy to a lot of weird science that already gets too much attention. Consumer Information by Dennis Hinkamp decision in your life" or "I see you talking to a man with the letter s in his name," The fortune teller is playing the odds more than reading your mind. Several studies have found that people will find some agreement in an astrology chart read to them even if it is not the correct one for their astrological sign. 3. Illusion of randomness: "Lightning never strikes twice" and "your luck is bound to change' ' are examples of our misunderstanding of randomness. Truly random events do occasionally occasional-ly occur in pairs and you may never win the, lottery even if you buy a ticket every day for the rest of your life. Conversely, auto fatalities really aren't random at all. They are heavily heav-ily influenced by speed, time of day, make of car, area of the country, coun-try, age of the driver, seat belt use and even car color. 4. Illusion of form: We tend to try to see patterns even when they don't exist. This is why we see animals in clouds and the image of Elvis on large garden vegetables. If you stare into a crystal ball long enough, you are bound to see something. 5. Cause and effect. If you chant and dance around a fire all night, as some of our ancestors did, you can make the sun rise in the morning I guarantee it. However, was there cause and effect? If when approaching ap-proaching a red traffic light you say under your breath "turn green, turn green" and it does do you have psychic powers? On a more serious note, alleged "cures" for diseases such as arthritis ar-thritis may only appear to have an effect because the disease varies in intensity on its own. This makes it difficult to assess whether it was the miracle cure or just time that eased the symptoms. Organizations such as the National Council Against Health Fraud and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal are finding themselves them-selves a minority in the losing battle to uphold reality. These are five reasons we are susceptible to claims of psychic phenomenon and health fraud: 1. We tend to look for meaning in everything: We all have had what might be called "strange" experiences. experi-ences. It is a matter of how you interpret in-terpret them. You may be able to sometimes predict what your spouse or sibling is going to say or do, but it's probably due more to experience than psychic ability. We also tend to forget all the times we tried to predict then-behavior then-behavior and were wrong and place greater importance on the few times we were correct. 2. Perception of probability: Most fortune telling and astrology is based on the teller's mastery of the principles of probability. They generally say something such as "you are having trouble making a |