Thoughtmagnet

Savoy has a little poll going on down at The Attraction Forums, asking people who their favorite instructor is.

Right now, I’m losing to Cajun and Fader, and am nearly tied with Braddock. Personally, I think it’s embarrassing that they’re even considered in the same league as me

Anyway, one of my defining characteristics, and something that has helped me immensely with my game, is the fact that I have no shame. So I’m not above trying to stack the deck by begging my blog readers to log onto The Attraction Forums and vote for me.

In return? I offer you a follow up to my “Is Rational Intelligence is a Spandrel” article from earlier this month.

It’s called : Embrace Magical Thinking

First of all, for those of you who don’t believe in magical stuff, please give me a chance before you reject this notion. I’m not going to blow sunshine up your ass, or give you some kind of wu-wu new-age energy field you can manipulate to help you solve your life’s problems. But I will explain to you, in an entirely scientific and rational way, why “magical thinking” make sense sometimes, specifically in social situations.

I mentioned earlier that the human mind is designed primarily to understand other human minds, and that our ability to understand the natural world is actually secondary to that first purpose. Well, magic, and peoples belief in magic, is partially a result of that.

Magical thinking and superstition come about when human beings mistakenly try to apply the rules of social intelligence to the natural world. Think about the following situation:

You’re heading out to the countryside with your friends on a long weekend, and you say to your buddy in the passenger seat “Oh man, traffic is looking good, we’re going to be at the beach in an hour”. Your buddy says “You shouldn’t talk about that, you’ll jinx it!!” You wind up at the beach in an hour, because what you SAY doesn’t affect traffic.

You’re heading out to the countryside with your friends on a long weekend, and you say to your buddy in the passenger seat “Oh man, we’re going to be at the beach in an hour, and I am totally hooking up with that Mary girl. You guys are going to need to find something else to do this evening, because if the house is a-rockin, don’t come a-knockin”. You wind up at the beach in an hour, and your buddies give Mary a funny, knowing look as they step out of the car. She suspects you’ve been talking about her, feels creeped out by it, and you don’t wind up hooking up with her.

Jinxing is real, it is not a superstition. It’s only a superstition when it’s applied to things that are governed by the rules of science. When it comes to human social situations, jinxing is a very real thing.

Here’s another example:

Perry Trotter, the famous boy wizard, is trying to cast a spell. He says “Abrakadabra”, and nothing happens, he says “AaaaaaaabraaaaKadabraaa” and suddenly a bright flash puts a hole in his book and singes off his eyebrows, and finally he tries one more time, says “Abracadabra”, and his book floats in the air just as he wanted it to.

Larry Trotter, no relation, is trying out a new opinion opener in a bar. He walks up to some cute girls by the bar, and tells them a funny story about how his little sister has a crush on David Bowie. At the end of the opener, he teases the girls for liking “old guys”, and they pretty much ignore it and keep talking.

The next set he does, he says the same thing, and the girls get offended.

The third time, he tries once more, and when he teases them at the end, all the girls start laughing and invite him to join their group.

So, while magic and superstition are not actually true when applied to the natural world, they do give us insight into the way that the social world works, and more importantly, we can use “magic” as an analogy to help us understand how social interactions work.

I can’t give you a magical spell to make people like you, I’m not going to pretend that there’s some new-age wu-wu thing that will give you the life of your dreams, but I will tell you there is a way to radiate, through your mannerisms and your bodylanguage, an energy that will influence the people around you, and you can control this energy. Using this energy you can make people feel comfortable, make people feel excited, make people have fun, and make people come along with you for a good time. Oh yeah, and you can make women attracted to you. I almost forgot that.