Came across a list of pseudosciences and was fun seeing where im woo woo.
Lunar effect – the belief that the full Moon influences human and animal behavior.
Ley Lines
Accupressure/puncture
Ayurveda
Body Memory
Faith healing
Anyway, list too long to read. I guess Im quite the nonscientific woowoomancer. How about you? What pseudoscience do you believe? Also I believe nearly every stone i find was an ancient indian stone. Also manifesting and or prayer to manipulate via subconscious aligning the future. oh and the ability to subconsciously deeply understand animals, know the future, etc
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Uff, i have a lot:
Life on earth is a huge organized organism. It created intelligent humans deliberately sothat we can spread life to other planets. Living beings (plants, insects, other animals, fungi) could not do that otherwise.
All life is sentient. Sentience doesn’t come from the brain, rather it comes from the hormones in your bloodstream. When we sweat, these hormones enter the air (apparently within the fraction of a second) and other people can smell them. That is how we can instinctually know how others are feeling.
Also i have a lot of mythology:
Heaven (realm of all ideas, knowledge and forms) and Earth (origin of mass and material) are a love pair. Because they couldn’t easily meet (there was an insurmountable gap between them), they created a bridge, which is life. This way, heaven supplies the shape (genes), and Earth supplies the body, and these two can be together in this way.
Viruses are books. They have a cover (shell) and contain scripture (RNA/DNA). We humans let them in because they are nature’s messengers and have a specific purpose, which is to exchange some information.
ask for more and i will give.
More plz
Definitely the lunar effect, but that is still under study. There’s a documentary called “The Shark Side of the Moon” which follows a scientist trying to prove a lunar effect on sharks. There’s also some inconclusive evidence of a lunar effect on people with bipolar disorder; the full moon might trigger mania, probably due to excess light during nighttime. Context: >!People with bipolar disorder (known as ‘manic depression’ years ago) are very sensitive to light, substances, and many other things that can trigger manic or depressive episodes for them. The possible mania under the full moon may be a reason behind myths like werewolves and terms like ‘lunatic’.!<
I’ll edit if I find more.
Edit: I found another one which I would easily try or suggest to others if evidence-based therapies have failed.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy in which the person being treated is asked to recall distressing images; the therapist then directs the person in one type of bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping. It is included in several guidelines for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some clinical psychologists have argued that the eye movements do not add anything above imagery exposure and characterize its promotion and use as pseudoscience.
I kind of a little bit believe that dreams have some weird predictive ability. The scientist in me knows it’s likely a mix of confirmation bias and information synthesis, but like… my family has a pretty strong history of dreaming about deaths and births a week or two prior to pregnancy announcements and right before/after deaths. My mom has had several dreams where a loved one has come and chatted with her in a dream and said goodbye, then later that day we learn they passed, for example. It’s happened enough that I have a lot of trouble brushing it off. I’ve had a similar dream myself and it felt quite different from a normal sleep dream. That one was less paranormalish though, it was a friend who died a few years ago and showed up to give me some life advice. Just… hit me in a specific, indescribable way (it was good advice too).
Can’t explain it. Don’t really believe it’s paranormal I guess, but I also don’t disbelieve.
Oh I believe in precognitive dreams, because I used to write down my dreams and had some that happened later. And I don’t mean big things like deaths or pregnancies. I mean piddly details that meant nothing and can’t have been foreseen. Once dreamed that I was at the local bank, three people were in line, I got on the scale they had there to weigh myself but the dial went backwards then I turned around and saw this girl Joann that I’d not seen since middle school. Wrote all this in the dream journal.
Couple of weeks later went to the bank. 3 people in line. I got on the scale but it was broken and said I weighed 30lb. I got off the scale and turned around, and yep, Joann from middle school, turns out she’d moved away but had moved back to town.
That’s the one I remember and I would have just thought I had dejavu if I’d not written that dream down.
And honestly it pissed me off pretty bad. I want to believe in free will, that we can choose, that the future has not happened yet. The dreams kind of broke that.
i have that too, a lot. not just when people die though. it is quite different than just a random hallucination, because i get the feeling that an organized intelligence is actually having a plan and giving me specific information.
like, sometimes, i will have a dream that conveys something important to me, and then i will deliberately wake up in the middle of that dream in a way that makes me remember what i dreamed about, so i can write it down.
to make an example, just yesterday. i dreamed that an old school colleague of mine is in some sort of deep trouble. today, for the first time in 6 years, i get a text message from a close friend of his that asks me to meet up.
Yeah, that kind of stuff exactly. Good to know it happens to others.
It’s not impossible that for some reason you and your family have some sort of strong subconscious indications in your dreams. So maybe things that your subconscious has picked up manifest in dreams and if we’re talking about predicting things that have been developing for a while like someone’s death (old age or sickness) or pregnancy, it’s not impossible that you subconsciously already knew it to a degree.
But confirmation bias abd memory synthesis is probably more likely.
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Pretty sure lunar effect is a real, scientifically confirmed thing, just known by a different name. Perhaps not the full moon specifically, but we do oscillate according to the moon phase. It’s called circalunar cycles. The name might sound familiar to circadian cycles because they both derive from the same word structure, ie circa-dia (“around a day”) and circa-lunar (“around a month”)
At minimum, I’m quite surprised that Wikipedia lists this as a pseudoscience, because my impression has generally been that circadian researchers acknowledge circalunar cycles as a given
A lot of these are adjacent to real observable phenomenon but a nutty belief system has been overlaid and then additional claims are made on the basis of that nutty belief system which are not observable.
For example, Feng Shui in practice is usually pretty sensible “where should I put the sofa” kind of stuff, but if you claim that it’s about the flow of qi through your house and suggest that based on that not only should the sofa go over there, but you need to put a topiary vase on the table next to it, that might be a nice aesthetic touch but there’s no evidence of qi.
Additionally there’s plenty of Traditional Chinese Medicine that became actual medicine because it has observable properties. For example turmeric is a mild anti-inflammatory.
According to Feng Shui, cacti are not suitable as home plants. Ergo Feng Shui is evil.
I mean, if you brush against their spikes every time you walk into the living room, you’d decry them as unsuitable too!
The Moon landing was staged, but Stanley Kubrick insisted to shoot on location…
Pffft, you believe in the Moon?
How else would you explain the Lunar effect?
Made up by lunatics.
The Apollo moon landings have been faked dozens if not hundreds of times and only done for real 6 times.
The USB law.
When you try to plug in a USB-A connector, there’s a 70% probability it won’t go in. Mathematically it should be 50%, but I don’t believe that.
You switch it around, and there’s a 30% probability it won’t go in. This is not something they taught at school.
You switch it around the third time, and there’s a 5% chance it still won’t go in. Your mind begins to melt down, you switch and insert repeatedly until it finally works sooner or later.
That’s true only if you don’t want to or cannot look at the connector. The side with the seam goes to the part of the hole with the plastic bit.
Shun the nonbeliever! ShunNnNnn!
Also, the overwhelming majority of USB plugs have the logo on the side away from the plastic bit, and sockets have their plastic bits towards the top of the device. You want the plastic bits on opposite sides (as physical objects don’t like to overlap), so that means that if you can feel the logo with your thumb, that side goes up when you plug it in, and you don’t even have to look.
Amazing! I need to check how many of my cables actually follow this rule.
Also, the socket side tends to be aligned in a particular way, but it won’t work with all manufacturers. I recall seeing some laptops that had their USB-A sockets upside down. Oh, and desktops too! Those sockets are usually vertical, and facing a wall, so it’s anyone’s guess which way is right.
Towards the back of the machine normally counts as up for upwards-facing sockets, unless it’s a case with feet on the side, in which case it’ll be away from those feet so the sockets would be the right way up if it were sideways and on the alternative feet.
That’s cheating! You gotta wing it like a pro.
USB Superposition
The orientation of the connector occupies both states at the same time. If you look at it, the superposition collapses into either of the two.
It’s the XCOM principle lol.
A shot with a 99% chance to hit will miss far more often than you think.
A shot with a 1% chance to hit will miss pretty much exactly as much as you think.
None. If any of it was reproducable it would science instead of pseudoscience
Although anyone who works in an ER will tell you the full moon is the busiest night; the occurrence rate of every issue but murder goes up.
CITATION NEEDED
My mother is a career nurse and swears by this and I’m inclined to believe her. I’d love to see if numbers actually back it up or whether it’s sort of confirmation bias.
Not murder, but I’ll be damned if as a teacher and parent kids aren’t wackier during the full moon.
Also, sugar doesn’t cause hyperactivity. Who ever doesn’t think that can teach for me on Halloween
Cryptozoology. There are definitely creatures unknown to science. Dozens of new ones are discovered every day. Loch Ness monster - no. Unknown ape - possibly.
Speaking of unknown animals. Unicorns could pretty much be real. Just imagine: We have horses, we have horned animals (even one-horned animals), it is not impossible that a horse-like animal with a horn exists.
And it’s called a rhino! I do admit that I use the term horse-like rather broadly here.
They are part of the same order (broad toed ungulates) and share a common ancestor, so they are certainly related
It’s an armored unicorn then!
Hippopotamus literally means river horse, so they are related (not genetically, of course, but etymologically).
Hippos 🦛 aren’t rhinos 🦏
We even have sea unicorns, land unicorns don’t seem too far fetched.
Except all of their remains have somehow disappeared
Hunted and had their horns removed by greedy humans.
I just know we’ll find that damned Insulindian Phasmid soon
There are a fair few accounts in Tasmania about thylacines still existing. The lands are so rugged and harsh that there’s not really any solid way to get in there and search. But I’ll believe it, absolutely.
That is not really cryptozoology, a known real creature that we think is extinct, but if it’s turns out to not be… Nothing weird here.
A lot different to claiming there is a loch Ness monster.
Many people claim the Loch Ness monster is an animal thought to be extinct though. The thylacine is generally held to be a cryptid in my experience.
I still like the thought that the Loch Ness monster was real, but died out. That legends grew from the real thing, and occasional real sightings, then popularized with more recent faked evidence.
Of course that doesn’t mean it probably was real, just it might have been.
All electrical components contain magic smoke that was put into them at the time of manufacture. If that smoke is released, it doesn’t work anymore.
Some broken or malfunctioning machinery respond to incantations projected with emotion. Cuss a machine hard enough and it will start working again.
Another one I’ve personally experienced, but don’t know of any studies for: the main casting of machining equipment such as mills or lathes is a big crystal with unique properties. Each machine has different frequencies it resonates at when cutting. You can hear and feel the vibration when cutting and tune the machine/program for more efficient cutting and tool life. Sort of like taking a guitar that is out of tune and tuning it to a pleasant chord. Two identical machines will need different tunings. This tuning can change over time due to wear, temperature, humidity or maybe the phase of the moon.
Unrelated to machinery: there are mountain lions in the deep south in the deep woods. I had one check me out once. The state wildlife agency denies the modern existence of mountain lions and I didn’t believe in them until I was face to face with one. I had to growl and hiss at it to convince it that I wasn’t interesting.
So that’s what happened when I plugged my 120 V appliance into a 240 V outlet, I released the magic smoke.
Yup. Unfortunately, once released, the magic smoke is gone and cannot be replaced.
All electrical components contain magic smoke that was put into them at the time of manufacture. If that smoke is released, it doesn’t work anymore.
I love this.
Not original to me. Totally stole it.
I completely believe the mountain lions one. Wasn’t the largest ever mountain lion just captured and tagged in Florida? It’s not hard to believe a family or two migrated out of Florida into the rest of the South. The woods are so thick, it seems like a great place to live.
Novel inbound. Don’t think I’ve ever written this down.
I hadn’t heard of the big mountain lion from Florida, I’ll have to look into it. Nifty.
I have heard that the lions in Florida experienced a bad genetic bottleneck and are inbred and won’t survive long term without intervention. There has been discussion about bringing in fresh breeding stock to try and help them, don’t know if its been instituted.
I saw mine deep in the woods, about 10mi north of a place called Cougar Holler. (I heard about that holler after this.) I saw the cat in Skyline WMA in North Alabama. Was 2mi from a road, no trail, after dark, coming up the side of a holler.
On a flat spot up the side, almost to the top, I saw what looked like green headlights coming towards me. It was confusing because you couldn’t even get a four wheeler in there and it was quiet. Realized it was eyes as it got closer, we were moving towards each other. Got to about 20 yards and realized it was a giant cat. LED lamp, so color isn’t great/lot of green, but it looked like gold/tan fur and white belly. Its tail was proportionally shorter than a house cat and longer than a bobcat. End of the tail was squarish, almost tufted. Face was blocky and a little flatter than a common housecat. It was twice, maybe three times the size of a bobcat, so probably a juvenile.
The way it moved was like a snake slithering. It was up on a deadfall, and it kept sliding out of my light. It slid off the log towards me. At that point I drew my handgun and started growling and hissing. It stopped and stared at me and I kept moving towards it. It turned back the way it came and just casually slithered away. It wasn’t afraid of me, just no longer interested.
I know bobcats and house cats. This was not that.
I will never, ever, forget its eyes or the way it moved. The entire event is burned into my memory. Adrenaline was up, but I wasn’t scared, living in the moment, excited. Got the shakes when I made it back to my truck and sat down.
One of the peak experiences of my life.
I had an old Mustang and used to say I could cuss start it.
We have come so far through the application of rationality and the scientific method. All the wonders of the modern world we owe to science.
What has pseudoscience bought us? Ignorance and stagnation.
I want ro live in a world of technological progress not a “Demon Haunted World.”
If it’s not provable by science, then I don’t believe it.
Science can’t “prove” anything. It is more accurate to say that it reduces the level of uncertainty of hypotheses, but that uncertainty can never be reduced to exactly zero.
What is “zero” exactly? Scientists CAN prove unequivocally that the earth is a globe, there is no uncertainty and it is not an hypothesis.
Assuming “zero” is the number of people who don’t believe in an hypothesis, then I agree with you. Despite the overwhelming evidence there are people that believe the world is flat.
The beauty of science is you don’t have to believe in it for it to be real or true.
Scientists CAN prove unequivocally that the earth is a globe, there is no uncertainty and it is not an hypothesis.
Could be a weird confluence of spatial anomalies perfectly mimicking a “globe” to our tests. That’s not very likely at all, but it’s a non-zero uncertainty.
Of course, we could all be living in the matrix and nothing is real.
Correct.
Science cannot even prove itself as a method. Science is just spicy epistemology.
Gödel would like to have a word with you
You express plenty of opinions not provable by science in your comment-history.
The only pseudo science I believe is that one day I’ll be happy. Even though I know i ll never be happy.
That is neither science nor pseudoscience. I don’t know your story, but there are scientific and pseudoscientific ways that might be able to make you happy one day.
It’s hard resisting the power of the moon.
Especially if you work on a boat, by the coast.
The moon haunts you.
Or in the case of Destiny and FFXIV:
my mother was a new-ager and my father was an engineer. the amount of woo i got exposed to on a regular basis, and the amount of explanations on how it’s bullshit, has pretty much inoculated me against it.
it’s all about theory of work; questioning what would cause the ascribed effect.
Time probably isn’t real.
I don’t know what to do with that information. It’s just a weird gut feeling.
Listen up brother because im about to open your third eyes fourth eye. Time is a construct made up by the big clock industry to get us addicted to their minute munchers which is exactly why I stop looking at them.
I dont know what day or time it is. I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept in 84 hours and I’ve never been more certain that I am absolutely terrified of everything.
Wake up.
The more I learn the more time feels emergent and not required.
That… actually makes a lot of sense. Time could just be an emergent property of entropy. The second law of thermodynamics (the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems never decreases) could then be applied to explain why time appears to only move in one direction.
Seeing as the time axis doesn’t seem special compared to spacial ones (especially in edge cases like black holes) I think time is just a perspective thing.
My take is that all particles must be moving at the speed of light through 4d space time. Everything always moves at the speed of causality, just not always in the direction you are looking from.
Do we know if the second law of thermodynamics is just a statistical thing? Does it work at extremely small scales? I know heat propagation could transfer from cold to hot. Its just so astronomically unlikely especially the more complicated the system gets.
I’ve often thought that maybe time is like color or weight. Electromagnetic radiation exists, but color only exists as an idea in our heads, how we’re perceiving and interpreting what does actually exist. Our weight is variable based on our mass and gravitational effects in our environment, rather than being an actual property that describes us. Is what you’re saying about time potentially being an emergent property of entropy the same deal? Are color and weight emergent? (I’m asking both about the actual wording and also how analogous the ideas are.)
Counterpoint:
Time IS real, but like all dimensiona of space it must be traversed in a direction. We can only experience it in a linear fashion, but as it can be traversed there must be a forward and backward (regardless of if we can access it or not). Ergo, predestination is real because all moments are happening simultaneously in different locations upon the time axis.
Here’s a twist I just came up with. We experience time passing, because we’re sliding through it uncontrollably.
Imagine a sled sliding downhill. If you wanted to stay still in time, that would take active effort. It’s like pushing against the sled to prevent it from sliding down. If you want to go back where you came from, it would take even more effort. It’s like climbing uphill.
Also, I have zero evidence about any of this, which makes me 99% confident that time doesn’t really work this way. It just sounds like an appealing concept that should be a foundation of a scifi novel.
must be traversed in one direction
See that’s the part I’m not so sure of. At least for all information transfer. Matter is likely too weighty to go against the current.
But time “feels” like a plane where traversal is just beyond my fingertips.
Or I’m just in the really early phases of dementia.
I think it’s like… in terms of time we’re kind of ‘2D’. Like if you picture a dot on a sheet of paper, it can only move around the directions on that flat plane. That’s time and velocity for us. if you go further up the X axis, you go less far along the Y axis, which is why time slows down the faster you go.
If you were somehow ‘3D’ in time, it’s be like if you lifted the pen off the paper, you could hop around all over the place or maybe even to a different sheet of paper entirely.
But isn’t all velocity relative?
