Good Fairies, Miracle Workers and Slick Phrases  

Good Fairies

..., fortune-tellers, astrologists, god messengers, miracle workers, brain readers, etc. It is already seditious reading, yet let us put some more oil into the fire anyway. Everyone has some idea, what he would like to hear – basically, it is the same for most of people: “you do well, yet some troubles are ahead, but you can get over them and may be, you’ll profit from them – I see a potential in you”. Put that into a mystic array, add a talk show of veteran “occult” worker, who gets the necessary details from your during the talk, and that’s it. It is possible to tailor the crystal-ball job to match your dreams. If you want to believe, you always find something, in what the prediction came true. Just don’t look at it with a strict logic, while leaving your wishes aside, because you would see that you were not told anything particular, except facts that one could learn from you, or from a wise book!

If you pay them regular visits to get the advices, they have a time to prepare. If you desire to know something specific, they can study the theme in advance and subsequently interpret, what the stars tell. And if they swallow a bait – the spirit has lost in the infinity…. But hey, what’s the matter? If you are a regular fan of them, I cannot convince you;-)

Ever heard of Pi-water? It is a miracle stuff that even the greatest physicists cannot produce. I do not wonder that – if you read, what the Pi-water is capable of, you don’t have to understand physics to see what a non-sense it is. Yet as an example, Litovel brewery started to brew a beer out of this water…

None, truly scientific approach has ever confirmed the miracle capabilities of charlatans. On contrary, it showed a tendency to disconfirm them.


Miracle Workers

Deviser of emotional equations, brain quadrants, expert on after-consciousness and unconsciousness, grand master of hermetic order and other fine-sounding titles characterize people, who are willing to help you. And what’s interesting, they often take money for that. And since they are after your money, let’s give them some extra space.

At the mujvztah.cz website of ing. Kalina, the deviser of emotional equations, there is an article named “Genius and not-yet fully understood brain”. It is about emotional equations, their origin, detection and how to profit of them – the positive thinking, which is followed by a short explanation, why it does not have to work always. It sounds to me like an attempt to set up an alibi, in case you get different results.

I don’t know, where the author got his MSc.-alike diploma, but I would not give him even a credit from math. His equations are nothing else but declaration of constants. I’m not gonna argue over particular numbers, they go from zero to ten, from the most awful experience to the most pleasant one. However, it is interesting to see that “I’ll be always alone” has the same grade of 8 as “fine meal in a nice restaurant”.

There’s a pearl in the article: “In that moment, when 1% of society will understand the power of brain, the change will come and we all will begin to experience more of well-being and peace”. What the term society stands for? What is the power of brain? Even the one percent of Prague, a city where they hold courses, is great enough (when compared to number of the courses’ attendees), so he gets his alibi over proving the sentence. He will never have enough people to achieve the promised results – he cannot even prove his claims to be true. He just promises something he cannot do. Perhaps, I should pay a visit to his course, or sacrifice 5.000 Kč per hour over phone to let him explain; for a comparison, this year average gross earnings were between 21 and 22 thousands of Kč per month – 1 USD = 18 Kč and 1 EUR = 26 Kč.

Now, let’s make a hypothetic reasoning, what he can tell about the one percent, for instance. Do you know, how these miracle workers explain it? One monkey from Koshima, a Japanese island, learned to season potatoes with salt. Other monkeys followed this behavior and as the imaginary (see? no exact numbers) hundredth monkey learned this, observers detected the same behavior on surrounding islands. The say is that the knowledge spread from consciousness to consciousness. Obscurantism nonsense. Let’s rather take a rational, scientific course of approach to these sayings.

Monkeys camped out on the coastline, where stream water is more salty as it is nearer to the sea-water – they mix together. Seasoning with salt improved the taste of potatoes, thus giving the monkey a reason to repeat the newly adopted ability. And since monkeys have tendencies to copy behavioral patterns, others followed and continued for the very same reason. There was no consciousness transmission – they were after gastronomic pleasures. And the surrounding islands? For instance, lectures on Prehistoric Cultures held by Tim Roufs at University of Minnesota in Duluth state that even some monkeys learned to swim. The islands are not very far from each other, so few monkey missionaries of salt seasoning could do the job. And that no one has noticed a successive spreading of the salt seasoning? How could they as nobody was watching. Moreover, people visited all islands. Is it really so unlikely that they could not had some monkey passenger when travelling among islands? How did the rabbits got to Australia? ;-)

But, let’s get back to the article. He declares value of 5 as neutral, and then he writes that the ratings are person-specific, so you cannot compare them, yet he does so. Or an emotion sign with a value. Wow, no ordinary plus and minus. I would like to state the poor technical quality of the writing, but it seems to me to like an inappropriate euphemism.

Pay attention, it does not concern just a single article. In another one, we can read this: “The brain is so far the highest-rating computer in the world. Daily, it produces 70.000 thorough and its only function, besides controlling the body, is to compare information.” So, if it compares information only, besides controlling the body, how is that possible it produces thorough? And how did he got the number of 70.000?

Oh yes, I wrote it does not concern just a single article. So, not to make plural out of two examples, let’s give him some additional space. Next of his articles “Give an order for your life partner” reflects itself in one of its sentences: “Send all love doctors to go sleep and give your new partner a concrete face”. Deviser of emotional equations will pardon me, I’m not sleepy yet. But let’s get to the points of the order:

1. Specify, what is important for you in the areas of work, interests and belief
2. Size up your position on sex and the role your partner should play
3. Size up your position on money and the role your partner should play
4. If you like to travel, note it down
5. If you enjoy meal, you won’t want to eat alone
6. Article next important specifications

Points 1 to 3 look reasonable, don’t they? So reasonably that nobody, who is reasonably, would directly oppose them. And since a lot of people consider themselves so, including number of teenagers, the set of possible partners was not practically reduced. Point 4, one man’s eat is another man’s poison. Somebody travels to sunny beaches only, another one has an eternal bond with mountains. Well, still no progress in reducing the numbers of possible fits as nobody wants to stay home all the time and never take a trip. Point 5 sounds like a possibility that individuals with an aversion to meal are a common phenomenon in the population. However, the final point is the best one – write down whatever you want.

By the way, make a small exercise: how many articles concerning “the theme” have you seen, which in real have not said anything particular?

I could not help myself, but to notice that the final order is not reflected in the decision logic of entire procedure. And how could that be as he doesn’t know your wishes? It cannot be. So, why all that work? Perhaps, the knowledge, whom you want, would be somehow transferred from your consciousness to hers, the one you want, and voila;-) – see the previously mentioned brain article…

I had the opportunity to meet some guys, who had they order for a long time – and nothing happened. And I had the opportunity to meet other guys, who had girlfriends. Accordingly to devisor’s articles, I could try something like “they did not follow the procedure exactly, so the consciousness transmission failed”, but that would not be the truth. There was one important difference. Ones tried to approach women and the others did not.

“Memorize your order and pleasantly con it over each morning for a month.”, sounds in the last step of the given order procedure. Then you are supposed to leave the order to its fate. Let’s skip it to presented results, “Experience shows that within three or six month (after the initial conning month) your order will get realized.”. Using some computation, we can get actually believable results. In the interest of fair play, let us use the longest possible interval – 7 months. Taking 30.5 days as an average length of a month, we get 213.5 days your dream lady has to appear within. Weekends are days of working rest, so how about approaching at least one woman per three days? It is not much;-) Yet, you’ll handle over 70 approaches this way. Does anyone believe that each of these women would refuse you immediately? The statistics says, you’ll have a date except the un-salvable ones.

And how could we guarantee that the woman fits the order? Those, who are capable of approaching unknown women, do not tend to use such techniques. On contrary, a guy, who cannot approach a woman, will be happy as she devotes some time to him (even if that is to be just his imagination), and therefore she has to be his dream lady.

Nevertheless, we can asset entire article with less efforts: ” Give an order for your life partner” and “…you order will get realized”. Wow – not only that such order will deliver your dream lady, but it will guarantee that you will keep her;-) Well, living in new age – to find out, whether you fit each other for a life, it is matter of minutes today, as his coworker, Lenka Černá, says in hers Minute Test. Perhaps, the timing could be of a concern... asking after first date, or after first fifty years...

• By giving your order, you don’t get the experience and knowledge you need to keep her in the long-term relationship.
• Even the Minute Test states conclusions with the word “probably”. They cover their asses for opposing variants. For instances, a true love of 15-years old girl would violate the test’s credibility;-)

And these types declare themselves as competent to advice on your relationships. Well, they would give you some advices. But I don’t see a reason, why to take them seriously, or even to pay for them.


Slick Phrases

You might get an impression that instead of writing constructive articles, I purposely criticize opponents. But the opposite is true. When you get walking papers, hear wild stories about successes of others, confront with a guaranteed procedure and its followers, you face a psychic stress, whether you are really doing the right thing. It is OK, to use brain and to question. Just keep your head cool and don’t let emotions to overrun you. That’s the reason, why I show different variants of argumentation, advices and procedures and their bugs. What I describe as a bug, I prove as a bug and for that reason it stays in your head. It is hard to forget the truth. So, next time they’ll try some sweet talking on you, it would be far easier to hold your ground.

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