4 ms·
Some of it is the old horoscope trick of if you have enough leaks, you can just throw a dart and be correct. Much like most people meet enough people every day
by VLM 4y ago
Some of it is the old horoscope trick of if you have enough leaks, you can just throw a dart and be correct. Much like most people meet enough people every day that a horoscope claiming "you'll meet someone today" is accurate most of the time although the process to get that result was nonsense.
My guess is if you observed a highly enough experienced and successful dowser for long enough you'd find out diagnostic work depends on a lot more unconscious knowledge than most give it credit. As an engineer I know to look for a slight depression in the ground, maybe so slight most can't notice, and the smell of wet dirt is different, and pipe comes in coils or segments of length X so even unconsciously I might eventually learn to detect at spots multiples of X away from the water main. I imagine I could unconsciously become a highly skilled dowser just by working it hard enough for enough years and storing enough data.
I know for a fact I can repair old ham radio equipment this way. I can "smell", or something, failed electrolytics far better than using an ESR meter by hand or replacing randomly. Only takes 40 years of experience and you can learn it too. I'm not marketing my skill as a form of witchcraft I'm well aware its merely decades of unconscious study. It is not even remotely controversial that different humans have different abilities to focus their eyes and resolve small things and see in darker environments; I think it quite likely indeed that I can unconsciously see bulging capacitor packages better than the average bear. I know for a fact, having replaced many, that old HP/Tek instrument-grade "black beauty" capacitors have a, shall we say, unique smell when soldered as part of the removal process, and I feel unconsciously that I can smell a cracked/leaking "black beauty" capacitor at room temperature whereas most people cannot. I do not smoke, for example, so I know for a fact my sniffer works better than anyone who smokes anything, but I also think that having screwed around with electronics for several decades I can quite literally smell a failed "black beauty" capacitor (edited: at room temperature; I assure you anyone can smell it when overheated LOL).
- LarryMullins 4y ago> As an engineer I know to look for a slight depression in the ground, maybe so slight most can't notice, and the smell of wet dirt is different Also spots with unusually healthy plants. If most of the grass is dry but there's a depression in the ground with slightly greener grass, there's probably water there. There are lots of subtle signals like that which an experienced dowser could subconsciously tap into.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThis is one of the things that archaeologists are trained to recognize to find buried sites. Different types of soil retain moisture differently and man-made structures can cause uneven plant growth, forming cropmarks. Mostly you'll just see the natural variation of the soil though.
- VLM 4y agoI bet on a smaller level there's even variation in leaf and bark color. Another interesting theory: Everyone knows plants wilt when dry and perk up somewhat when watered; human eyes are hunter eyes, are we're good at detecting movement; can a trained gardener / professional orchard operator / dowser see in the movement of the leaves and branches in the breeze which plants are near a leak or a high water table area? I bet they can, consciously or unconsciously. There's always a little wind where I live. I was thinking about my unusual ability to find bad capacitors; I'm a little proud that my ancestors and I have excellent visual resolution and no astigmatism but it would be very funny if my unconscious ability was seeing overheated components brown with heat; everyone's seen totally roasted and burned carbon comp resistors, but failing caps go high ESR which means high heat which means maybe I'm unusually good at color perception despite my pride about my lack of visual astigmatism. This probably happens with dowsers; they think they're "seeing" colors in the plants, but it would be funny if its not visual at all and they're actually feeling the bounce in their step as they walk across a lawn or field, or as you mention, they operate off being unusually sensitive to tilt.
- timc3 4y agoDownvoted because you obviously haven’t tried it.
- AlexandrB 4y agoIf that's your standard for evidence, I can claim that space is made of molasses. How can you object?! You haven't been up there!
- teawrecks 4y agoI'm assuming they were joking. A lot of these comments boil down to the same dumb claim.
- fractallyte 4y agoHowever, the difference is that you can actually try dowsing...