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Figuring on what you actually want in life and working towards that is productive, yes. But that's mild compared to what he says. He basically says he can infl

Figuring on what you actually want in life and working towards that is productive, yes. But that's mild compared to what he says. He basically says he can influence the stock market with affirmations. You should read the chapters. https://www.scribd.com/doc/156175634/the-dilbert-future-pdf https://www.scribd.com/doc/156175634/the-dilbert-future-pdf. Starts on 218.

teddyh 1y ago
> He basically says he can influence the stock market with affirmations. He does not say that. > Starts on 218. Actually it’s page 246.
- dsizzle 1y ago
  More like he says the affirmations result in stock market premonitions. For example, he said after his "I will get rich in the stock market" manifestation he woke up in the middle of the night thinking "buy Chrysler" before it went on a rally.
  - XenophileJKO 1y ago
    I mean if the affirmations make your brain, both conscious and unconscious, fixate on thinking about market conditions and purchasing opportunities, this passes my smell test. A premonition is a fancy name for an unconscious prediction. Now does are the predictions "good", that is a completely different story. Probably depends on the information going in.
    - robocat 1y ago
      > A premonition is a fancy name for an unconscious prediction The problem with woo is you can always add more woo (bonus points if it has sciencey glitter). Goes from woowoo to woowoowoo. Woo has no logical consistency and has nothing predictably predictive. Ask manifestation believers why they are not successful or rich or whatever? You'll hear some fabulous reasons. My neighbour paid money (I presume thousands) to do courses on learning how to unblock herself. The stated reason for the failure to manifest was due to blocks. Her explanation of the material was outrageous. I have yet to see the positive effect on her. I don't manifest, yet I've got things others would like to manifest. Not sure there that fits in with the woo.
      - aaronbaugher 1y ago
        I knew a bunch of people who were really into the "Law of Attraction" woowoo manifestation stuff back in the mid-2000s. That was a good time for it, especially for suburban middle-class American folks like these, for whom life was generally pretty great. When your life is going great, believing that you manifested it just shows how awesome you are and how much the Universe likes you. But after some time goes by and you get pinched in the mortgage crash, or your wife hits you with a divorce, or you get cancer, if you really believe you manifest everything into your life, then you have to believe you manifested the bad stuff too. So why did you do that to yourself? It's a rough belief system then.
      - neom 1y ago
        To my mind, manifesting is just deciding, manifesting daily is focusing daily. I think the woo starts to come in when people either deliberately misconstrue or genuinely are not very intelligent and just followed a plan well. A couple comments above was talking about someone who woke up in the night and bought Chrysler, made me chuckle because I once woke up in the night remembering I'd forgotten to buy more $TWLO. I could tell this story as: I wanted to get rich playing the stock market, so I decided to write down I was going to do the stock market, every day I wrote down and research the stock market "manifesting" it more and more, once day I wrote into my manifest pad "I'm going to win the stock market!" for the 50th day in a row. That night I went to bed, and in the middle of the night I woke up and thought "I should buy more $TWLO!" - the next day I did, and a week later it rallied netting me $360,000. Truly a master of manifesting my own reality, I suppose? heh. But seriously though, in think in the vain of the above, if "manifestation" is what someone needs to do as their trello or jira for themselves, more power to them.
  - teddyh 1y ago
    > he says the affirmations result in stock market premonitions Not even that. He says that affirmations resulted in him having a premonition. He does not generalize or predict that this will happen for other people, or even himself in the future.
    - sanderjd 1y ago
      This seems very pedantic. The original comment's criticism remains valid with this description of what he says.
      - teddyh 1y ago
        The original comment said “influence” the stock market. Having a premonition is the opposite of influencing.
  - saalweachter 1y ago
    Are you sure he didn't write "I totally didn't inside trade on the basis of information leaked by an employee who thought he was just telling me a funny anecdote to use in my comic, I totally just manifested a premonition in a dream."?
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      Email from an employee is also a plausible mechanism for how that idea might have come to him in a dream. Information not fully processed and turned over when awake can turn into clear ideas in dreams. By committing himself to get rich in the stock market when awake, he primes himself to think about related information when he sleeps. It could be that he never even consciously connected the two and believed it to be a premonition. Or it could be as you say. No way for us to know.
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  He does. He basically argues that our thoughts can influence reality - the idea is that if we perceive something happening as truth, it will become truth (along with all the bullshit pseudo science to support it)
  - teddyh 1y ago
    > He does. He does not. I can’t prove a negative, but you, being the one making an assertion, could provide a quote (with context) which shows your assertion correct. Please do so.
    - limbero 1y ago
      > If it's possible to control your environment through your thoughts or steer your perceptions (or soul if you prefer) through other universes, I'll bet the secret to doing that is a process called "affirmations." > Even more interesting was the suggestion that this technique would influence your environment directly and not just make you more focused on your goal. > I don't know if there is one universe or many. If there are many, I don't know for certain that you can choose your path. And if you can choose your path, I don't know that affirmations are necessarily the way to do it. But I do know this: When I act as though affirmations can steer me, I consistently get good results. I'm not the person you replied to, but I would say that "He basically argues that our thoughts can influence reality" is a fair description of these quotes and the rest of the chapter around it. Some of it is him referencing what other people told him, and he certainly hedges his statements a lot, but I certainly read it as him believing that his affirmations are directly influencing reality.
      - teddyh 1y ago
        [flagged]
        limbero 1y ago
        In a literal sense, I agree with almost everything you wrote. He does not want to directly make the claim that he believes affirmations are magically affecting reality. He aims the text at people predisposed to certain types of woo. And he wants to convince those people to try his other type of woo. He doesn't say what he himself actually believes. Where I differ from you in my take on this is that I also weigh what isn't there. He doesn't provide any form of alternate explanation. Nowhere does he say anything that comes close to "I don't believe that affirmations work this way" or anything of the like. I also don't agree that his hedges clarify anything, rather they muddy the waters. He presents a thesis, presents other people's arguments for that thesis, presents no arguments against, and then explains that he lives his life in a way consistent with believing in that thesis. The hedges fill one function: to make it harder to argue against him. If the arguments aren't his, the chapter stands even if the arguments fall. To me, that is basically arguing for the thesis, but in a roundabout and quite defensive way. What other point would you say that that chapter conveys?
JoeyJoJoJr 1y ago
Can you provide some quotes?
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - mikestew 1y ago
    Don’t give people homework, give them URLs to back your assertions. Surely one friggin’ quote isn’t too much to ask.
    - ActorNightly 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - JoeyJoJoJr 1y ago
    Until you provide some substantiation you are just making baseless claims. Edit: BTW, you can’t copy the text on that PDF.
netsharc 1y ago
As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save their king/queen, but kings and queens don't live beyond the average lifespans of humans... If you want to read a book that's closer to how the universe actually works, and how your mind should operate, read it: https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709 https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709
- bell-cot 1y ago
  > ... millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save ... Plausibly quite true. But given (1) how often the succession turned violent after a monarch died, and (2) how very little power the average person had - I'd say such prayers were entirely reasonable. If they made "life in the lower 99%" just 1% more bearable, that'd be a worthwhile RoI. Demon-Haunted World is a book worth reading...but Carl often seems to forget that 99% of humans are neither huge science geeks (as he is), nor rationalist robots.
- cladopa 1y ago
  To be fair, that is not a very valid argument, given that for any given King/Queen, they will be millions on the other side wanting this given person to die. E.g when the Spanish Empire ruled the world, the British were not very happy about that. With the British Empire, the French and the Germans fought them with every opportunity.
  - jakeydus 1y ago
    That's true, for every prayer I say for my monarch I include a note asking for my enemy's monarch to die!
    - b112 1y ago
      I can see this being true, but so many monarchs were related, it's kind of weird.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    I don't believe it, but it could also be the case that the God is wiser than everybody praying for their monarch to have an unnaturally long life, and knows that monarchs dying in a regular sort of way is best for the kingdom. I'm an atheist, but many of the arguments put forth by atheists seem very lame to me.
paulddraper 1y ago
Page 246 And yes, that is basically what he says. With infinite possible universes, you can guide which universe becomes your reality through affirmations. Wacky perhaps, but the philosophies of consciousness and quantum mechanics are kinda wacky too... --- On a relevant point, he talks about curing cancer.

teddyh 1y ago

> He basically says he can influence the stock market with affirmations. He does not say that. > Starts on 218. Actually it’s page 246.

dsizzle 1y ago
More like he says the affirmations result in stock market premonitions. For example, he said after his "I will get rich in the stock market" manifestation he woke up in the middle of the night thinking "buy Chrysler" before it went on a rally.
- XenophileJKO 1y ago
  I mean if the affirmations make your brain, both conscious and unconscious, fixate on thinking about market conditions and purchasing opportunities, this passes my smell test. A premonition is a fancy name for an unconscious prediction. Now does are the predictions "good", that is a completely different story. Probably depends on the information going in.
  - robocat 1y ago
    > A premonition is a fancy name for an unconscious prediction The problem with woo is you can always add more woo (bonus points if it has sciencey glitter). Goes from woowoo to woowoowoo. Woo has no logical consistency and has nothing predictably predictive. Ask manifestation believers why they are not successful or rich or whatever? You'll hear some fabulous reasons. My neighbour paid money (I presume thousands) to do courses on learning how to unblock herself. The stated reason for the failure to manifest was due to blocks. Her explanation of the material was outrageous. I have yet to see the positive effect on her. I don't manifest, yet I've got things others would like to manifest. Not sure there that fits in with the woo.
    - aaronbaugher 1y ago
      I knew a bunch of people who were really into the "Law of Attraction" woowoo manifestation stuff back in the mid-2000s. That was a good time for it, especially for suburban middle-class American folks like these, for whom life was generally pretty great. When your life is going great, believing that you manifested it just shows how awesome you are and how much the Universe likes you. But after some time goes by and you get pinched in the mortgage crash, or your wife hits you with a divorce, or you get cancer, if you really believe you manifest everything into your life, then you have to believe you manifested the bad stuff too. So why did you do that to yourself? It's a rough belief system then.
    - neom 1y ago
      To my mind, manifesting is just deciding, manifesting daily is focusing daily. I think the woo starts to come in when people either deliberately misconstrue or genuinely are not very intelligent and just followed a plan well. A couple comments above was talking about someone who woke up in the night and bought Chrysler, made me chuckle because I once woke up in the night remembering I'd forgotten to buy more $TWLO. I could tell this story as: I wanted to get rich playing the stock market, so I decided to write down I was going to do the stock market, every day I wrote down and research the stock market "manifesting" it more and more, once day I wrote into my manifest pad "I'm going to win the stock market!" for the 50th day in a row. That night I went to bed, and in the middle of the night I woke up and thought "I should buy more $TWLO!" - the next day I did, and a week later it rallied netting me $360,000. Truly a master of manifesting my own reality, I suppose? heh. But seriously though, in think in the vain of the above, if "manifestation" is what someone needs to do as their trello or jira for themselves, more power to them.
- teddyh 1y ago
  > he says the affirmations result in stock market premonitions Not even that. He says that affirmations resulted in him having a premonition. He does not generalize or predict that this will happen for other people, or even himself in the future.
  - sanderjd 1y ago
    This seems very pedantic. The original comment's criticism remains valid with this description of what he says.
    - teddyh 1y ago
      The original comment said “influence” the stock market. Having a premonition is the opposite of influencing.
- saalweachter 1y ago
  Are you sure he didn't write "I totally didn't inside trade on the basis of information leaked by an employee who thought he was just telling me a funny anecdote to use in my comic, I totally just manifested a premonition in a dream."?
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Email from an employee is also a plausible mechanism for how that idea might have come to him in a dream. Information not fully processed and turned over when awake can turn into clear ideas in dreams. By committing himself to get rich in the stock market when awake, he primes himself to think about related information when he sleeps. It could be that he never even consciously connected the two and believed it to be a premonition. Or it could be as you say. No way for us to know.
ActorNightly 1y ago
He does. He basically argues that our thoughts can influence reality - the idea is that if we perceive something happening as truth, it will become truth (along with all the bullshit pseudo science to support it)
- teddyh 1y ago
  > He does. He does not. I can’t prove a negative, but you, being the one making an assertion, could provide a quote (with context) which shows your assertion correct. Please do so.
  - limbero 1y ago
    > If it's possible to control your environment through your thoughts or steer your perceptions (or soul if you prefer) through other universes, I'll bet the secret to doing that is a process called "affirmations." > Even more interesting was the suggestion that this technique would influence your environment directly and not just make you more focused on your goal. > I don't know if there is one universe or many. If there are many, I don't know for certain that you can choose your path. And if you can choose your path, I don't know that affirmations are necessarily the way to do it. But I do know this: When I act as though affirmations can steer me, I consistently get good results. I'm not the person you replied to, but I would say that "He basically argues that our thoughts can influence reality" is a fair description of these quotes and the rest of the chapter around it. Some of it is him referencing what other people told him, and he certainly hedges his statements a lot, but I certainly read it as him believing that his affirmations are directly influencing reality.
    - teddyh 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - limbero 1y ago
        In a literal sense, I agree with almost everything you wrote. He does not want to directly make the claim that he believes affirmations are magically affecting reality. He aims the text at people predisposed to certain types of woo. And he wants to convince those people to try his other type of woo. He doesn't say what he himself actually believes. Where I differ from you in my take on this is that I also weigh what isn't there. He doesn't provide any form of alternate explanation. Nowhere does he say anything that comes close to "I don't believe that affirmations work this way" or anything of the like. I also don't agree that his hedges clarify anything, rather they muddy the waters. He presents a thesis, presents other people's arguments for that thesis, presents no arguments against, and then explains that he lives his life in a way consistent with believing in that thesis. The hedges fill one function: to make it harder to argue against him. If the arguments aren't his, the chapter stands even if the arguments fall. To me, that is basically arguing for the thesis, but in a roundabout and quite defensive way. What other point would you say that that chapter conveys?

JoeyJoJoJr 1y ago

Can you provide some quotes?

ActorNightly 1y ago
[flagged]
- mikestew 1y ago
  Don’t give people homework, give them URLs to back your assertions. Surely one friggin’ quote isn’t too much to ask.
  - ActorNightly 1y ago
    [flagged]
- JoeyJoJoJr 1y ago
  Until you provide some substantiation you are just making baseless claims. Edit: BTW, you can’t copy the text on that PDF.

netsharc 1y ago

As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save their king/queen, but kings and queens don't live beyond the average lifespans of humans... If you want to read a book that's closer to how the universe actually works, and how your mind should operate, read it: https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709 https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709

bell-cot 1y ago
> ... millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save ... Plausibly quite true. But given (1) how often the succession turned violent after a monarch died, and (2) how very little power the average person had - I'd say such prayers were entirely reasonable. If they made "life in the lower 99%" just 1% more bearable, that'd be a worthwhile RoI. Demon-Haunted World is a book worth reading...but Carl often seems to forget that 99% of humans are neither huge science geeks (as he is), nor rationalist robots.
cladopa 1y ago
To be fair, that is not a very valid argument, given that for any given King/Queen, they will be millions on the other side wanting this given person to die. E.g when the Spanish Empire ruled the world, the British were not very happy about that. With the British Empire, the French and the Germans fought them with every opportunity.
- jakeydus 1y ago
  That's true, for every prayer I say for my monarch I include a note asking for my enemy's monarch to die!
  - b112 1y ago
    I can see this being true, but so many monarchs were related, it's kind of weird.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  I don't believe it, but it could also be the case that the God is wiser than everybody praying for their monarch to have an unnaturally long life, and knows that monarchs dying in a regular sort of way is best for the kingdom. I'm an atheist, but many of the arguments put forth by atheists seem very lame to me.

paulddraper 1y ago

Page 246 And yes, that is basically what he says. With infinite possible universes, you can guide which universe becomes your reality through affirmations. Wacky perhaps, but the philosophies of consciousness and quantum mechanics are kinda wacky too... --- On a relevant point, he talks about curing cancer.