Hu Shi said at the graduation ceremony of the Philosophy Department of Peking University in 1931 that the purpose of studying philosophy is to "not be confused by others." It can be seen that in order to be "not confused by others," these four words have a certain meaning. How difficult it is to have to go to study philosophy. But in fact, learning philosophy, apart from providing you with a set of attire and terminology to confuse others, does not help much in whether you can avoid being confused by others.
Our lives are surrounded by lies and fascination all the time, some of which are beneficial to oneself at the expense of others; some cannot be seen as to whether they are harmful to others, but self-interest is certain. We call the former "cheating", but there is no good word to describe the latter. Many people are convinced that they have seen superpowers or some kind of religious miracle, and they worship it. In the past few years, domestic miracle doctors have become very popular. They claim to be able to cure diseases thousands of kilometers away, not to mention things like taking things through walls and seeing through eyes. They attracted many fans until he cured everyone to death. Only then did he suddenly wake up (in fact, even if the doctor died, he would not blame the miracle doctor for not being good, but the deceased himself for being insincere). What happened after that was that water turned into oil, people went on hunger strike, and so on.
In fact, any behavior of so-called superpowers cannot withstand strict scrutiny, such as divination (and all fortune-telling). Its principle is called the "deep effect" in psychology, that is, : The more general the meaning of a passage is (it’s okay if you think it’s profound), the more people who listen to it can know themselves, especially in this passage. For example, "Sometimes you are outgoing and sociable; but sometimes you are introverted, cautious and conservative." If you hear others use this sentence to evaluate you, do you think it is accurate? In fact, everyone will think this sentence The words describe themselves very well, but in fact they say nothing. A doctor in France did an interesting experiment. He found one of the most famous astrologers at the time and sent him a large sum of money. At the same time, he had to include the birth dates and horoscopes of 10 people. This information was all true. Divinations are performed on these people. The astrologer soon sent back the results, and the divination results of one of the people aroused the doctor's interest. The results are as follows:
"This person was born in the sign of Virgo where Jupiter is located, so his nature makes him passionate about people. Very caring. At the same time, this person must be intelligent, intelligent, upright, and extremely capable... He not only loves wealth, but is also devoted to public welfare, values ??feelings and knows how to repay, and is willing to sacrifice himself for others... He loves My own home is an excellent man’s, and his home is often a place for friends to celebrate and have activities.”
In fact, this is the birth date of a super murderer, who always wanted to kill. All 63 people were killed for money. After killing, they put the corpses into his quicklime body pool. When he was accused of killing 27 people, he was very disdainful and said that he had actually killed 63 people. This guy is actually considered to be "passionate and loving towards people... he values ??feelings and knows how to repay, and he is willing to sacrifice himself for others..." and so on. Seeing that he had won the first battle, the doctor placed an advertisement in the newspaper saying that he was willing to tell fortunes for free. When everyone saw that someone was willing to tell fortunes for free, they sent in their birth dates. The doctor selected 150 people from different industries and ages. He copied the previous murderer's divination results intact and sent them out, and at the end he asked the other party to comment on the results. As a result, 94% of people replied that it was correct, and both themselves and their relatives and friends were satisfied with the divination results. When the doctor made the experimental results public, the whole country was in an uproar. In fact, as long as all fortune tellers, fortune tellers, and astrologers don't say anything particularly positive, and say more flattering words, they will basically make no mistakes.
Some people believe that there is telepathy in this world. There are reports that a boatman went fishing and died in a storm. And that night, his wife dreamed that her husband was swept away by a huge wave. Is this a manifestation of telepathy? In fact, as long as you do a little research, you will find the facts: the wife had learned about the wind on the sea from the radio, and she forced herself to sleep while she was extremely worried. She thought about it day and night, and dreamed about it, so she dreamed about her husband's death. . However, when those reporters reported the incident, they deliberately concealed certain facts, leading people to mistakenly believe that only telepathy could explain the dream.
In most cases, the so-called special powers are magic, and magicians can do it too, but they honestly say it is magic, while the masters are not so honest. In order for all special functions to be performed successfully, there is no other way but to rely on cheating. This is the case with a very famous special function-retrieving objects from a bottle. The performer puts some pills (for example, 20 pills) in the bottle and seals it. He makes a batch of such bottles, but he secretly makes another bottle with only 10-15 pills in it, and waits until the performance is when no one is around. He mixed the bottle into the pile of bottles, and then took out some pills from his pocket and put them in the palm of his hand. After he pretended to be a fool for a while, he found the bottle with fewer pills and picked it up. At this time, there was a gap between his palm and the bottle. There are 5-10 pills hidden in between. Finally, chant a spell to shake the pills out of the bottle. Even up close it would be impossible to tell whether the pills had fallen out of the bottles, and even if someone were to examine the bottles, they would find that they were indeed sealed. His special function was finally completed.
There is also a joke here, saying that there was a master who performed taking things from bottles, but the pills in the bottle were pieces of cod liver oil. He still followed the old rules and took some cod liver oil and put it in the palm of his hand, and then took it When he picked up the bottle, maybe it was too hot, or maybe the master was so nervous that his hands sweated. As a result, several grains of cod liver oil melted in his hands. Although the performance was "successful" in the end, the fishy smell of the master's hand caused him to go around patting people on the back and rubbing cod liver oil on others.
These are relatively low-level deceptions, and there are also some more advanced deceptions. For example, a certain master claims that he can see things while blindfolded, and often performs in public. He sits on a high platform and blindfolds himself. Since there are many people at the scene, he cannot use small objects to perform while blindfolded, so that the people in the back row The audience was confused, so they chose to guess the color of the clothes, and asked volunteers to run on stage. Everyone could see the color of the person's clothes, and then let the master guess. To successfully play this game, the master's assistant must play a big role. When the assistant sees someone coming on stage, he says: "An audience member has volunteered to come on stage. Let our great, benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent master guess." What color are his clothes?" The master miraculously guessed it right every time. Some people even had more than one color on their clothes and could guess them one by one. The secret is hidden in the words of this assistant. People who don't know think that this is a normal compliment, which makes the master appear to be very powerful. However, the adjectives "great, benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent" are not just spoken casually. Maybe when people in red clothes say this, people in blue clothes will say "merciful, great, omniscient and omnipotent", and people in black clothes will drag out the word "wei" in "great". As long as the master and his assistant practice diligently, it is normal to invent more than 100 different sets of "slang", so that not only the color of clothes, but also any common things can be guessed. In fact, as long as the master can talk to his assistant, he can guess the color of the audience's clothes even if he is on Mars.
But then again, why would anyone want to believe in fortune telling, telepathy, or anything else. Let’s put ourselves in someone’s shoes. Suppose someone has cancer and has reached an advanced stage. If you ask the doctor, the doctor can only tell the truth that you can probably live for half a year. If you ask a miracle doctor, he will tell you. No matter how good you are, you can tell me where to get a doctor. It doesn't matter if you have this little problem. As long as you are sincere, you can definitely cure it. But if you don't give money, he will say you are dishonest. It can be seen that people are willing to believe in witchcraft to make themselves feel better. Especially in this world where there are many things that science can't do anything about, witchcraft can only be used to fill the holes in people's hearts and give them comfort.
Similarly, if a relative of yours dies, of course you will feel sad and hope to see this relative again. Science will tell you that this is impossible, but psychics will tell you this. It's too easy. With just a few spells, the souls of your loved ones can attach themselves to you and even have conversations with you. It can be seen that the reason why some people believe in witchcraft is actually because people want to believe it, because the facts are often too cruel, and illusions are often more in line with psychology.
It stands to reason that the so-called superpowers belong to the tertiary industry - the service industry, because it provides people with some psychological services, but it would be fine if it was just this. In fact, the vast majority of people with supernormal abilities rely on others. Stupid and amassing wealth. At this time, science has to stand up. The achievements of science in the past few hundred years are obvious to all. However, in many cases, it still cannot prevail in the fight against such superstitions, because the general public has never In my heart, I hope that science will fail and superstition will win. Therefore, they consciously or unconsciously implement double standards, that is: as long as science fails once, it is a failure, and as long as superstition wins once, it is a victory.
Those prophets don’t know how many times their predictions have failed, but as long as they predict diligently, they will always be right once or twice. At this time, he only needs to publicize the correct one or two times. , there will naturally be believers who worship him. Once someone asks him why he made a mistake in his prediction, he can just say that he was not in the best condition that day and was in a bad mood. And what about science? Take the TV set, which is the crystallization of physics achievements in the past 100 years, for example. Once it is produced and shipped out of the factory, it must be guaranteed to be usable. It cannot be said that one or two out of a hundred units can be used, which means it is a success. Even if it happens to happen to happen, If the TV is not working, I will not say that the TV is not in working condition today and is in a bad mood.
For all the prophets, there is one whom I admire very much. He predicted countless things in his life, but unfortunately few of them were correct. Finally, he became anxious and began to predict his own death date. , thinking that this matter was something he could control at least, so on the day he predicted, he committed suicide. He is finally a very professional prophet.
Reposted from: Duan Hongbin’s blog