The Power of Belief

Great Debates
1

If you are actively looking for something you increase your chances of finding it, right? It makes sense. So if I walk around town for a week actively looking for quarters instead of just picking up the quarters I happen to see as I normally would I’m going to end up with a lot more money at the end of the week.

But, if you actively believe something will happen are you increasing the chances that it will happen? It’s not nearly as cut and dry or empirically verifiable.

Here’s the scenario: Every day as I walk to class I pass by several rabbits that live on the campus where I’m taking summer classes. Sometimes I stop for a moment and look at them. If I don’t do anything they will stand around grazing, but if I take one step towards them they are gone like, well like jackrabbits. So once I realized I couldn’t get near my furry little friends I tried getting them to just look at me. I would whisper little noises, make passive motions, and try anything to just get one of them to turn their head and look at me. As you might imagine I did get a cockeyed glance from the humans on the campus, but try as I might not one rabbit would look at me except out of its peripheral vision.

Today was my last day of class, I took my final exam and walked out feeling very relaxed from both finishing the course and feeling good for doing well on the test. As I was walking to my car I passed by my little rabbit friends and thought well this is it, the last time I’ll see these guys, might as well give it one last shot. This time however I didn’t make any motions and sounds I just concentrated on emitting a positive and friendly ‘energy,’ for lack of a better word, towards the rabbit, and just for a moment I turned off my rational brain and allowed myself to believe the rabbit was receiving my message. Just as I realized that doing this was making me feel better than I already was the rabbit turned its head looked at me for a few seconds and went back to its grass. Dare I say it, we shared a moment. Please don’t stoop to quoting this and making a sexual joke. I only have platonic relationships with non humans.

I am an atheist but I believe in the power of belief. That quarter experiment is taken in part from a book by Robert Anton Wilson called Prometheus Rising about the power of active thought. I also think that the power of belief can be helpful in explaining religious miracles, the placebo effect, and the concept of karma and other phenomenon where the outcome of a low probability event appears to be influenced by active thought alone.

So what do you think? Pseudoscience hooey or actual experiences?

I won’t be back until Saturday to check this thread, so go easy one me. :wink:

2

Not sure if I understand what you’re talking about, but I have definitely noticed that “The Power of Positive Visualization” really does work. Except, in my case, it always works backwards. Which means, if I keep imagining that something good will come of something, something BAD will come of it…and vice versa.

For instance, when I recently took my car in to have the brakes fixed, I kept imagining the mechanic telling me that my rotors were shot and would need to be replaced, adding hundreds of dollars to the bill. But they turned out to be just fine.

I’ve actually put this to good use. Sometimes I’ll save myself the embarrassment of asking a chick out on a date, solely because I can’t avoid thinking about how happy she’ll be to say “yes.”

Ehh…it’s all a conspiracy anyway.

3

I think in this case it’s the power of conditioning. Your bunnies made friends with you. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
And the quarter deal is the power of observation. I ain’t gonna see Waldo anywhere unless I’m looking for him – knowaddamean?

However, I am a firm believer in one physical property that I think has a relationship with religion: whatever law it is that states, “For every action there is an equal reaction.” I believe that is the basic gist of karma.

Things you do consciously – and subconsciously (i.e. “what you think”, for lack of a better term) – affect how things happen to you.

Your actions (overt and subconscious) presented no threat to the bunnies and they got used to you, the end result was … “a moment.” Your belief, and the power you think it presented, were just part and parcel with the karma you put forth.
That’s my little religious speech for this decade.

4

Dangit! The server ate my post. Well, maybe this one will be more succinct.

For the quarter experiment, I see nothing more mystical than the idea that someone who is looking for quarters is more likely to find them.

With your bunny buds, I can think of three hypotheses:

  1. Simple coincidence
  2. The rabbit knew you were non-agressive, but through non-mystical cues. Could be body language, the fact that you were NOT making noises, or even (far-fetched) your smell.
  3. You communicated with the rabbit telepathically.

Personally, I’d vote for 1 or 2.

I don’t think that thought can affect the probability of an event through supernatural means. My definition of ‘supernatural’ is any action at a distance that relies on something other than the four fundamental forces recognized by physics.

If your point is that many things we think of as supernatural actually do occur, but have natural and rational explanations - I agree.

5

cainxinth if the sort of phenomenon told anecdotally in the OP actually existed, I would expect at least some of the studies in parapsychology research to have come across it somehow. Those guys have been searching for precisely that sort of thing for 150 years.

But the simplest answer is: that sort of story is why in science you do not make conclusions based on anecdotes, personal experience, and uncontrolled experiments.

Besides, dealing with animals has its own complexities. Many people (including my mother) claim I am some sort of cat person because I can usually get cats (individualistic bastards that they are) to come to me whether they know me or not, but in fact I don’t particularly like cats --I do like the pleasant and sociable ones, but I find most other cats psycho. The reason I can get a cat to come to me or pay me attention is that, rather than look straight at a cat’s face and make stupid “tch-tch” noises while getting all worked up with enthusiasm–these are not very friendly cat-signals-- I instead give the furball a glance then move my gaze slightly away from its face (and eyes), remain calm without gesticulating, and provide certain cues to encourage the cat to come over and interact with me; usually a few meows and some movement of the fingers are incentive enough for the cat to come explore.

Now, you say that you could not get the rabbits to look at you–but perhaps they were looking at you already and you simply didn’t realize it because you were thinking in terms of human binocular, high-resolution, high-colour vision. A rabbit’s eyes are placed high and on the sides of the skull, conferring upon Fluffy near-360 degree vision. On top of that, rabbits have front-facing nostrils and an acute sense of smell (which compensate for a blind spot directly in front of their head) and hearing. They tend to be farsighted, and can probably spot circling hawks high in the sky more easily than series of moving blurs like you and other pedestrians in your university area.

You said that when you try to get closer the rabbits dart away. Most animals have instinctive “spheres” of safety/private space around them: keep sufficiently far away and they will ignore you, but take one step too far and you trigger a reaction–some animals dash away just like your rabbit, and some others rip one of your limbs off, like crocodiles. Knowing the appropriate distance to keep from an animal is the most important thing animal trainers and handlers learn; when you see a crocodile wrestler or a lion tamer or a snake handler, rest assured that they know exactly when and from where to intrude into the animal’s “field” in order to stimulate a particular reaction (or take advantage of it).

My guess is the bunny saw you but was simply not interested in you; yet when you got too close fluffy thought you were a threat and you triggered its escape. The one time you stood still and made no noise and succeeded in getting a glance from the rabbit could have been a simple coincidence, or an instance of rabbit puzzlement (for example, “is that funny-smelling, formerly moving blur a predator getting ready to pounce?”).

Pseudoscience hooey, at least as far as the interpretation goes. “Active thought” may have an effect on one’s body and mind in terms of such things as the placebo effect and one’s own perceptions, but not much else. That’s not to say active thought is not useful or effective: apart from the placebo effect and basic self-confidence I think when applied properly it can help in, for example, internalizing loci of control or improving concentration. On the other hand, when improperly applied this sort of exercise can develop credulity, delusions, the bank accounts of professional liars, and other things you don’t really want to grow any larger.

I seriously doubt you connected telepathically with a rabbit, for example, and I think that believing in this sort of “mysterious” and largely fictional “power”, while not directly harmful, is not a healthy activity. It’s just another form of superstition.

6

Sorry to pee on your cornflakes, but when a rabbit looks at you sideways-on, it is actually looking right at you; rabbits’ eyes are positioned on the opposite sides of the head, this gives them almost a 360[sup]o[/sup] field of view, but almost no binocular vision. It would be very unusual for a rabbit to ‘look straight at you’.

7

Uh, that first thing.

It’s possible that you did influence the bunny’s behavior, but not directly through your thoughts. Animals have a very strong instinct to respond to behavioral cues. For example, if you come running at an animal screaming, it would probably run away. But it doesn’t have to be that obvious. They could have responded to much more subtle indicators of your mood. Your thoughts affect your behavior. But the most likely explanation is that it was coincidence.

I’m reminded of gamblers who believe their thoughts can control the outcome of games of chance. I always have to suppress the urge to ask these people why they aren’t millionaires.

8

When I say, “I believe that is a rabbit over there” am I saying “[There is something I want to assert]” or am I saying “A rabbit is over there” ?

If I say, “A rabbit is over there”, can we not arbitrarily tack on “I believe…” to the front of it? For if asked, wouldn’t I tell you I believed it? Does expressed belief reveal more about the state of affairs or the state of the speaker?

From my saying, “A rabbit!” I can say, “I believe that is a rabbit” though it may seem silly to do so. And then, “And yes, of course I believe that I believe it is a rabbit.” How many "believe"s may we add on before no more information is added to an assertion like, “That is a rabbit”?

Believing something… isn’t that implicit in everything we do? The power of belief guides everything we do: if we believed we couldn’t do a thing we won’t even try.

But not this kind of belief, then? You mean that the act of believing itself is what causes something to happen? But how is that different from the above? If you believe you can cause an event, then that is the power of belief: giving you confidence to do it. Do you believe you can telepathically communicate with bunnies? If so, it isn’t your belief that does it; you do it through some means: belief allows you to do it (or attempt to, should the action prove impossible).

That’s MHO on “belief”.

9

When everyone believed the Earth was flat, was it flat?

10

This power of belief stuff is all placebo. If you don’t remember your headache after you’ve had it because you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve gotten well via magnets/homeopathy/alien probing (and that would affect the heads of one or two believers I know), then aforementioned method seems to work. Experiment: Visualise a coin landing heads up. Flip a coin 50 times. How many times did it land heads up?