Does fortune-telling work?

A recent survey shows a significant proportion of people believing in astrology and Tarot (BBC News, 12 April 2009). The number of believers is slightly down from the 1990s, but still much higher than in the 1950s.

One reason why these beliefs are popular is because they appear to work: practitioners of fortune-telling sometimes produce excellent insights. However, this can be explained as follows.

We start with the theory that the human brain is divided into leftbrain and rightbrain.

We then observe that fortune-telling typically involves a complicated procedure, and sometimes complicated calculations. This applies to a range of practices, including astrology, iChing and Tarot. Sceptics typically dismiss this as pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

However, all of these procedures and calculations have the effect (and so perhaps the purpose) of occupying the leftbrain, while the rightbrain quietly produces some interesting and relevant insight. In other words, the more complicated the procedure the more effective it is.

See my post on Confirmation Bias

Pact with the Devil 2

Cambridge University researcher Mike Bond would rather admit to superstition than trickery. 

Following my post yesterday on his paper "Pact with the Devil" (auspiciously numbered 666 and dated 6/6/6), Mike added a comment in which he confirms my analysis, admits (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) to some (internal) superstition, but denies my suggestion that this might have been planned for (external) effect.

In some circles, perhaps particularly in Cambridge, eccentric beliefs are more socially acceptable than vulgar publicity-seeking. Faking the numbers to achieve some worldly purpose would itself count as a Pact with the Devil. 

But sometimes the innocent sharing of a joke may be more authentic - and therefore more infectious - than cynical manipulation or conscious planning. An effect may be amplified by an manifest absence of purpose. (Mike's paper deserves to be read, and a bit of light amusement in its publication surely can't do it any harm.)

But absence-of-purpose at one level may be sustained by a deeper purpose. POSIWID helps us to search for a purpose, but doesn't reveal what kind of purpose we might find.

Pact with the Devil

Is the University of Cambridge Computing Laboratory superstitious? Report number 666 (on computer malware) was published on 6/6/6 and is entitled Pact with the Devil [abstract, pdf, announcement]. 

This was clearly contrived. The Laboratory normally publishes a couple of reports every month. Report number 665 was published in April 2006, and then several reports were apparently held back so that the malware report could be assigned an auspicious number and date.

(Three further reports were published immediately after the malware report. Perhaps the numbers and dates are assigned by some bureaucratic computer system; but we may presume that the computer scientists at Cambridge would know how to cheat the system if they had chosen to do so. Perhaps it matters to some people whether this really was the 666th report, and not the 669th report with the code numbers swapped.) 

Superstition is an interesting phenomenon. The computer scientists can claim an interesting defence: they are not irrational themselves, merely exploiting the irrationality of other people. Contriving an auspicious number is a trick to get themselves some publicity for the report. (Hey, it's got me to post a blog about it, and I'm not admitting to being superstitious either.)

---

The report itself talks about malware that coopts users to help with propagation - exploiting their greed, malice and short-sightedness. 

It can be observed that a biological virus may alter the host's behaviour - for example, causing them to cough germs over other people. I understand that some people infected with a biological virus become so angry and alienated that they deliberately set out to infect other people. Obviously a biological virus that can cause this kind of behaviour is likely to be more successful at propagating itself.

The authors of the paper discuss various mechanisms and incentive structures that a crafty computer virus could use to bribe and blackmail users, causing them to assist with propagation. It's a scary thought. But the authors end with an even scarier thought - we may no longer be able to draw a hard line between malware and other propagated software. Until we have proper controls, "running other peoples software will remain an activity to be undertaken with caution". 

 

See also Pact with the Devil 2 (June 2006)