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.
> 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.
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."?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
> 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."
> I first heard of this technique from a friend who had read a book on the topic. I don't recall the name of the book, so I apologize to the author for not mentioning it. My information came to me secondhand. I only mention it here because it formed my personal experience.
> The process as it was described to me involved visualizing what you want and writing it down fifteen times in a row, once a day, until you obtain the thing you visualized.
> The suggested form would be something like this:
> "I, Scott Adams, will win a Pulitzer Prize."
> The thing that caught my attention is that the process doesn't require any faith or positive thinking to work. Even more interesting was the suggestion that this technique would influence your environment directly and not just make you more focused on your goal. It was alleged that you would experience what seemed to be amazing coincidences when using the technique. These coincidences would be things seemingly beyond your control and totally independent of your efforts (at least from a visual view of reality).
He then goes on to discuss stock, him taking the GMAT, etc. He later continues:
> I used the affirmations again many times, each time with unlikely success. So much so that by 1988, when I decided I wanted to become a famous syndicated cartoonist, it actually felt like a modest goal.
Then he talks about syndicating Dilbert.
He doesn't say, "I can influence the stock market with affirmations," but if you read what he wrote, he is very clearly arguing that you can change reality with your thoughts.
> He doesn't say, "I can influence the stock market with affirmations," but if you read what he wrote, he is very clearly arguing that you can change reality with your thoughts.
Earlier today I was reading your comment on mobile and thinking about the reply I would make. Now I am on a desktop making that reply. I'm pretty sure, therefore, that I can change reality with my thoughts, at least to some degree.
> 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.
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?
Looking it from that perspective, aren't we just describing agnosticism? The lack of "what isn't there" does indeed distinguish it between atheism, as that would be a "I don't believe in X", but it is also distinguishable from the religious beliefs of a true believer.
There is also the possible half point between atheism and agnosticism, where people self identify as atheism but will act according to some religious concept because they view it as important to their lives. To me it indicate strongly that beliefs, any beliefs, sits along a spectrum. A person can live their life in a way consistent with believing in something, either because they believe in it, or they don't know, or that they don't believe in it but still behave in that way because of a reason or an other.
If you were to actually read the chapters, its pretty clearly stated there.
He said he wanted to get rich on the stock market. Wrote an affirmation. Had a dream to by Chrysler stock. Bought stock, stock went up. By his conclusion, he manifested stock going up (because of how thoughts and perception can influence reality and e.t.c)
When I buy X, it is guaranteed that X will tank the next day. It usually takes about 2 months for the market to forget that I bought X, and X will return to normal.
When I sell X, it is guaranteed that I sold for the lowest price that day, and X will rise dramatically for the next 2 months.
This problem is why I rarely trade. I'll hold a stock for decades.
It sounds to me a lot like the power of positive thinking.
Let's say you're not a confident person. If you tell yourself that you are a confident person, and try to act like a confident person would, you will likely become a confident person.
He does not say that.
> Starts on 218.
Actually it’s page 246.