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RichardKennaway comments on Open Thread, January 11-17, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I can think of a good reason for anything. I ask my brain "conditional upon it being a good idea, what might the situation be?" and the virtual outcome pump effortlessly generates scenarios. A professional fiction writer could produce a flood of them. Try it! For any X whatever, you can come up with answers to the question "what might the world look like, conditional upon X being a good idea?" For extreme X's, I recommend not publishing them. If you find yourself being persuaded by the stories you make up, repeat the exercise for not-X, and learn from this the deceptively persuasive power of stories.
Why consult a psychic? Because I have seen reason to think that this one is the real deal. To humour a friend who believes in this stuff. For entertainment. To expose the psychic as a fraud. To observe and learn from their cold reading technique. To audition them for a stage act. Because they're offering a free consultation and I think, why not? (Don't worry, my virtual outcome pump can generate reasons why not just as easily as reasons why.)
What is the real question here?
You got me, there was no real question. It was all made up for fun. It would be fun to know of a rationalist's experience and interpretation or desire to visit a psychic and whatever unusual circumstances and reasoning led them to it.
Even conditional on someone having those experiences I find it unlikey that the person would write an reply to a question on LW that posed as the question above.
Thanks for the feedback.