Ask Lemmy

Why is it that saying something bad will happen will make it happen, but saying something good will happen won't?

If things are calm at work, not a lot is going on, don't say QUIET. Never use the fucking Q word at all.

Mind and body are very tightly bound (that is how placebo works) I don't think you are wrong to be wary of speaking disease into existence. The only sinus infection I have ever had, came after reading a particularly vivid and detailed article about how they start. Like my body was following along.

I do give my work computer enrichment activities to keep it happy. Listen to music so that it can have music, browse occasionally so it doesn't have only work to work on. I get far fewer problems than my teammates do, so it seems to work even though it's superstitious nonsense.

Touch Wood

It's a small superstition that saying some things out loud will jinx it "it's going to be good weather today" - turns the weather bad - and that then following it with "- touch wood" and finding anything wood to touch will make the jinx cancel out

I get superstitions about being cocky or headstrong. Nearly every time I do, the universe corrects my behavior, typically by me failing in some huge, embarrassing fashion.

I really think this Earth is alive. Like a consciousness we can’t fully understand. And when we mistreat it more diseases get released.

When its not feeling well were all gonna feel it.

I believe there’s a connection between conscious minds that is not connected to the senses.

It originates off some legend that a large team of monks gathered to meditate and pray together on a given day. The city’s crime rate drastically fell on that day.

It sometimes seems to manifest in other stories, like family knowing immediately that something bad happened to a family member (before getting a call about it) or animal keepers having an emotional bond with their creatures without being able to communicate.

Cloud tax is real.

In astrophotography, when you buy a new piece of equipment you have to pay the cloud tax. That is: after receiving your new gear it will be cloudy so you can’t use it. The number of cloudy days is directly related to the value of the new gear you got. If you buy something expensive it can be months before you can use it.

I work in 911 dispatch, and there's definitely something about full moons.

It's not that we're busier, or that the calls I get are more serious, but everything is just a little bit off when the moon is full. It's subtle, I don't think it would even be reflected in the types of calls we're entering, but a lot of our callers just get weirder.

Oh I'm superstitious about a great many things but I try to make it as useful as possible by being the most superstitious about not practicing regular gratitude. So for instance I'll "wish" or "bless" someone with something like "a boring shift" because that's the kind of thing it's important to remember to be grateful for. Or instead of saying it's "quiet" (a common bad-luck superstition in healthcare), I'll comment that "I have been blessed with a good night so far."

A core component of my spirituality that I've reflected on lately is that regardless of what I do or don't believe cosmologically, spirituality and religion offer a huge amount of emotional / psychological tools that have stood the test of time and appeared across multiple religions in various forms due to sheer usefulness. These include things like community and regular gratitude and mindfulness practices.

They absolutely can and have been analyzed and implemented in other ways, but that requires a lot of research and very careful coordination of a lot of individual components. Meanwhile I've found a remarkable amount of success emotionally and psychologically in connecting with a faith community that has all those things built in and which has a LOT of other people who are doing the same thing to support me sticking with it.

When I plan a trip and I somehow wake up late and for some reason I just feel so tired. I cancel the trip I take that as a sign something bad is about to happen. That saved me from two incidents. Personally I think it probably is just a coincidence.

It's always funny to me that people have to signal that they don't believe in magic before declaring that they do, in fact, believe in magic.

Whenever I buy insurance for a device, nothing happens to it. Twice I've not had insurance (once it was not offered, second time I foolishly skipped it) and both those times, those devices fucking ate it.

Buying the insurance is a magic spell that protects my technology and nothing can convince me otherwise

Don't touch anything in production on a Friday

Whenever things seem to be going well, don't let the universe know you've noticed, otherwise the universe will make things absolute shit to 'balance it out'.

I was a hockey player and a motocrosser. I don’t have blood running through my veins, they’re filled with superstition.

My job sees me putting a lot of really heavy objects on trailers, vehicles, boats and trains.

You must say "She ain't going nowhere" and tap the load with your hand or else she is going somewhere you don't want.

I swear by it. Every time I or one of my subordinates has forgotten the phrase its been a disaster. So we say it every time now and make sure the new guys do it to. Or else.

I'm in I.T

• we DO NOT talk about how On-Call should go this weekend. I'm probably jinxing it just saying its name
• we DO NOT forecast in our timesheet how much was spent on overtime, even though fucking H.R seems to need it a week in advance like I have a fucking crystal ball
• we DO NOT say Good Luck, really; not ever.
• we DO NOT throw the box away - nor the shipping box - until whatever part has been running for a month. And then in secret so it doesn't see us discarding the box.
• We DO NOT say "this is the reason. Now it'll work." You hear me, ChatGPT? You're killin' me.
• We DO NOT say "it's just a reboot."
• "Compiled on the first try" means "that's a bus error later."

I can't think of any more, but I think I.T people don't retire so much as just get afraid to leave the house.

Murphy's Law says anything that can go wrong will go wrong. My more optimistic version is that the way to make things go right is to make it impossible for them not to. This just makes me proactive - for example, I assume that if I set a bag of groceries down next to a wall without thinking, it will lean away from the wall and tip over. So I just always give bags a half turn before I set them down, and Bingpot! they obediently lean against the wall and stay standing up. It might not exactly be a superstition because I don't think mystical forces are involved. Rather I think a perverse part of our own brains subliminally plans these little accidents for amusement. But once you start using the conscious part of your brain to subvert the plan. those little snafus start not happening.

Similar principle applies to looking for things - say like I'm trying to find my tape measure. I've learned that if I can't find it in a very brief time and consciously decide to do something different - like go to the store and get another tape measure - most often within a couple seconds I will look right at the tape measure, or whatever it is. Pretending isn't enough - I have to sincerely decide to give up searching. My theory on this is that deep down I know where the object is, but part of me is enjoying the treasure hunt so it won't let the knowledge rise to the surface. Once that part of me realizes the game is over, it stops hiding the information and I seemingly at random look right where the thing is.

Maybe believing in these little brain functions is the superstition.

Absolutely nothing. I don't believe in ghosts, magic, ju-ju, or karma.