This is not manifest destiny

I visited one of my oldest friends to-day.  It's been awhile, not because he's very far away; it's just that we have very different lives these days.  Anyways, since I saw this fellow last, I had cut my hair, shaved my mustache and traded out all my old homeless clothes and shoes for slightly trendier clothes.  You know, for professionalism.  I've also started sporting glasses.  I put a lot of thought into my look.  He thought I looked like a jerk.

Now, I don't care what I or anyone else looks like.  But I'm not so ignorant as to go into a business related field of study and pretend that my appearance doesn't matter to others.  With that logic, my appearance matters more to others than it does to me.  So am I selling out if my appearance never had any value to me?

I took a poll around town about affirmations.  Nobody seems to disbelieve in it, but not a lot of people trust it, some people are intrigued by it, and hardly anybody claims to understand how it works.  The affirmations I'm talking about here are a form of self-hypnosis whereby ideals are suggested repeatedly during a meditative state in order to manifest positive change.  So, like, if I were to dim the lights, ignite a bunch of lavender candles, cross my legs in a chalk pentagram I drew on my basement floor and chant "I have the perfect job for me" it will increase the likelihood that I will land a kickin' occupation.  Perhaps as a demon overlord.

OR, if I wanted to go the less satanic route, I might claim that writing "Brenda will be mine" over and over in the margins of my algebra notes will increase the probability of Brenda agreeing to go to the winter formal as my date if I asked her.  And without drinking ANY goat blood out of a grail.  You can say confidence has a part to play in this event.  If you believe something is as good as won, you have all kinds of confidence and that confidence leads you to manifest victory.  On the flip side, some people unconsciously repeat to themselves that they will fail, which manifests failure.  I could go up and ask Brenda to the ball and have "this ain't gonna work" written all over my face.  I'm all nervous and looking at the ground, but I muster out "Hey.. uh... look.  I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go to... the ball with me. You know.. if you're not going with anyone else that is.  I mean you don't have to."

Golly, I was practically TELLING her to say no.

On the other hand, I COULD be relaxed and having a good time, and casually ask "so are we going to the ball?"  Now, there's never a guarantee for success, but there are guarantees for failure.  My point is that increasing probability starts in the mind.

Operant conditioning says that the repetition of a mental process reinforces chemical pathways in the brain making the connection between two neurons stronger, which makes them more likely to conduct the same message again.  Think of water running through dry land.  The more it runs through it the deeper an indentation it makes, the more water is allowed through at one moment, and so on and so forth.  Glial cells eliminate neural synapses that seldom or never fire, but neurons that fire all the time, in a specific pattern will strengthen in their bond and wire together into a complex network that will be automatically set off whenever a stimulus is presented in a the owner's everyday life.

Affirmations as a concept is similar to placebo theory.  Medically, it's the idea that people become healthier when taking a medication they believe will make them healthier whether it is truly designed to do so or not.  Whatever the reason, all science points to "if you think it will work, it will probably work."

Similarly, I had a mathematician friend who had spent months on a math problem, where he attempted to decide the effect of will on chance by imposing his desire on sets of randomized numbers and recording the results.  Astonishingly, the results pointed TOWARD a positive correlation.

In my mind, all these things also have an implication on the nature of prayer.  It's exhaustingly huge to think that God designed the entire universe with the idea in mind that he would create mankind and that mankind would pray.  Desire is not all of prayer; there is also gratitude, submission, and... listening to what God wants for you.  It is interesting to me to think about the effects of prayer, however, and how sometimes they manifest outside of even religious practices.  Things like supernatural healing, spiritual experiences, and (you guessed it) the power of positive affirmations.  Just how many benefits are there to prayer?  Whoever came up with the idea is a genius in my opinion.

Affirmations specifically are funny because they say you're suppose to repeat phrases that are:

Short - easier to remember and usually catchier

Present tense - "I have the perfect job for me" as opposed to "I will have the perfect job for me" which at best has no discernible time frame and at best is stressful and constricting.

Positive - "I am healthy" as opposed to "I am not sick."  Probably so the mind doesn't focus on the mental image of what it DOESN'T want and accidently manifest it anyways.

I think it's funny because at its foundation it is a lie that you are telling yourself with the purpose of forcing it to be true.  Statistically these things work.  So think positive, ladies and gentlemen.  And remember to keep your POSSIBILITIES UNLIMITED and INFINITE!

--J.M. Gatewood
Probability Significator