Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The Pauli Effect
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
Bah - at my last job, we had a problematic old plotter that used to break down all the time. In the beginning, I had to remove the cover (but touch nothing inside) to get it to work, but after a while I could get it working again just by threatening it. It eventually got to the point where the thing saw me coming and snapped-to. It became a running joke in the company that the plotter was afraid of me.
The link says Pauli was unaware of many of the occurrences. But I've learned how to actually control problematic electronics! It's actually not that hard -- training the plotter was just like training Pavlov's dog. It knew when it was misbehaving that if it didn't correct itself I'd disassemble it.
So the real issue of interest here to investigate isn't whether I have this power (clearly, I do), it is how trainable certain pieces of equipment are.
The link says Pauli was unaware of many of the occurrences. But I've learned how to actually control problematic electronics! It's actually not that hard -- training the plotter was just like training Pavlov's dog. It knew when it was misbehaving that if it didn't correct itself I'd disassemble it.
So the real issue of interest here to investigate isn't whether I have this power (clearly, I do), it is how trainable certain pieces of equipment are.
elte
Valued Senior Member
I suspect confirmation bias in a lot of these types of jinx ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinx ) incidents. Also, sometimes thinking of something happening can influence behavior to make it happen.