How Astrologers Predict Future / Fool You - Barnum Statements Explained

14,119 views Wait, is this logic right? • Aug 18, 2023

Slog Reference: The Barnum Effect or How Astrologists Fool You

Description

Do you want to know how astrologers or tarot card readers can accurately judge your personality and predict the future? The answer lies in a few sentences known as Barnum Statements. Let's try to understand what are these Barnum statements and how astrology and other pseudosciences like biorhythm, graphology and other claim to know your personality based on these. Let's understand the Barnum statements and how they work so that you can save yourself from such tricks.

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Referred in the video:
Navin's article: https://web.archive.org/web/20081202054039/http://baskya.com/-2-2/star-numerologist-sanjay-b-jumaani-to-be-awarded-the-bharatt-rratnaa

More videos you would want to watch:
The Randomness of Science: https://youtu.be/uNhT2hRtqUU
Fighting Misinformation: https://youtu.be/_NVtf7-GNAg
Is Jyotish Shastra Indian? - The Origins And Evolution of Astrology - https://youtu.be/gatm0hDY-iE
System 1 vs System 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4
Map is not the territory: https://youtu.be/qxEi0sz4oL8

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & the experiment
05:15 Barnum effect
08:13 Properties of statements
09:52 Why it works?
13:18 Astrology
14:20 Biorhythms
20:04 Graphology
20:50 Homeopathy & Ayurveda
23:00 Weaponization
25:25 For you pages
26:50 Politics
28:40 Sales

#futureiq #barnum #astrology

Related Slog Matches

The Barnum Effect or How Astrologists Fool You

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Transcript

- we have analyzed all our viewers and readers and based on fed that information to chat GPT and we have a personality profile for you right so you our viewer you want people to admire you you are critical of yourself you have unused capacity that you haven't taken advantage of your self-controlled on the outside but insecure on the inside you have strong opinions but you don't always express them you're extroverted with some people and introverted with others and some of your Ambitions are quite unrealistic what do you think how well does this match you from a number from 0 to 5 0 means this was a very bad match and five means this was a great match right I

0m 48s would give it a 4.2 yes so the thing is you are not going to find this very convincing because you've already seen the title of the episode and you know what uh this is about right these statements that I made these are called Barnum statements or forer statements yeah and they have been carefully designed so that anybody listening to them feels that it is about them yeah and it applies perfectly to them yeah except that that only works when they have some reason to believe that this is really true information right it has to come from an authoritative Source you did have reason to believe so you wouldn't be convinced but trust me right if you were to make these statements in

1m 34s front of someone else or if you were to just play this uh Audio for someone else then they would be nodding their heads in agreement 100 guaranteed you have to give them a reason to believe that right so what we did was in the office here told everybody that we accessed uh all their Chats on slack for the last three weeks fed it to chat GPT 4 and used a prompt from a world famous psychologist to uh analyze their personality profiles and then we asked them whether chat GPT had analyzed their profile well right so take a look at some of the reactions yeah fun reactions there I enjoyed that very much Akshay has a need for other

2m 19s people to like and admire him and yet he tends to be very critical of himself while he has some personality weaknesses he is generally able to compensate for them he has considerable unused capacity and he has not turned it to his advantage self-controlled on the outside but tends to be worrisome and insecure on the inside at times she has serious doubts as to whether she has made the right decision or done the right thing oh my God he prefers a certain amount of change and variety and becomes dissatisfied when him didn't buy restrictions and limitations he also Prides himself as an independent thinker he does not accept other people's statements unless they are you know given with satisfactory

3m 06s proof but he has found it unwise to be too Frank in letting people know his real opinions right at times she is extroverted and affable and sociable but at other times she is introverted very unreserved okay and some of her aspirations tend to be quite unrealistic so this is the what charging PT came up with uh can you give me a number from 0 to 5 0 means this was a very poor match and five means this was a good match right what do you think uh this thing is almost 4.5 I think three five nearly about 4.5 very good match I would mostly give 3.5 or 4 because almost yeah I think that was more likely 3.5 or 4.

3m 57s somewhere in between I I get mostly four I will I will give more mostly yeah did my colleagues tell you all we are reading the same paragraph to everybody everyone is giving it a 4.5 rating these are called Barnum statements they have been carefully designed so that everybody thinks it applies to them oh okay so you see what happened right all the ratings the lowest was a three there were mostly around four and four point five the average was 4.1 so this experiment was first done in 1948 by Dr forer a psychologist and the average rating that his subjects gave for exactly these I mean this is the paragraph I just picked the paragraph he

4m 43s has written in 1948 the average rating uh at that time was 4.2 this experiment has been repeated hundreds of times after that and roughly it is always 4.2 and in the office here also it was roughly the same this is called the fourer effect uh wait we were doing the Barnum effect yeah so Dr forer is the one who studied this first okay but later on somebody else came up with a much better name okay the one who had the Ringling Brothers Circus nice I mean so he made a fortune calling people into believing ridiculous things do you know what is most famous statement is uh uh no there is a sucker born every minute

5m 33s I mean people you know gullible people are born every minute you just have to find a way to take their money from them yes that's why these statements that I read to you at the beginning of the episode These are called Barnum statements and they have been carefully constructed in such a way that everybody thinks it is about them yeah most of those statements some of them will say both sides you are extroverted sometimes you aren't introverted at sometimes right like who is not who is not and many of the state ruins will say some negative thing but then the exact opposite and padded with positivity positive things so you are like yeah yeah that is correct because you know I

6m 14s am strong opinions but I don't tell them all the time of course everybody everybody does that like but I mean this when you are not paying attention right they sound specific enough that people think oh my God how did they describe did you talk to my colleagues in the office that was fun right so this is the Barnum effect yep so uh I'm pretty sure that this effect doesn't work across all the time and across all kinds of people but there there have to be certain conditions for this effect to be applicable yes so it works for most people under certain conditions right okay it works best when The Listener believes that the statements were

7m 05s specific to them if you saw the Montage earlier this episode is about whether Chad GPT can read personalities properly right so what we did was three weeks ago we got access to the company's slack we didn't look at any of the messages but we wrote a program which downloads your messages sends them to chat GPT and there is a prompt that has been created by Dr forer a famous psychologist for and using that prompt and then your messages from a very small number of messages chat GPT is supposed to be able to give a good personality description of you right okay so we have that description here and I'm going to read that to you and in the end ask you how

7m 51s well it matches you know we made a big deal about oh let me find your profile where it is yeah and you know we we're not sure whether we have enough data for you just and we also Prime yeah we also Prime people saying that chat GPT read your slack so your messages were being read right so yeah I mean you people have to believe that these are specific to them okay people have to believe that it is coming from some authoritative Source or some algorithm so Dr Forest prompt in the momentas that we did no no no oh yeah I mean in the mountain right so there is reason to believe this is true otherwise I mean other people

8m 39s will believe it for things like you know uh you know it is in the Stars God has given this uh ability to be and so on things like that right the statements you can't use random statements if they have to be carefully constructed right they have to appeal to people's desire for self-esteem people's desire to be unique everybody believes they are unique right everybody is unique man everybody is unique correct they have to be positive statements right you have to sort of appeal to their ego but you can't make it too obvious that is why you say negative things but then you offset it by a positive ending to that statement okay like your disciplined and

9m 28s self-controlled on the outside but reserved on the inside no no self-controlled on the outside and uh very worried and concerned on the inside yeah that was actually Ulta we first said the positive then the negative but offsetting is the point of the right of setting and ultimately it still shows that you as far as the world is concerned you are self conduct so another story you know and we are telling you that we are not going to tell anybody else about it right these are statements you want to believe in perceived Authority Ah that's when it works yeah so chat GPT and uh the world famous psychologist Dr forer were the perceived Authority in this particular Montage in

10m 15s this particular experiment you know in this office people are like more science and rationality oriented right yeah depending on the subjects I could have used uh things like my grandfather was an astrologist and I learned a few tricks from him or uh something like that or you know a video palm and I say exactly these statements and I tell you it's written in your lines have you ever wondered why this happens like people are people claim to be rational and then they go and believe things like this because we have done episodes on this system right system two your rational brain thinks that uh everything has to have proof and that is one of our

10m 55s statement right you believe you don't believe things unless there is satisfactory proof yeah but in reality system 2 is not in control system one is in control system one is emotional and instinctive system one wants these statements to be true yes it does so it convinces you that they are true yeah if you have if you don't know why we are saying that go check out the episode on System One versus system two uh essentially the Crux of it is system one one six one System One Believes a statement to be true system two will rationalize it will retcon it and make uh up reasons on why it is true correct so in fact there is a lovely phrase I

11m 37s heard recently which captures this feeling right which is believing is seeing we already believe something is going to be true that's all you see in the evidence oh look UFOs in that photograph yeah or ghosts in that photograph I mean in the beginning right the real version is longer uh which you might have seen in the Montage we make a lot of statements right probably 12 13 of them if four of them hit four of them match you you want to say oh my God such a perfect description of me you will completely forget that there are eight others which didn't match yeah if you are in the correct frame of mind if you are in the

12m 19s believing is seeing frame of mind what you are going to do is you are going to remember the good ones and you're going to completely forget that there were a bunch that didn't match there are abundance actually our memory is even worse than that okay so there is one famous example which happened on uh TV right where a person who's supposed to be reading your past and knowing things about you magically right uh he went and he was talking to the subject and he said he was something about uh you know uh hunting about your dad and going hunting with him and the subject said you know yeah my dad never liked going hunting because it reminded him of bam

13m 06s okay okay this is what happened in the interview later on when a scientist interviewed that subject and asked them how impressive was it and the subject Center was so impressive how did that guy know that my dad doesn't like hunting because of Bambi [Laughter] Point himself yeah [Music] living is seeing later on this person remembers it as oh my God that person said Bambi okay this recording recording you will not believe it but it happens more often than uh you think yeah your memory is terrible okay that is definitely true and not just mine everybody's memory is terrible which is why uh there has been a lot of questioning about whether eyewitness accounts are to be believed or not

14m 00s another time another episode on that all right so we've established that this happens a lot of times with a lot of people yeah uh and definitely there are cases where people take undue advantage of this and Barnum effect and Barnum statements yeah I think one of the most prominent examples I can think of is uh um and I I'm I know I'm going to get Flack for this but the moment you open the newspaper to page whatever and see that little word called horoscopes your daily horoscope you should you should actually check them again and cross-reference them with Barnum statements all of astrology is just Barnum statements right yeah I mean all of uh the generic Mass astrology that

14m 49s happens in newspapers yeah right in person astrology uses a different an additional technique called cold reading we'll talk about later but before that I want to give an even more mind-blowing example okay of how this works okay there is just like astrology and palmistry and all that there is a pseudoscience called biorhythms okay what these guys say hold on what are biorhythms biorhythms are these guys say that for every person you have a intellectual cycle okay okay an emotional cycle and a physical cycle okay okay uh which means that on different days your emotional cycle might be at the top or it might be at the bottom uh similarly for intellectual and similarly for physical right okay

15m 38s and these Cycles I mean the physical cycle is a 23 day cycle emotional cycle is a 28th day cycle because of periods by the way as a result of that these Cycles almost never match and they are all different for different people right so which means that somebody who's doing biorhythms for you huh in the morning we'll tell you that today you are at the top of your physical cycle but at the bottom of the emotional cycle and sort of middle on the intellectual which means that you should do physical things today okay try to stay away from doing you can do a little bit of intellectual work not too much and definitely stay away from emotional

16m 21s stuff today you get involved there you're going to have a bad end okay they sound like a very poor excuse coming from a student to a teacher for not doing their homework I intellectual cycle and your emotional cycle but at the bottom of physical right okay one second one second this is computer work today and do uh on your computer do something with your like close friends where you can get emotional I can't even believe people actually believe this because of people believe this it is easily trackable like all you have to do okay so that is why my example is mind blowing okay okay so James Randy is a very famous rationalist right he tries to debunk these things

17m 12s what he did was he called one subject a guest on his show and he gave her her biorhythm okay and he told her for the next two months you look at what is happening with your biorhythms and they are supposed to predict how your day is going to go and you write down in a journal for every day how will it matches correct okay two months later she came on the show and he asked her how will it matched and she said it was a 90 percent match okay and then James Randy looked up his notes and he said oh my God I am sorry I gave you my biorhythm by mistake right I should

17m 55s have given you you are my original so he took back his by Rhythm he gave her hers sent her off for two months two months later when she came back would you like to guess how will the new one matched uh now that she had her own biorism I'm guessing it matched perfectly even better than the previous one okay right even better than the previous one where the previous one was 90 percent match correct and then James Randy told her okay oh sorry I gave you my secretaries by rhythms both of those were not her by rhythms but believing is seeing she would look at what the biorhythm is predicting for her and then she that

18m 35s would happen to her in the day or at least the things that happened to her she would notice the ones that matched and not notice the ones that didn't match okay okay I believing is seeing people believe once they believe it there is then they rationalize it red color right so for example people who are trying to debunk this biodum stuff right the biorhythms are supposed to start at the moment you are born at that time all three biorhythms are at zero and all three start going up and then over the next few days the diverse because their periods are different correct and then for the rest of your life they're all you know going differently correct and

19m 13s yeah so Reggie Jackson is a baseball Hammer Hall of Famer right okay on 18th October 1977 all three of his Cycles were at the low end so he was physically lowest intellectually lowest and emotionally lowest right because he should have had a really bad of his life yeah right the worst day of his life I mean if this part of them work stuff really works on that day he hit three home runs on three consecutive pitches to win the game of the World Series right that's like dhoni hitting three sixes in a row on the last three balls to win a World Cup okay yeah he did hit one but that stuff was exactly opposite Mark Spitz you know who my

19m 59s experts is the Australian swimmer I think yes so he won several gold medals on 5th September 1972 okay if you look at his biorhythm chart for that day right what you will see is that physically he is at the top emotionally he is at the top intellectually he's at the bottom now how will a biorhythm person explain this say oh of course right physically you have to be at the top for winning the medals emotionally also you has the head has to be in the game well what about the fact that intellectually he was at the absolute bottom well so his brain wasn't distracting him you know where where all this works where astrology of course palmistry again I'm

20m 44s guessing Taro also comes into that numerology comes into that graphology graphology yes this is like this handwriting analysis I after 12th standard I can guarantee you so many students are getting their handwritings analyzed for 3000 rupees per pop and then getting some [ __ ] about students are paying 3000 rupees for handwriting analysis yes I am starting and writing analysis business I will analyze your handwriting send them to me I will charge only 300 rupees just send them to me 300 rupees once again I'm telling you do not do this you will actually get people sending you by rupees right hold on one second uh and I am sorry to bring this up yeah what does uh

21m 32s Homeopathy and ayurveda also actually no okay by the way I am completely against Homeopathy so it makes me very sad to defend Homeopathy okay is not Barnum statements Okay the reason Homeopathy seems to work the reason why Homeopathy has so many fans are different right okay uh two very important factors one is that there is something called the placebo effect okay right uh I think Tolstoy has said this that if you have a medical problem and then some treatment is given to you with the intention of treating that problem and if the problem goes away no power on Earth can convince you that it wasn't because of the treatment listen I mean even system two will accept this cause

22m 25s effect correct the fact that it's a correlation doesn't apply right the reason Homeopathy works is that there is something called the placebo effect okay if you are given a medication and you truly believe that this medication is going to help you our brain and our biology works in mysterious ways and there is a 20 30 chance that you will actually get better this has been proved again and again and again by modern science using control trials yeah we need to do a more detailed episode on placebo effect one of these days all right uh but you you said something about cold reading earlier just you right yeah when you were at a time uh things were pretty bad

23m 16s something to do with I mean you know connected to your health are you trying random statements on me please don't do that because I have now awakened and I know when someone is trying yes I did I was a very troubled teen I ran away from home but also it was related to education not really no uh long story I'll tell it some other day and also private so I'm not telling you or them so I was coming to the weaponized Barnum effect right okay Barnum effect works by just these generic statements which apply to everybody but if you're sitting with someone huh and you are doing one-on-one then you use techniques called code reading right so you were trying cold

24m 03s reading on me I was trying a technique called shotguni okay just say something that just applies to many situations pretty all of you have had some trouble time during your teens yes okay there is a there is there is a phrase called teenage rebellion yeah and the Very phrase means yeah that it happens if already he's a very skeptical person and he was in a skeptical mood yeah but if he was in the right frame of mind he would have jumped at the chance of talking about how he ran away from home and why he ran away from home and it was probably something to do with education or I could have said well yeah

24m 42s disciplined right yes shotgun is discipline education family difficult time during teenage years something to do with medical or education right absolutely at lies to 90 of the people correct they will say yes and then you get them to give the details and then you say the details back to them like that Bambi story yeah I was just thinking of that they will remember it oh my God he knew I ran away from home right yeah so uh yeah these techniques are used by Cold readers to be able to give like a perfect thing he will he will make a really good astrologer I'm telling you like he can write he can write astrology horoscopes for the best

25m 26s of the best newspapers and whatnot yeah I can see how a lot of these astrologers graphologists numerologists end up making a ton of money I I mean all of kundaliers 300 rupees graphology signature analysis kundali all of kundali is also this okay okay reading and I don't even know what they are a lot of personality tests right okay well we just did personality test of everybody in this office 4.2 [Laughter] uh but I I don't believe in any of those I am immune to the Barnum effect I am awakened correct so do you listen to like uh you know the your app which gives you customized for you output right the algorithm this is for you we

26m 22s have customized or like uh Tech talk used to do and I think Twitter has now come up with the For You tab right yeah yeah they are they are customizing the algorithm based on what I like what I read to it one is a little bit not how much right you go to a store right foreign [Music] but I remember there being a controversy that Johnson's baby oil was just regular oil [Music] statements to convince you that the product is tailored for you specifically so you should pay more for this particular product not that General one that is being sold to everyone confession time I have I have done that on couple of occasions when I was

27m 25s responsible for some of the marketing in some cases so you know another category of people who are instinctively base of Voters as possible but we have to make the voter believe that I am the one who is fighting for your cause as opposed to all these other losers yeah every politician thinks the other politician is a loser and also the public that is listening to them actually not necessary okay one of the things I mean people who have studied Barnum effects and cold reading and all of this right what they find is that after a while the practitioner I mean they see so much success and sometimes it works better than they expected right that after a while they start believing

28m 13s that this works oh so I'm not saying that a lot of them are not con man they are themselves god with themselves believe that this truth I mean I have I have friends who are homeopaths right sibo effect and being seen that is why that is why that is why uh okay so uh the for you algorithms that most of these uh sites come up with uh well I and some of the modern sites like Netflix and spot find online yeah decent AI so it might be for you but also there's a lot of time it doesn't match slightly off topic but uh Netflix if you have different profiles on Netflix uh then go and look into each

29m 02s profile for the same series or um uh you know what the movie the image that accompanies it will be different for each person because that image is chosen on the basis of uh who the person who the profile belongs to and what the profile has watched before so some of those modern companies do it but it's you know a lot of them don't I just claim that it is for you forget marketing right sales I mean a good sales person you would have noticed you know you go there and you're talking about you know I want a shirt like this and then you start looking at me this is not nice and that is better right after

29m 40s a while the salesperson start telling you that this is better that's not nice they just pay attention to what you seem to be liking and then after a while says right that will be good for you so good salespeople also do that this is why I have stopped going to shops entirely most of my shopping is now online e-commerce only but I miss if you think I know I knew he was going there I knew he was going there this is why I turn off my browsing history on Amazon this is why I turn off recommendations everywhere this is why I don't I don't let anything be personalized before getting the pure Barnum effect I know

30m 18s exactly Then I then I can at least be 100 sure that this is Barnum effect and I have to make make my own decisions awakened walk no not okay walk I mean that's the point of this episode yeah be a little awakened at how these things work right I can guarantee you that you would have given a rating of 4 or 4.5 to that statement if you had been in the correct frame of mind and if we hadn't put how astrology tricks you in the title itself you can still try it out for yourself just play out that little sound bite to people around you and ask them what they would rate it on a scale of 0 to 5 0

31m 00s being doesn't match at all and five being matches really well and 4.2 4. everything yes uh which is also 42 divided by 10 the answer to the question of life universe and everything uh but for now these answers will stop here srikanth Naveen future IQ thank you for watching till the end if you liked this episode check out these others you might like them also and please share with your friends I'm sure they will also like these thank you