I just have to say that this topic would be much better if it was about how I originally read your post:

Could you link to the Post article?

Gallup polls on belief in the paranormal occasionally:

The poll shows no statistically significant differences among people by age, gender, education, race, and region of the country. Christians are a little more likely to hold some paranormal beliefs than non-Christians (75% vs. 66%, respectively), but both groups show a sizeable majority with such beliefs.

I would cast doubt on the gathering or presentation of the data.

Saying women beleive in a specific superstition that is packaged and sold in an almost solely female environment (read: grocery checkout lane magazines and daytime television) more than men is like saying more men believe wearing a special pair of socks causes the cubs to actually win a series this century.

duh.

[/kisses lucky socks]

I guess 75% of Christians don't *really* believe in the resurrection.

My math makes it more like 25%, which is odd seeing how a resurrection falls squarely under 'paranormal' in my book, not to mention the guy kinda central to that belief structure that knows what everyone thinks.

official Church Sanctioned paranormal activities have, since Nicea, been redefined normal inasmuch as they can be described either by the Bible, the Apocrypha, or several witnesses. In the third case, the paranormal event must in some way glorify or reinforce the activies found in the aforemention texts to acheive normal status.

So, if Father Patrick sees an alien, but the alien is saving a truckload of orphans, and Father Ricardo and three nuns back up his tale -- that's not paranormal. It's God's Work.

If you see the same thing, you're just effing crazy.

Yeah, I read this as "women and physics" too and was hoping this would be about mammaquatia. You owe me a boob thread, Paleocon.

But back on subject... I hate so-called "psychics." What some would consider a "sixth sense" is possible, from detection of electromagnetic fields or something of the sort, I don't know. Thing is, that's not what self-proclaimed psychics are "about." They're about stating vague guesses with conviction, then fluttering their eyes and looking skyward when they're wrong. They're about false hope. Anyone who pays them for their services is buying an act, not advice.

This is why I absolutely HATE that Court TV (sorry, "Tru TV") has a show on psychic "detectives." They always advertise the show as supernatural investigators cracking cases "wide open." Then the show is always pure theater. People acting dramatic, dramatic music, dramatic lighting, and the occasional vague detail that matches up to what is already known. They never crack a case. They never even HELP a case. If they did, there'd be some redemption for what they do. If they actually helped someone. I've yet to see it happen. Their "psychic impulses" never pan out and never yield new hard evidence.

If there really is any truth to psychic phenomena, these people do it - as well as the people they claim to be "helping" - a huge disservice.

I'd be interested to see if there's a real gender difference in this as well, since I've met just as many men willing to believe in psychics and ESP as women. In fact, I remember a particularly ridiculous argument I had with my father, a physicist by training, who argued that Pluto's position was the real cause behind the Afghanistan War. People believe stupid things regardless of gender.

I don't think it's very valuable to argue about which demographic has a higher propensity to believe this crap. The energy is better spent getting people to not believe this crap.

I'm curious how it works on the large scale, and in the rest of the country. This area is chock-full of a melting-pot of all sorts of philosophies from harcore bible-thumping up to the most etherial thought.

I just walked to the coffee stand nearest my work, and on the way I pass the local "new age" bookstore/coffee house. The kind of place that has cedar and several other sorts of branches on the outside tables if you wish to smudge away any negative influences while enjoying your coffee. The place was fairly packed due to some sort of speaker. A quick count from the door gave a fairly even spread with some margin of error due to indeterminate gender.

The last frame of this pretty much says it all. Complete with a full serving of self-conscious irony.

The actual predictive power of psychics is, of course, zero or so close to zero as not to matter. Otherwise, they'd all be wealthy and powerful, no?

But there is some value in, say, a Tarot reading. Not because it's actually going to tell you anything about the future, but because it can reframe your thinking about the present. We're good at fooling ourselves, and the ceremony of "a reading" may allow "the psychic" to tell someone who's being a dumbsh*t that they're being a dumbsh*t without them taking offense. Or it can let them realize that themselves, without prompting, simply by having their current situation 'explained' differently. Framing, as we've learned from the Republicans, matters.

So, there may be a benefit there, it's just not what they think it is. I remember how blurry my cause and effect thinking was when I was young. Things can work without you understanding why they work. "She can tell the future!" is much easier to accept than "I'm a moron and he's giving me obvious advice."

Plus, women are very into talking about problems: we men like to fix things, they just like to talk. Strikes me that readings, in their various flavors, are good excuses to do that.

How old are you, Malor? 172?

Old programmers' joke: with women, the binary system actually has THREE digits:

-- yes
-- no
-- no, and don't even ask about it!

If by "intrinsically" you mean there is something non-environmental like a genetic predisposition, what is your evidence for that assertion?