[xianshou]

A perfect application of the Forer effect: humans have an amazing ability to interpret what can apply to anyone as having special significance for themselves.

It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work. Stepping back and thinking logically, it's easy to see why their messages might apply to a lot of people. But when you're reading one, you can't help but think, "Ah! It says that I would encounter adversity at work this week, but overcome it! I knew that presentation wasn't the end of the world." And if you're a little lonely or down and need emotional rapport, you can't help but feel a little spark of excitement and connection when that Mechanical Turker claims to like your favorite TV show - especially because the text messages from the fake partner look just like they would from a real one.

No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers - see the Silicon Sycophants study: http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_a...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.

[jusben1369]

When I was young I picked up a book at a friend's house on astrology. I am a Taurus. I mistakenly opened it on another sign thinking I was reading the chapter on what made up a Taurus character. I was reading and nodding my head "wow, this is kind of weird. That is me. I do that. Well, I'm not like that but it's not going to be a 100% fit" After several pages I realized my mistake. And then I realized the Forer effect without knowing what it was or that it had a name.

[UrMomReadsHN]

Julia Sweeney on astrology - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjturKoFsg

(The background is she just found out she was actually born 3 months after her parents told her she was born - they lied to get her to start school a year earlier.)

[hyp0]

Astrology is obviously nonsense, but it seems plausible that the season of birth could have a personality effect: the cold dead of winter, with little fresh food vs spring etc, also from the attitudes of surrounding adults.

Of course, different near the equator, and phase-shifted in the southern hemisphere, and... much less pronounced in modern times, with supermarkets, refrigeration, air-conditioning/heating, imported foods, and wider social presence (newspapers, TV, radio, internet, phone) etc.

[Terr_]

The socially-constructed age-cohort you go into is huge too. Want better grades and performance at sports? Be months older than your classmates.

[allendoerfer]

The reverse is true, too: Want better performance than people of the same age? Have had more training than them.

I suspect this applies especially to language or logic related tasks.

We will likely never find out, variance seems to be extremely high, while the actual differences are very low.

[eru]

There are actual studies. Lots of professional athletes were in the older part of their cohort when they were younger. So the effect Terr_ described seems to outweigh the one you describe.

[SloopJon]

> No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers ...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.

I just started playing The Walking Dead. In one scene, after another character saved Clementine from a zombie before I could, the game said, "Clementine remembers that you didn't save her." A very different feeling than failing and having to replay from a checkpoint.

[TeMPOraL]

I had a lot of similar feelings with Mass Effect series. In this game all the decisions you make permanently reshape the game world, which carries through the first game to second and third. Major and minor characters in the last game may be missing or doing different things based on your actions in the first game. While playing I felt the impact of my steps in even tiny details.

This, + general storyline and execution of the product made it the first game I found myself to be really involved emotionally with. Say, when I picked up the second game and met an important NPC from the first, I literally felt like I've just rejoined with an old friend. By the third game I actually printed out a photo of my character and her entire team. It's crazy how deep a good video game can touch you.

Oh, and I spent 10-15 minutes thinking heavily about morality and consequences just to choose the right ending...

[SloopJon]

Funny you should mention Mass Effect, because I'm playing that for the first time as well. Evidently there's a romantic sub-plot, making it even more relevant to this story. Will I get an Xbox achievement and 25 gamer points if I get lucky?

[TeMPOraL]

I don't know. I played PC. Also, achievements in a game like ME are stupid and ruin immersion. Turn them off if you can (on PC version I don't recall them popping up in game anyway).

As for romantic subplots - they are very good and the game will totally hijack your emotions through them.

[WillPostForFood]

Only 10 points for the Paramour achievement.

[thret]

I haven't played this game, but after I posted OP on my facebook feed I went out to a party and one of my friends confessed that it made him think of Mass Effect also. Apparently he put quite a lot of time into trying to build a relationship with a hot NPC only to find out she was gay. In his words 'I was shattered. I put all this time into building the relationship and she wasn't even into guys'.

[BrianEatWorld]

You should try "Wolf Among Us" as well. It was amazing how that game tricked my normally passive personality into acting out in anger, chasing down leads for revenge instead of justice and then feeling like the monster I had become. By the end, I felt redeemed, but still vulnerable because my weaknesses had been exposed. All of that and I played the entire thing on nothing more than a tiny PS Vita screen.

[LLWM]

You should try reading a book.

[pyrocat]

Books are great for making you feel something about fictional (or non fictional) characters, but they've got nothing on games when it comes to making you feel something about yourself.

[LLWM]

You should try reading a good book.

[thrownaway1501]

Good books are great for making you feel disdain towards imagined (or real) unwashed gamers, but they've got nothing on games when it comes to 2nd-order meta-self-trolling.

[pizzasynthesis]

You should try stepping outside of your fortress of irony for two seconds.

[LLWM]

Nah, it's snowing out there.

[IgorPartola]

Video games have always been very interesting this way to me, and there are some real gems lately that manage to tap into very emotional parts of my brain. Fallout is ripe with ethical dilemmas, almost to the point where I found myself unable to proceed when the choice is not obvious. You know the characters are not real, you are alone playing a single-player game; but you can't help but try to figure out how to help the character. The Fable series is really great this way too. There it's actually the focus and the theme of the game.

[soylentcola]

Only every played the second Fable but I still remember the one choice you need to make near the end and have to pick one of three "fates".

Not sure if it's considered a spoiler at this point but there's basically the one option to return a beloved companion to life (after recently being forced to suffer his death in the game). It wasn't necessarily the most logical choice nor is it the "smart" choice if you're treating it solely as a game and trying to get the most points/gold/etc....

...but when I was offered that choice there was not a single question which one I would pick. It's all just pixels and textures and sound effects but the chance to return a character that had followed you for most of the game hit me way harder than I might have expected. Manipulative,cheap, emotional exploitation? Maybe. No regrets though.

[IgorPartola]

Worse. The first time I played, I picked a different option. There was a bug in the game where you could see the companion on the map, but could never reach him. I spent hours trying to find a way, before starting the game over just to choose differently.

[crshults]

I remember having that same feeling playing Road Rash after attacking Natasha during a race.

[nodata]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

[sharkweek]

Same thing with the "crossing over" folks who claim to talk to dead relatives right?

"You had a family member who passed recently right? Or someone really close to you"

"Yes, yes! My aunt passed away earlier this year!"

"Ah, yes! And... and... she was sick right? Or in pain close to her death?"

"Wow, yes!!"

"You were close with her, or you were close with her family right?"

...etc

[Karunamon]

That theory kind of breaks down when they get into specifics about military service, clothing, scars, etc. Things that a cold reader wouldn't have any access to.

[aetherson]

Cold reading is certainly not the only kind of fake psychic scam. For example, hot reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_reading

However, a skilled cold reader will in fact get specifics (though they'll also have bad guesses), by making further general guesses based on the information you've already confirmed for them. For example, military service is very common for men in a certain age range, who were drafted to Vietnam. Clothing can be pretty uniform for people who you know to be/can guess to be in a certain demographic. Most people (beyond children) have scars.

If your comment was intended to suggest that some people actually can communicate with dead people: dude, no. It's not true. Your emotions are being preyed on for someone else's profit.

[Karunamon]

I'm not going to get into the over-arching point on a board inhabited by subscribers to scientism, but don't you think the jig is is kind of up if you're told someone has a scar through their right eye and they actually didn't, or that someone had a favorite shirt that has a tear in a certain place (that both of those things didn't exist, etc).

In other words, a level of specificity that is not so easily dismissed as a scammer interpreting the information they've been given.

[splawn]

If you actually know someone with supernatural powers do them a huge favor and tell them about this so they can get their million dollars.

http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html

[Karunamon]

Anyone with supernatural powers that takes that offer is a fool - their life would be effectively over. A person that could, say, see the future, is better off predicting the winning lottery numbers and sidestepping the almost certain involvement with government agents, or worse.

(Not that winning the lottery is statistically a good thing for one's quality of life either, which is a plausible reason that "psychic wins lottery" has never been a headline...)

[thret]

This is about the future, but I think can be applied equally derisively to talking to the dead. Also My Dinner With Andre is a great movie so why not share it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vGpBYJ5_6E&t=91m00s

[aidos]

As James Randi (the ultimate Skeptic) demonstrates here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp2Zqk8vHw

[loceng]

There's a fine line (maybe not so fine) as to when something becomes manipulation IMHO - though if someone's paying $25 monthly for someone(s) to chat with to feel connected then I suppose they've applied an added bias or value; makes me feel a bit sad if the people aren't doing it just for fun.

[tormeh]

People are doing sadder things than this to keep the emotional lights on. At least it's cheaper than prostitutes.

You know the saddest first-world thing I've ever heard? A prostitute doing a reddit AMA had a client once that wanted her to sing "happy birthday" for him. It was his birthday and no one else was going to.

[testboo]

Agreed.

[aerialcombat]

I totally agree with this.

[Roodgorf]

> At least it's cheaper than prostitutes.

I think there are a few more moral issues with prostitution than its market value.

[oldmanjay]

That's rather broad. There are moral issues with sex slavery, for instance, but prostitution as a concept is fairly amoral unless you mistakenly believe the sexuality of others is something you have a right to judge.

[scrollaway]

You really think there are more moral issues with selling sex than selling lies?

[krat0sprakhar]

Learnt something new on HN today! Thanks a lot for your comment.

[crpatino]

> It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work.

A more charitable interpretation of horoscopes and fortune cookies could be that, given that human behavior and problems falls into recognizable patterns, generic solutions can be offered as a sort of framework or scaffold for the received to fill in their particular details and get started with a more appropriate and personal solution.

What else did you expected? from a little something that came inside of a cookie!!!

[bad_user]

This drive to reduce humanity to a set of chemical reactions and evolutionary traits is misplaced, because nothing makes less amazing our ability to love just about anything. And we should celebrate that, instead of being condescending about it, because you know, life would be very boring and unfulfilling without feelings.

[acdha]

Understanding how something works does not preclude enjoyment or wonder. Richard Feynman rather famously observed that understanding more of the science can deepen your appreciation:

http://zenpencils.com/comic/137-richard-feynman-the-beauty-o...

[Pinn2]

Except for you, right? People like to feel better about themselves by declaring defects in everyone else but themselves. Even me.

[abandonliberty]

Very interesting, but the article mentions they're using amazon turk - "real" people. Probably.