Is the worst of the global economic crisis behind us?apparently 10% responded "dont know". Obviously the other 90% do know, or feel that they have sufficient paranormal or psychic abilities to know what remains unknown to others less gifted.
Clairvoyancy has become a popular pastime, or so it would seem. Once frowned on as a black art punishable by death, or a fate worse than, it has now become a mainstream belief. Judging by the proliferation of poker machines, racetracks, casinos and hedge funds catering to clairvoyants it would appear that whilst clairvoyancy enjoys popularity it has not provided a successful business model. This then begs the next question, if clairvoyancy is so consistently unprofitable why does is it remain so popular?
Psychologist Susan Blackmore has a theory
A few years ago I read an article in the British Psychological Society Bulletin about the "Royal Nonesuch of Parapsychology." The author, H. B. Gibson (1979), described Mark Twain’s wonderful story of cognitive dissonance, about the show that never was. Many people were lured into paying 50 cents to see a nonexistent show, but instead of decrying the fraud they went out and persuaded others to see it and pay their 50 cents too. Gibson was reminded of this tale, he said, by a conference paper given by a woman who had spent two years in fruitless research on parapsychology. He suggested that parapsychology is only kept going by the "very human tendency to try to get one’s 50-cents worth after one has been misled . . . by an unkind fate which has led one into an immense expense of effort in a blind alley."
