From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 07 2002 - 23:36:03 MST
At 02:36 PM 2/8/2002 +1100, you wrote:
>At 07:43 PM 2/7/02 -0700, chesh wrote:
>
> >I bitch about running into constant red lights, do a bit
> >of mental acrobatics, and note that every (or very nearly, nothing's
>perfect) traffic light is
> >green for the rest of the day. Sometimes this has lasted a few days or a
>week; depending
> >on my general state of mind.
>
>
>No, what I'm asking--as I do when my sweet, endlessly gullible
>sister-in-law tells me of her inner power over traffic lights--is: how is
>the mechanism of traffic lights vulnerable to this magickal power?
To play devil's advocate: it might not be that the magic is affecting the
street light mechanism, but instead the time at which you arrive at the
street light. If your magic is affecting all sorts of subtle things about
the way you and the people around you react, it could reasonably change
your schedule enough that you always happen to arrive when the light was
going to turn green anyway. Of course, this would be a scientifically
testable phenomenon, and you could definitely arrange some pretty easy
experiments, even without the subject being aware of it (since that might
interfere...somehow).
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