Talk:Law of attraction (New Thought)

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Plausibility

Overscepticism also is non neutrality, this article would look awsome with a resume of the experiments realized if any to proof the supposed law.--Neurorebel (talk) 17:03, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

 not done it’s not clear what change you want to make. Also, as a registered user, you can make any edits (based on sources) to the article you feel are necessary. Edaham (talk) 14:56, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Claims of its effects - section

Related policies: WP:CLAIMWP:WEASEL
A couple of issues. Firstly the language used in this section of the article repeatedly makes use of the word claim. It sounds unencyclopedic. The claims aren’t attributed to anyone or thing in the text, making it sound weasely. Secondly the citations given all look as if they are linking to commercial sites on the subject. These aren’t good sources. There’s a section on health here. The sources referenced should be up to WP:MEDRS if we are going to say anything about the subject. I personally think this whole section is an excuse to stuff in a bunch of commercial links. As an encyclopedia we shouldn’t give a hoot what people claim about their Harry Potter notions on how the world works unless those claims have been reported on by reliable secondary sources and are notable for having been so. Pending a discussion on this section and the use of similar links throughout the article I will leave the content alone for a reasonable period and remove it afterwards if there’s no objection (from editors, not new thought sales-persons) Edaham (talk) 15:09, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

.....and I think that time has now arrived!Edaham (talk) 08:53, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I've removed a section based solely on these sources.

• http://www.thesecrettolivingthelawofattraction.com/health-and-law-of-attraction.html
• https://www.law-of-attraction.com/secret/515/manifest-money/
• http://newthoughtlibrary.com/larsonChristian/yourForces/your-forces_113.htm#TopOfText
• https://www.law-of-attraction.com/secret/423/hidden-truth-behind-your-worries/

These sources are either: Personal websites/blogs, commercial sites or written by authors from an "in-universe" perspective. While we can argue that they are useful for validating their own claims, we cannot use these sites to verify the merit-worthiness of the authors of this content within their field. We need academic sources (or at least more mainstream sources) if the the content is to be restored. Please refrain from restoring without discussion or at least a good summary. Please also address the rest of the article, which contains similarly sourced content. Cheers! Edaham (talk) 09:05, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Pseudoscience

What is the reason for this revert? [1] --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:14, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

It seems biased to put the pseudoscience panel on just because SOME think it's pseudoscience. Alot of really successful people have used LoA to raise their vibration and manifest their dream lives and buttloads didn't even care about a scientific basis for it to be "pseudo".— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1:f563:e763:59d5:6e5f:d8bb:8972 (talk) 13:23, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I added the paranormal banner. Hey, it says it’s pseudoscience right in the article. That’s actually a stretch because there is NO science in it at all — not even psuedo. But if something like this works (which it doesn’t) it’s definitely paranormal, not by the known laws of nature. RobP (talk) 15:21, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Which part of their "vibration" did they "raise"? Frequency? Wavelength? Amplitude? And by what amount? What part of them vibrates?

"Raising vibration" is exactly what the term "pseudoscience" means: abusing scientific terms and giving them new fantasy meanings in order to sound scientific. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:59, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry to revise an old discussion Hob Gadling, and thanks for your edits with the article. I won't revert the citation change, because you're right about them being in the lead section. But just because certain words are used doesn't mean that its practitioners are advancing a spiritual belief as science. Even if they were, they would just be non-scientists using scientific terms, not some type of academic fraud. I don't think sources show anywhere that it is widely held to be fake science, certainly not by the general public. The Psychology Today article you linked shows that some psychologists don't believe in the idea, but not much more. "Widely held" seems to be quite an overstatement. Maybe "widely held by psychologists" or social scientists, etc. But the sentence as it stands is too broad compared wit the sources. AnandaBliss (talk) 17:47, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

You start from the assumption that pseudoscience means "scientific fraud". You also said I don't think religious/spirituality articles should be labeled as bad science when they're not science at all, which starts from the assumption that pseudoscience is "bad science". But pseudoscience is neither of those. Pseudoscience means it pretends to be science but isn't. If you look at the claims of the Lawyers of attraction, you can clearly see that they try to sell it as science. You already agree that it is not, so QED.

But that does not matter. We have reliable sources which say it is pseudoscience, and we have no reliable sources which say it is not. Case closed.

Also, your attempts are at minimizing the group of people who see it as pseudoscientific bullshit fail. Everybody who knows even the tiniest amount of science can see this does not work. I'll ask at WP:FTN if there is anybody who agrees with you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Hob, I'm not trying to oppose you, not sure why you're taking such an adversarial tone. I'm not convinced that certain buzzwords all of a sudden trigger a "science claim." I think this is a spiritual idea, claimed as a spiritual idea, by people who think what they're advocating for is a spiritual idea. I'm not trying to minimize anyone, just get the right message across. Do not proscribe an agenda to me just because I have a different opinion. Please don't escalate this further, I already said I'm not reverting. I still don't see anything that says it's "widely" considered anything, unless the group doing the considering is true scientists, and if so then maybe the lead should say that. AnandaBliss (talk) 18:06, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

The FTN crowd has lots of experience with articles about such subjects. They know how Wikipedia handles them. They also know what the word "pseudoscience" means. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't doubt that they do. But since there is no dispute, there's no reason to raise an issue. There's no revert-war here, just a discussion. I'm not going to change the article to go against the sources, just a tone issue is all. AnandaBliss (talk) 18:21, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Talk pages are not the place for tone issues. They are for improving the article.

But what you call "adversarial tone" is just refutation of the false claims you made. When you tried to remove the word "pseudoscience", you used two wrong definitions for "pseudoscience", and I told you. That is called "reasoning", and it is the way Wikipedia resolves differences of opinion on how an article should look. I don't know how to refute your reasoning without sounding "adversarial" to you, so, by making that accusation, you are essentially trying to forbid people to contradict you. I don't know where you get the "agenda" stuff from, but "the right message" you are trying to get across is just your opinion: in your opinion, the number of scientists who disagree with the childish fantasy called "Law of attraction" is smaller than reliable sources suggest - there is no hint there of any real scientist agreeing with it - so you were trying to minimize them. But we follow reliable sources, not editors' opinions. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:45, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with this. How it exists in culture is primarily as a spiritual idea & practice. You might as well write that prayer is a pseudoscience in the first line of that entry. There’s obviously a crowd of sources out there that call it a pseudoscience & that should be acknowledged but I don’t believe that is a neutral description. Maybe every spiritual belief that is not from pre-20th C has the fate of being labelled a pseudoscience? E--85.255.232.192 (talk) 03:10, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Read WP:INDENT. You made it look as if you agreed with me and I responded to you, when actually you agreed with AnandaBliss. I corrected that.

If something is called pseudoscience in reliable sources, we also say that. If it is not, we do not. There is no point in trying to change that. See WP:RS. Regarding "neutral description", see WP:FRINGE, WP:FALSEBALANCE and WP:YWAB. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:51, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Scientific Support - Related Scientific Theory

The skeptical orientation herein is has a key shortcoming (fallacy) of all-or-none rejection of the "Law" of attraction. (Aside: Although it is offensive to science to refer to it as a "Law", that issue has not been addressed.) The shortcoming of this article is the incorrect rejection of the undergirding hypothesis of The Nonsense of Attraction: How you think about your world and daily interactions has an impact on our outcomes. This assertion is a statement of scientific fact, as seen in the long-standing and well developed scientific literatures of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, Expectancy Effects in science, Placebo Effects, and so on. These effects are seen in education literature, medical treatment literature, medical diagnostic literature, psychopharmacology, psychology, and business, to name a few. Thus, the article's rejection of 'cognitions affect behaviors which in turn affect outcomes", is falsifiable. Back on the skeptic side, however, pseudoscientists run with the established effects of things like cognitive style science (Martin Seligman's mainstream cognitive work, for example), and push it to an irrational extreme of there existing a "mind over matter" power. This is the indefensible and scientific garbage that should be assailed, specifically. For example, special crystals to not direct a secret energy within us to bring about a particular positive result in our lives. Nonetheless, our belief that our day will work out as we need it to increases the likelihood that things go relatively better rather than worse. Thoughts have effects. That is scientifically accepted, and it is the truthful element of this fake "Law". Over-skepticism is present, and this fake "Law" can be attacked as being nothing more than a drastic overstatement of more mundane psychological scientific realities by charlatans claiming secret knowledge.

Protection?

Should this page be semi-protected? It has regularly been subject to attempts at promotion of dubious websites over the years. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

To all the IPs who want to remove the word "pseudoscience" from the article: Why do you waste your time by editing it? Why don't you just send a wish to the universe that the article never contained the word in the first place? --Hob Gadling (talk)

It doesn't seem so NPOV to call it pseudoscience right out the gate. And so many people are using the Law of Attraction to speak their dreams into existence, maybe the mainstream scientific community is missing something. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.232.52.209 (talk) 18:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Have you read WP:NPOV? It doesn't mean all text is neutral. It means that reliable sources are summarized in a neutral manner. The preponderance of reliable sources consider "law of attraction" to be pseudoscience, so the article should and does reflect that. You might also read through Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Schazjmd (talk) 18:44, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

If the mainstream scientific community is missing something, then it is Wikipedia's duty to also miss it. You are starting in the wrong place, it does not work that way. Change the scientific community's mind, then Wikipedia will follow. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:26, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Evidence for the law of attraction

I believe the book Mindset by Carol Dweck ph. D holds evidence for the law of attraction. 65.129.89.59 (talk) 01:14, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think her work on fixed and growth mindsets is related. Which pages of her book do you see as providing evidence for the law of attraction? Schazjmd (talk) 01:24, 14 December 2021 (UTC)