Neapolitan

We are all human beings and whether you believe in God or not you still going to have fear. When the alarm goes off in the morning people drag themselves out of bed for the fear of being late for school or work. Most people do well or just get by at school because of the fear of failing. Is there no fear of writing a paper that will not pass peer review? I wonder how much fear can contribute in academic achievement as well.

__________________

Guybrush

Fear of not passing peer review or getting horrible grades are rational fears. But I would argue that a fear of being reprimanded or punished by God for saying that he/she/it doesn't exist is an irrational fear.

edit :

The interesting thing here, I would argue, is that we are all influenced by irrational fears, even those of us who consider ourselves skeptics. Perhaps not a fear of God, but most of us will at some point behave in certain "ritualistic" ways depending on the situation. Aside from the test, other simple examples of irrational behaviour could be gambling when we "feel" that we have a bigger chance of winning than we actually do even if we rationally know our chances or it could be a football player doing some sort of ritual like kissing the ball before trying to score a goal on a penalty kick, hoping that the ritual would add to his or her chances of scoring.

__________________
Something Completely Different

blastingas10

Well maybe, just maybe, tore, there is some instinctual reality at hand.

Guybrush

Well, there are rational ways of explaining why we behave irrationally and it's exploring those explanations which I think is interesting.

__________________
Something Completely Different

ribbons

While writing the note, I felt very uncomfortable but only because the thought makes me uncomfortable – not the act of putting it to paper. I had no thoughts whatsoever that the incident might occur because I wrote it down. Writing it down did not increase my level of discomfort. I didn’t think of how to dispose of the note while writing it; but of course, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t going to leave such a note around for others to see (and therefore make them uncomfortable). I didn't think of burning it, but only because I never burn any papers (whether they have positive or negative things written on them) -- it's just something I never do.

Freebase Dali

Am I the only one that wrote it in notepad?
I can't see there being an actual difference.

ribbons

I wrote it on a yellow post-it note.

blastingas10

I wrote it in my mind

Guybrush

The test is supposed to work for most people, but so far it seems most people who post feel they've "beaten" the test by not being scared of writing the note. If they felt uncomfortable, it was for rational reasons (or so they claim). There are some possible explanations. Maybe people don't like admitting to "failing" the test leading to a situation where people who feel they beat it are more likely to post in the thread. Or perhaps people on musicbanter really are relatively unsuperstitious when it comes to note-writing.

__________________
Something Completely Different

blastingas10

I don't think anyone really thinks that the note is going to cause a death. I think that simply thinking the thought makes people uncomfortable, not the note.