What would you have done?

[Yeah_Right]

When I was out walking today I came across a guy that was dowsing, It was sort of a shock since I have never seen someone do this in person. It was even more of a shock when I saw that he was working for Union Gas, which is a major company where I live in Canada.

I never said anything to him, but I did look in disbelief and continued my walk. When I first saw him, my inclination was to be confrontational and ask him how he could use something so nonsensical as dowsing to look for natural gas lines. But then I thought the better approach would have been to ask him questions about the workings of dowsing and then ask some carefully worded skeptical questions such as, what sort of signals are the pipes sending that those rods are recieving? And how do you know you are just finding natural gas pipes? Pretty good questions I thought, but what would you do in that situation?

 

[Garrette]

Probably not much. There are times and places for vocal skepticism, and those times and places do not automatically equate to every time woo is seen.

On a human note, it also depends on my own mood and schedule.

Specifically to your circumstance, I doubt anything but a curious approach would have done anything. If the man was working he would have been unlikely to listen to or answer your skeptical questions--no need and no time. But a polite "Hey, Mister! Whatcha doin? Really? Wow. Is that, like, written up in any articles or anything? Uh-huh. What about those guys who say it doesn't work and all those tests they say it fails."

But there would be a limit even to that.

 

[Uncayimmy]

Contrary to how I might appear here, I'm actually quite personable in person. I would have struck up a conversation with the guy and tried to maneuver him into making a bet that it won't work if he closes his eyes.

 

[devnull]

My father recently brought round an old friend who had traveled from interstate to visit family etc.

Over lunch she told us about how her family were all powerful dowsers, and then asked my father to go make her some copper dowsing rods, which he did.

She then walked around the property and told us all about underground rivers etc.

We all duly ooohed and ahhhed and generally humoured her. She's a nice old chook and we wouldnt want to hurt her feelings.

Afterwards I asked my father "you realise dowsing is complete crap, right?" He said "ofcourse it is, but it makes crazy people happy, she's a loon but a nice loon".

 

[bluesjnr]

He may be doing only what he is told, so on that ground I would let him get on with it. I might ask if the procedure is a Union Gas one or if it is just his personal "method". In the event that he answered the former then I'd probably take it up with the company if I was particularly bored or feeling belligerent enough that day.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Let him get on with it. It may well work for him.

That requires clarification.

Assume he was actually looking for a gas pipe. He probably has a lot of experience of the sort of places pipes tend to run. Some of that knowledge will be conscious- what he has been shown or read. Some will be unconscious- stuff he has noticed, but not noticed that he has noticed- subtle depressions of the ground, alignments of close up features with more distant features suggestive of a linear structure.

If using a dowsing rod helps him bring this stuff up to conscious awareness, then it works. It's the same reason I find crosswords easier if I hold a pen in my hand than if I put it down.

There is , pretty definitely, no relation between the pipe and the rod. There may well be a relation between his mind and the rod. If his results pan out as no better than chance, the guys doing the digging will soon let him know.


ETA- I suspect this is also why dowsers who claim good results in real life situations inevitably fail in a lab test.
Any subconscious cues they are able to detect in the real world are absent in the case of most tests involving (say) bottles of water in boxes. They accordingly get results matching chance and are genuinely surprised by this.

Some people are genuinely far better at detecting water than others just by looking at terrain- and they can do so reliably with no mechanical aids. These are hydrologists and hydrogeologists. The reason they are good at this is because the knowledge they have is conscious. They know what they are looking for.
It's the same as the difference between a Reiki "therapist" and a physiotherapist watching a man with fallen arches walking. One may "feel" there is a foot problem because she is unconsciously aware of how gait adapts to fallen arches. But that's not how she explains her feeling. She does that in terms of her Reiki model.
The other makes a confident diagnosis because she is consciously aware of the symptoms. She explains her knowledge in terms of a physiologic model.

Both reach the same answer, one for a wrong reason.

 

[Garrette]

Contrary to how I might appear here, I'm actually quite personable in person.

Don't believe him. I've seen him dowse for puppies to boil for his breakfast.

 

[Garrette]

Let him get on with it. It may well work for him.

That requires clarification.

---snip for brevity---

Well said.

 

[EHocking]

Don't believe him. I've seen him dowse for puppies to boil for his breakfast.

That's just sick.










it's bbq for puppies...