What I find particularly curious is why exactly did people start to believe posting something or saying something on hackernews can actually have any real effect. Is logical absurdity (doing an action which consumes energy of an effort but has no obvious effect) exactly the force meant to do the work here perhaps? No fun making, actually trying to dissect the logic on which does the magic stand :-P

Sorry i made fun. Really though what is this comment but a spell(ing)? I cast my spelling and expect an effect wether my reasoning is valid or not. Methods that seem to have a compelling causal loop at play get distilled into divinity practices such as "tarot" or "tweeting" each themselves requiring a larger semantic web to make sense of.

Way back in the day, a religious leader was described as a man of the cloth, which sounds eerily similar to todays CTOs leading their monasteries of illuminaries to build out "service fabric". Solomons temple had two columns, both draped with networking.

Just as with hn comments, one can dismiss it all, or one can approach it with suspension of disbelief.

What is the logical causal chain that compels professional sports players to do their "lucky wiggle" before a serve?