Comment by TeMPOraL
1 day ago
> The Forer/Barnum effect is why horoscopes, myers-briggs, enneagrams, fortune tellers, and similar parlor tricks work.
I'd argue it's also true of actual therapy.
It's not like therapists can see through your skull and interpret patterns in your brain. They mostly listen intently, and ask some pointed questions, and make you fill in the blanks yourself, too.
Which is to say:
1) I'm not sure if seeking immunity from this effect to full extent possible is a good idea;
2) It makes no sense to round ChatGPT off with the horoscopes and quacks, if the difference between that group and genuine therapy or spiritual help is a matter of tiny details, not of kind.
The difference is that a therapist works with you for years, takes notes, and builds an actual working model of your psyche. They may start with generics but build towards an actual understanding. A lot like an engineer building a domain model of the business they’re working in.
A horoscope or personality test can’t do that because they’re not even personalized. They explicitly have to fit the thousands of people reading that same text.
ChatGPT (or any LLM) might eventually be able to do this. But from what I’ve seen it isn’t there yet.
> The difference is that a therapist works with you for years, takes notes, and builds an actual working model of your psyche. They may start with generics but build towards an actual understanding. A lot like an engineer building a domain model of the business they’re working in.
Ideally, yes. I wonder how that compares to actual, lived experience of people. Because as far as I can tell, it's hard to afford getting to that point these days even on a tech salary.
In my own lived experience, even half a year of therapy didn't go anywhere further I could get with ChatGPT or Claude over one or two frustrated evenings.
(But then maybe it's just me who was spectacularly bad at finding and retaining therapists.)