Bibliographic record
Abstract
What is a non-believer to do in the face of an exhibition of the supernatural by those variously called psychics, clairvoyants, seers, mystics, sensitives or spiritualists? While clearly the agreement between the exhibitor and the client/spectator calls for belief in the supernatural’s existence and immediate presence, disbelief does not preclude a relationship. If I am a non-believer, however, I must read the event quite differently based on the intentions of the exhibitor. I can consider the exhibitor a liar, and observe the event as if it is fraud; in this case I might watch in stony silence, or vocal effrontery, or cynical amusement, depending on the extent of the exhibitor’s power over the client/spectator, the amount of money changing hands … and the strength of my own disbelief. I might consider the exhibitor genuine but self-deluded, and observe the event with astonishment, or anger, or condescension - again, depending on my perception of any danger to believers, or to myself. Finally, I can witness the exhibition of the supernatural as if it is a theatrical performance, and admire and assess the psychic according to character and spectacle. I would then put aside the non-believer’s concerns about fraud and self-delusion and assume a measure of theatrical self-consciousness on the part of all concerned. To some extent this may be true; a good “show” can be appreciated under any belief system. To some extent, however, I suggest that this is another form of self-delusion, a false “as if” that positions the event at a comfortable distance and the spectator on an apparently safer higher ground from which to watch.1 While the cultures of the occult and the theatre have a long and inextricably complex relationship, both have just as complex a relationship with the culture of commerce. Not all psychics conduct their readings as small businesses, any more than all theatrical performance is commercial. But to the extent that commerce is a goal, strategies are at work that are not necessarily theatrical.2
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".