Pseudo science, why no pseudo IT?

[xoggoth]

While on one of my walks I got talking to a guy who does websites. He told me about the bloke, client I think he said, on this site

WWT - Weather Without Technology - Welcome

Like a lot of "pseudo sciences" I suppose, there may be some truth in there somewhere. Perhaps there are patterns in weather, a cold February could be more likely to follow a dry January. I shall be checking. Not sure it's less accurate over the long term than usual weather forecasts.

Anyway, the chap has a lot of dedicated followers apparently. The main point is, could you lot be missing out on making some money here by focusing entirely on technology? Some people reject science and embrace "the other". I know some bright people who believe in acupuncture, homeopathy (aTW?), negative vibes etc.

What about an IT company that combines Visual C++ with spiritualism, orders a database according to the rules of Feng Shui etc. Doesn't matter if you don't believe it, you may attract clients!

[cojak]

While on one of my walks I got talking to a guy who does websites. He told me about the bloke, client I think he said, on this site

WWT - Weather Without Technology - Welcome

Like a lot of "pseudo sciences" I suppose, there may be some truth in there somewhere. Perhaps there are patterns in weather, a cold February could be more likely to follow a dry January. I shall be checking. Not sure it's less accurate over the long term than usual weather forecasts.

Anyway, the chap has a lot of dedicated followers apparently. The main point is, could you lot be missing out on making some money here by focusing entirely on technology? Some people reject science and embrace "the other". I know some bright people who believe in acupuncture, homeopathy (aTW?), negative vibes etc.

What about an IT company that combines Visual C++ with spiritualism, orders a database according to the rules of Feng Shui etc. Doesn't matter if you don't believe it, you may attract clients!

Business Analysis (although not really cool enough for the LinkedIn "Thought Leaders and Influencers").

Even Big Data is looking a bit old-hat these days.

[jamesbrown]

Like a lot of "pseudo sciences" I suppose, there may be some truth in there somewhere. Perhaps there are patterns in weather

There are certainly patterns in weather. They're called "climate".

You can predict, to some degree and in some places, in the long range (e.g. seasonally) using well-known patterns that are closely connected to ocean-atmosphere teleconnections (ENSO, PDO, NAO etc.), but that's science, not pseudo-science.

Still, the above is definitely in cat lady territory. The trick with all these things is to plant a seed to bring in the punters. In this case, anecdotes about climate that have been collected over centuries in folklore, which are based on something - observation - so they're not useless. Still, they aren't going to trouble numerical weather prediction models and other scientific approaches at any forecast horizon. The reality is that computer models are pretty useless at forecasting beyond a small number of days in most places, because they are super-sensitive to small errors in the initial conditions (cf. chaos). So, at a certain forecast horizon, pseudo-scientific BS and proper science may be equally useless. The difference is that scientists wouldn't pretend otherwise, because they aren't looking for punters, on the whole

[NotAllThere]

Pseudo IT = Tech Mahindra, TCS, Infosys...