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Technology Stocks : WAVX Anyone? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wildman262 who wrote (8208)	7/15/1999 5:22:00 PM
From: Smilodon	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 11417

External support for one's pathological condition. "If an individual with pathological ideation is surrounded by people who challenge the pathological position there will be a reasonable probability that the position will be re-evaluated, rejected and a healthier one put in place. "However if the pathological position has external supports -- people who similarly hold that position -- there is often very little chance to have that position re-evaluated, let alone having it modified in a healthier way. "This is why cults are so powerful an influence on their members. It seems that for many buying a stock is similar to joining a cult. Instead of being investors -- open, alert, considering all information concerning their holding -- they become cultists, cheering the stock in spite of negative data and wanting to kill the messenger who brought it. "They find cult mates on Internet message boards and in a kind of ritualistic behavior, post wishful predictions like 'up 10% by next month' or 'big takeover coming.' These posts have nothing to do with fact, but by posting them the action itself serves to reassure them and other cultists that all is well and that they have done something in the service of the cult -- e.g. the post and prediction. "This is similar to primitive peoples who during a drought do a rain dance. It gives them something to do to validate their beliefs and it reaffirms the cultist hope." California clinical psychologist Jerome Silverman as quoted by Herb Greenberg in TheStreet.com 7/15/99.