Traditional wisdom versus the algorithm in the study of palmistry

Finger length, the endocrine system, and the future of traditional knowledge in the age of Artificial Ignorance

I recently gave a talk about finger length and hormone function, discussing one way that palmists decipher the personality from the shape of the hand by reference to the glandular secretions that influence both:

The audience loved it, and I felt rather clever for connecting the discoveries of traditional palmists with those of endocrinologists cited in journal articles going back to 1888. But on the same day I received a text that made me feel rather impotent. Someone inquiring about a palmistry session was quoting the lying smartypants that is ChatGPT:

“There is no credible scientific evidence supporting the claims that palm lines can predict personality traits, health outcomes, or future events… limited medical knowledge... [blah blah]…unfounded… [blah blah] … Barnum effect… [blah blah]”

There is so much to be horrified by here that I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t. The final word went to an algorithm. Will this be the fate of all our traditional knowledge?

Confidently delivered, technical-sounding bullshit

I once had a lively conversation with ChatGPT about how the Talmud views the ritual purity of a woman who dreams of laying an egg. Niddah 16a was the source until I asked it to double-check; it apologised and corrected it to Berakhot 57b. On further questioning, it conceded that there’s no such dream anywhere in the Talmud.

It’s the kind of thing I’d like to find in the Talmud. The only reason I didn’t go ahead and text a rabbi about it is that I check my conceits against reality (Niddah 16a and Berakhot 57b, in this case).

One of OpenAI’s founding investors calls himself “aspirationally Jewish” and throws Sieg Heils when he gets excited, so perhaps wisdom on Jewish scripture is a lot to expect from ChatGPT, but this problem goes beyond the Martian. Confidently delivered, technical-sounding bullshit is the signature of our historical moment. ChatGPT has merely made the delivery more efficient.

It is known, as far as anything can be “known” in science, that the relative concentrations of different hormones in the amnion during gestation effects the growth of the foetus: the bones, ligaments, fatty tissues and skin of the fingers, also the lobes of the brain, the immune system, the digestive tract and every other cell in the body.

Regarding “no credible evidence”, whose credits is ChatGPT distributing? Data reveals that adults with longer ring fingers have more offspring, are more agreeable and have a tendency towards autistic spectrum disorders. Another extensively studied area is the fingerprints that record the developing human’s first interactions with their environment (the amnion), and correlate to different Myer-Briggs personality types.

These metrics, along with markers for lung, heart and digestive health, cancer risk and psychiatric disorders, are obvious enough to be perceived even by modern science with its clumsy bell curves and the godless sterility of its language. The greatest medics of history used palmistry including Galen, Paracelsus and Hippocrates (who has a Hippocratic finger named in his honour). None of this, and none of the modern research, is enough to impress ChatGPT’s code. Because it learned everything it knows from us.

Entertaining ignorance

When someone asks me what I do for work, I have to make a quick decision: I could dodge the question, or I could run the risk of being thought a charlatan or an idiot. When the latter happens, I tend to swallow the insult rather than get deep into nuance. Epistemology, the limits of enlightenment science and the structural racism of the post-colonial world can get a bit painful for all concerned, and especially for your friend’s fiancée on a first meeting.

When someone who doesn’t know whether their own ring finger is longer than their index finger argues with a palmist about palmistry, they are (technically speaking) totally ignorant about the subject. Total ignorance is no great sin, in itself: I am totally ignorant about many things. I don’t, however, impose my ignorance on the plumber fixing my loo or the chef making my bibimbap.

When someone is totally ignorant as well as opinionated and insulting, now that is a holy trinity I can work with. For example, I can politely, gradually, and with a hint of concern in my voice, nudge them towards further confessions. They will explain that they don’t believe in Jesus either. Nor prayer, nor spirits, nor souls - not even their own soul [gasp!]. At that point, I can write a contract on a scrap of paper and offer them £1 for their soul.

Really dogmatic foils will sign a contract with whatever clauses you care to invent. Some people, however, suddenly change their minds at this point, so you haggle as if you were in a Turkish bazaar, although downwards if they are moved more by pity for your credulity than pride in their own rationalism. “Come on, it’s just a penny, it’s nothing to you and I want it for my collection!”.

This is why ChatGPT is so annoying: not because it can scan the internet at lightning and yet doesn’t; not because it is as confident, opinionated and disinterested in truth as some of our political leaders. The problem is that it doesn’t have a soul to collect.

A better language than science

As I was giving my talk, I was struggling to make sense of my motivation - you can hear the conflict in the delivery. I’m still struggling now, having spent days studying endocrinology and primatology. Perhaps I’m just indignant at programmers teaching such promising tech to ignore 3,500 years of Vedic tradition. But why should I care about the conclusions of ChatGPT (or someone outsourcing his thinking to it)? Palmistry was good enough for Alexander the Great to choose his generals - with some success, it seems. Surely that should be good enough for me?

I’m not really learning any palmistry with my unanchored fascination either. It is interesting that the index finger gets longer as we move from monkeys to apes to humans, but the primatology simply confirms my very first palmistry lessons: the index finger is about consciousness, morality and individuality, all traits that develop as the primates leave their collectivism behind. The index finger grows under the influence of oestrogen, and oestrogen also gives us less hairy bodies, greater sensitivity regarding our social status and ambition, and more forebrain activity and better creative thinking - all human qualities compared to other apes. So I’ve learned something about oestrogen, about human beings and other primates… but nothing about palmistry. Palmists expressed these truths thousands of years ago, and in language that is much more descriptive.

For example, the index and middle fingers are assigned to the two rulers of the cosmos: Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. The former is idealistic and jovial, generous and expansive, always falling for one nymph or another, pursuing his fascinations across continents, throwing parties, bestowing gifts and curses. The latter is the opposite, the god of the harvest who rewards those who work long and hard, who punishes those who don’t, and who applies constraints to our lives. We see this relationship in gesture. A child raising her hand points a single Jupiter finger, but the blessing hand of a priest places the index and middle fingers together - perhaps because they are ordained to represent society’s mores, not to question them. The same gesture is often seen in the hand of an academic lecturing from the podium in a position of institutionalised authority. You can follow these shifts second by second and track a person’s cognition in real time.

Sometimes, gestures repeated over time change the morphology of a hand. When a Jupiter finger bends laterally inwards towards Saturn, it tells us that the gravity of the hand is centred on Saturn; the restrictive and conservative nature may be overpowering the expansive and novelty-seeker. One could, in theory, construct a scientific study about this by measuring the bend and doing personality tests, but why would anyone fund it? A jobbing palmist sees this regularly, but in the absence of a scientific study it counts for very little when the only measure of truth is science.

The mythopoetic language gives us templates to share with clients. Take the relationship between Saturn and Jupiter: Saturn (Cronos) swallows his children to preserve his dominion, but Jupiter (Zeus) escapes, returns, and overthrows him, instituting a new cosmic order. In an earlier cycle, Saturn himself had overthrown Uranus by castrating him and casting his genitals into the sea - and it is from that foam that Venus arises. Saturn’s victory speaks to transformation through severing ties with oppressive origins; Jupiter’s evokes the emergence of individual will from inherited constraint. Together, they show how breaking old patterns can release love, beauty, and new possibilities into the world.

Other stories invigorate and inform a session. Someone with lines on the mound of Pluto can learn from Persephone’s abduction into the underworld; a client with an overdeveloped Icarus line might do well to avoid obsession over their object of fascination, and someone with a soft thumb joint can learn from Venus’s compliance that ended in her being caught in a golden net.

Scientific language is too clunky to approach the nuances of the hand or the nuances of life. It is only really good for establishing the most basic matters in a way that satisfies people with poor imaginations and strong convictions.

Why am I spending my time on this?

As the great Robert Anton Wilson said: convictions cause convicts. I think I study this type of thing because I’m even more interested in corroding the chains of oppression than collecting souls. Also, code-switching is fun. I feel like a different person when I speak and think in Portuguese or Japanese, and there is something similar about shifting between knowledge systems.

And yet there is also a difference. Japanese and English feel like different biomes to move through. Scientific language feels like the cramped bedroom of an awkward teenager, however.

If you’d like to know more about what palmistry can tell you about yourself, book a reading!