A decision procedure used by the Naskapi Indians whereby the shoulder of a caribou is held over hot coals, causing cracks in the bone which are then used to direct a hunting party.
What is interesting about such decision procedures as this and reading crystal balls, entrails, livers, palms, ouiji boards, biorhythms or astrological charts, polygraphs, "scientific jury selection," the "blue sense", "etc., is that they "work!" A decision is always made after using them. It may not be the right decision or the best decision, but it is a decision nonetheless.
The fact that a decision is made is a relief, a comfort; it is satisfying to remove uncertainty and indecision. Occult and questionable decision procedures are likely to be especially attractive in situations where logic and rational thinking appear useless, such as in deciding whether or not to marry someone or where to go hunting when it doesn't seem that there is any game anywhere or where to invest in the stock market.
Irrational decision procedures can seem quite rational to their users not only because they "work" in the sense of arriving at a decision but they "work" in the sense of arriving at an acceptable or demonstrably satisfactory outcome, i.e., you're happy with your wife (or glad you didn't get married); the hunters find some game; your stock portfolio isn't much worse than anyone else's, maybe even a little better, etc.
In some cases, for perhaps all people, irrational decision procedures are better than none at all. The trick is to know when this is the case. For example, my college has a hiring decision process which forbids the panel of interviewers from discussing among ourselves any of the candidates we interview. We must give a secret numerical notation to each candidate for a number of categories and give our notations to a referee who tabulates them and reports to the committee who the top three candidates are. Then, the President of the college is called in and we are allowed to discuss those three candidates in the presence of the President who then interviews each candidate and hires one of them. When I complained about not being able to discuss each candidate I was told by the Vice-president of Instruction that I should give the system a chance and that it "worked." (I wanted to have an open discussion of each candidate on the grounds that someone else in the group might have noticed something I didn't and vice-versa, which would provide me with better information than my own private impressions would.) I replied that "Nazi Germany worked, but maybe something else would work better." He was not amused.
further reading
Lyons, Arthur and Marcello Truzzi, The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime (New York: The Mysterious Press, 1991).
Nickell, Joe, Psychic Sleuths (Buffalo,N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994).