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Tarot for Hackers
- juped 7y agoThe use of tarot decks for divination dates back only to the 18th century, well after magic stopped being useful (because all the skilled or talented magicians rebranded to "scientists" or "naturalists"), so I'm skeptical of its value as a system of symbols and motifs. (You will find preachers condemning it much earlier, which is often cited wrongly as evidence of its use for divination, but they were condemning card games, not divination.) For me, it's like squeezing blood from a stone, despite the cool illustrations that look like they should form a symbolic system of Rider-Waite (1910!). If you're serious about your magic, you should probably cast the I Ching for this sort of thing (imo).
- geofft 7y agoCertain versions of UNIX even had a command for casting the I Ching on stdin, though I can't seem to find a modern system (of any heritage) that does: https://www.unix.com/man-page/v7/6/ching/ https://www.unix.com/man-page/v7/6/ching/
- juped 7y agoIt's in NetBSD. It somehow went missing from BSD at some point, but NetBSD added it back later.
- adrianN 7y agoWhat's the point of being serious about magic? I doubt that the I Ching works better at predicting the future than other RNGs.
- lou1306 7y agoTarots, the I Ching etc. can guide creativity. Not because they are magic in any way; it's just that their rulesets act as a framework for thought processes. See: The Man in the High Castle (PKD wrote it by using the I Ching) and The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Calvino (based on tarot readings).
- C1sc0cat 7y agoBrian Eno (Producer on Bowies Heros) actually produced a deck of cards to help with inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoAlso Anthony Piers’ Tarot series. It was interesting..and I guess, confusing?
- techer 7y agoAnything that makes you stop and think and maybe reflect is worthwhile in my opinion...
- bfuller 7y agodivination helps you navigate the field of potentiality.
- kixiQu 7y agoYour exact dates are debatable; here's a good piece (https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-surprising-origins-of-tarot-most-misunderstood-cards/ https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-surprising-ori...) that has a good history of the older decks. (tl;dr: a bit older than that, though the 'divinatory' use was much more like kids playing MASH (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MASH_(game)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MASH_(game))) The thing is, when they did make up the Tarot meanings, they were basically just mappings onto ideas with an older provenance: the four suits became the four elements, elements map onto astrological meanings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_the_classical_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_the_classical_el...), and so on and so forth. You get to those astrological houses, and you've gotten back to the Babylonians. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(astrology)#Early_forms_of_house_division https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(astrology)#Early_forms_...) From my understanding, the interpretations and methods of the I Ching have been just as historically variant. I think there's nothing more or less serious about these different systems if you like one or another better.
- CharlesW 7y agoIf this intrigues you, Oblique Strategies[1] (online version[2]) might also interest you. Although created for artists (musicians in particular), it can help reframe almost any creative endeavor in interesting ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies [2] http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
- gav 7y agoAlong similar lines, Pretend Store (purveyors of fine goods such as the Pocket Developer[1]) have a set of Prompting Cards[2]. [1] https://pretendstore.co/collections/all/products/pocket-developer https://pretendstore.co/collections/all/products/pocket-deve... [2] https://pretendstore.co/products/prompting-cards https://pretendstore.co/products/prompting-cards
- amerine 7y agoI’m grateful for Christine. I had the pleasure of working with them before, and one of the things I appreciate is their openness around idea sharing. Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the negativity.
- amerine 7y agoFor me, it’s tarot is almost just like oblique strategies.
- reificator 7y ago> Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the negativity. I mean, you can talk about reading tarot at home and I'll support your hobby. No problems there, I'll ask you what you've done with it recently with genuine interest, and I'm not going to even think about saying you shouldn't do what you enjoy. But you talk about using tarot for debugging at work, there's basically no chance I'll ever take you seriously again. I apologize for my negativity for not wanting to use tarot cards for debugging or a Ouija board for requirements gathering.
- vorpalhex 7y agoIt's just a form of rubber ducking. Frankly, a Ouija board for requirements gathering might be a lot less mysterious and esoteric than some of the scrum practices I've seen...
- sillysaurusx 7y agoPlus, if it works, who cares? It's a bit strange to have an objection to a thing based on the idea that it's impossible. I once objected to the idea that colors look fundamentally different in darkness than in light. When put like that, it's kind of silly to imagine that one could object to it. But my objection was mostly to do with the way it was presented: Someone told me to stare at a picture and let my brain "buy into it." I was younger and practically laughed it off. But sure enough, after actually doing it, the picture looked much more vivid. One possibility presents itself as to why Tarot debugging might be effective: Perhaps it gets you to try more things than you otherwise would have. The post begins: envision the product or service you are trying to understand more about. Think of the plans that went into it, the users of the service, how this understanding will help them, and where the missing part of knowledge fits into the larger whole. Write this all out if it helps, the more detail the better. So, user stories. Right? From further down: draw The Action. This card will help you decide what action you need to take. This could be restarting a server, fixing a communication pattern (or lack thereof), or even just doing nothing and waiting a few minutes. Sometimes it means that you need to stop what you are doing and try to do the read again later. It’s okay for that to happen, though that should only be a very rare occurrence. This sounds pretty similar to ad-hoc debugging techniques I've seen. I'm not saying it's a great idea to, y'know, restart a production service based on a card telling you. But on the other hand, have you tried restarting it to see if that helps? Who among us hasn't tried that, honestly? And being told to do it just to see what happens seems like it has a decent chance of being effective. I kind of want to go the other direction and make a deck of cards for debugging. You shuffle the deck, draw a few cards, and see if you've tried all the techniques it mentions. You could even have decks for designing systems, refactoring code, etc. It seems like there's a deeper disconnect here: We want to believe so badly that programming is scientific work. But it's craftsmanship. Are these rituals really so much stranger than the rituals of Japanese swordsmiths? Why engrave a sword with such embellishment when it serves no functional purpose? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#/media/File:Wakizashi_horimono.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#/media/...
- saagarjha 7y agoSounds a bit like rubber-duck debugging: you solve problems by explaining them outside of your head and hope that can get you to think about them in new ways.
- Matumio 7y agoA great explanation of the rubber-duck method: http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174....
- mlang23 7y agoCome on, are you serious? Tarot on HN? Is someone looking for a new gf or what? This is the antithesis to rational thinking.
- gbear605 7y agoOn the contrary, divination can actually be helpful (in some circumstances) by providing controlled sources of randomness to get our brains out of their ruts. It’s not a mystical property of the cards; they just provide a structure. It’s essentially rubber duck debugging + randomness. For a deeper thought (not centered on programming), see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnkbdwckdfHS2H22Q/steelmanning-divination-1 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnkbdwckdfHS2H22Q/steelmanni...
- daenz 7y ago>It’s essentially rubber duck debugging + randomness. I think it's the emphasis on the source of the randomness that rubs people (myself included) the wrong way. People attribute some kind mystical supernatural influence as the reason why those cards were chosen, and the culture of people who are into tarot does not minimize those interpretations.
- kerkeslager 7y agoYears ago I arrived at roughly this conclusion, that randomness could be a source of creativity (which then has to be evaluated rationally). But from the first paragraph of the OP: "They act to your soul like iron filings do to a magnet. When you shuffle the cards, the Universe (via entropy) examines all of those myriad inputs and helpfully orders them so you get exactly the message you need most." Uh... this isn't a rational approach to tarot at all.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoI guess I always considered things along the “divination” path to be a antithetical to scientific rigor. Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to be spiritual. Things like yoga and meditation have documented and studied benefits — which is exactly why they’re different than tarot cards.
- pickdenis 7y agoI'm curious what the significance of the tarot cards is here. Why not just write the following article: (this also serves as a TL;DR) When you encounter a problem with your program, consider the following in order: - your Motive - Facet (localize the failure) - Immediate Past (what changed to cause this problem) - the Action (that you need to take) - the desired Result While the message is valuable, I'm not a fan of the obfuscation.
- gbear605 7y agoThe tarot card is helpful as a source of random thoughts. Other equivalents could be just as good - pick a random word from the dictionary for example might be a decent one. Another good alternative (that is designed for this) is Oblique Strategies [0]. It helps give you hand holds for your brain to latch onto and work around. Without the randomness, it is too easy to get stuck in a rut. [0]: http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
- anigbrowl 7y agoThe problem many technically inclined people have when it comes to thinking outside the box is that they begin by defining the box in such great detail.
- xena 7y agoWhich is exactly why I define the box to begin with :)
- Buge 7y agoI don't think drawing a random tarot card will help me write a better postmortem. If I started doing so my colleagues would probably start to doubt my judgement. Maybe skimming through all the tarot cards in order to pick relevant ones might be useful though. Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate.
- geofft 7y ago> Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate. I wonder how many tech employers know for sure that their in-person interview process has a higher accuracy than this one. If you've passed a resume filter / internal referral and can demonstrate that you're not simply lying about being able to code (or whatever the job is) does the rest of the in-person interview reliably, provably add signal? That's sort of the implied argument of the article - that we deal with complex systems so complex that systematic and rational debugging isn't obviously higher-signal than picking things at random.
- ghthor 7y agoI've been doing quite a bit of research into the origins of the tarot deck. From what I've found is heavily based in hebrew mysticism, aka Qabbalah. The 22 major arcana are symbolic representations of the meanings of the 22 letters of the 22 alphabet[1]. My most recent finding is even more exciting. The 4 suites numbered 2-10 come out to to 4×9=36 cards. 36×2=72. The myth about the 72 3-letter names of God matches here, where each of the numbered suite cards Carrie's the meaning of a pair of 3-letter names from the set of 72. [1] I've been researching why the 5 final forms used in the 27 letter alphabet were not included and I dont really know why. I've made a deck adding new major arcana cards for to include this discovery.
- chrisbennet 7y agoMy girlfriend used read them. One day I said to her: “Maybe they don’t predict the future, maybe they make the future.” I don’t think she’s touch them since.
- blamestross 7y agoTarot cards and similar forms of divination can be really useful if you use them right. The cards you draw are random and have little significance. A GOOD tarot reading asks you to reflect on how your life fits to the cards you drew. It doesn't tell you anything you don't already have in your head. It just provides a context to present your personal crises and reflections to yourself. Done well it gives you a chance to reflect and learn about yourself. It has no power over anything but your own mind. I consider myself a "Rationalist Chaote" Ritual, Faith and "Magic" have power, abet a small one. They are useful tools for intentionally modifying your own behaviors and outlooks. They are not a replacement for therapy or medical attention when you are having issues but they are a tool you should keep in your arsenal of self-improvement.
- hcarvalhoalves 7y agoThat’s a great use of tarot cards. I’ve heard of it being used to help on therapy and decrease anxiety, but using it to help debugging is an ingenious one. I believe it helps anytime you have a difficult challenge and don’t know where to start, or your previous attempts failed, by introducing some randomness and instigating lateral thinking.
- kixiQu 7y agoSomeone else has already linked to Oblique Strategies, but I wrote a ~response to Christine's blog post. Mine is about randomness, Tarot, and Oblique Strategies: https://lesser.occult.institute/introducing-randomness-into-chaos-culture-oblique-strategies-and-tarot https://lesser.occult.institute/introducing-randomness-into-...