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As someone who reads Tarot for friends, and may do so professionally in the new year, it depends a lot on the reading and the type of reading. Any reading that

As someone who reads Tarot for friends, and may do so professionally in the new year, it depends a lot on the reading and the type of reading. Any reading that offers advice is opinion, but some opinions should be stated with more confidence than others. Given identical cards I might tell one person "Get out, he'll hurt you if you stay!" and another "I'm not sure this relationship is right for you, if you stay there's a good chance you'll get hurt" depending on how the reading unfolds. The kind of questions people bring to a tarot reader are of necessity the kind where there's no obvious way to determine facts. If my intuition told me to say the first reading and the client asked if that was a fact or my opinion I'd probably give an estimate of my confidence.

canadianfella 4y ago
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driverdan 4y ago
It's almost 2023 and people still believe this nonsense. Humanity is doomed.
- fargle 4y ago
  and, worse, it seems that some of them work with computers. it's shattering to see this being taken seriously by people who should be trained to work with extremely deterministic systems, demanding the utmost rationality.
  - the_af 4y ago
    Some years ago, someone here on HN was arguing in favor of "magic in the server room" -- as in "blood magic", not hackerdom. They claimed they felt persecuted by skepticism and if they were engaging in some kind of joke, they took it far enough to never accept it was a gag (and HN wouldn't be the place for it anyway). If I remember correctly, it was someone reacting to one of Aphyr's "magic" articles (which are metaphor), taking them at face value and claiming they also did spells while working with computers. Again, this was not a metaphor for hacking, but a claim of actual, Harry Potter style magic.
burkaman 4y ago
> The kind of questions people bring to a tarot reader are of necessity the kind where there's no obvious way to determine facts. If they are paying for a tarot reading, that means they believe there is a supernatural method of getting a factual answer. They do not believe you are just telling them your own personal intuition. You need to understand this if you're going to be taking people's money and not just playing a game with friends. > Any reading that offers advice is opinion Your customers will not understand this unless you explicitly state it.
the_af 4y ago
Are you arguing the tarot cards have any bearing on what you tell each person, or are you admitting they are just an excuse and what you say to each people is based on other things? Because I can sort of understand the latter, but how would you even justify the former here on HN, a forum for tech and science oriented people?
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  The sense I get from the person, what the cards say, and what my own predispositions say, all have a bearing on what I say during a reading. As for justifying the part determined by the cards, I can offer two: -they might simply be a way of limiting what I can say since I'm not going to tell someone something completely counter to the traditional meaning. That limitation might force me to be more creative than if I was just going off my own predispositions alone. -I also would hope tech and science oriented people wouldn't rule out that the question being asked has a bearing on what cards show up before running an experiment. I'm agnostic on that point myself, but I could expound at least two theories that would allow for that kind of foreshadowing without contradicting any beliefs that are held by at least a plurality of the HN crowd. What is contradicted by that belief is our instincts based on Newtonian physics, but those have already been proven incomplete.
  - generalizations 4y ago
    Sounds like a form of guided therapy.
  - the_af 4y ago
    > I also would hope tech and science oriented people wouldn't rule out that the question being asked has a bearing on what cards show up before running an experiment Yes, we would rule it out, short of the Tarot reader secretly manipulating the deck. There's no polite way of saying this, so I'll be straight: that's magical thinking. You cannot influence what cards show up just by the question you ask: you can only do so by actually manipulating the deck with your bare hands (or having a trick deck). There's no two ways about this. Experiments have been conducted time and time again. Anyone able to reproduce the claimed effect would be rich by now.

canadianfella 4y ago

[dead]

driverdan 4y ago

It's almost 2023 and people still believe this nonsense. Humanity is doomed.

fargle 4y ago
and, worse, it seems that some of them work with computers. it's shattering to see this being taken seriously by people who should be trained to work with extremely deterministic systems, demanding the utmost rationality.
- the_af 4y ago
  Some years ago, someone here on HN was arguing in favor of "magic in the server room" -- as in "blood magic", not hackerdom. They claimed they felt persecuted by skepticism and if they were engaging in some kind of joke, they took it far enough to never accept it was a gag (and HN wouldn't be the place for it anyway). If I remember correctly, it was someone reacting to one of Aphyr's "magic" articles (which are metaphor), taking them at face value and claiming they also did spells while working with computers. Again, this was not a metaphor for hacking, but a claim of actual, Harry Potter style magic.

burkaman 4y ago

> The kind of questions people bring to a tarot reader are of necessity the kind where there's no obvious way to determine facts. If they are paying for a tarot reading, that means they believe there is a supernatural method of getting a factual answer. They do not believe you are just telling them your own personal intuition. You need to understand this if you're going to be taking people's money and not just playing a game with friends. > Any reading that offers advice is opinion Your customers will not understand this unless you explicitly state it.

the_af 4y ago

Are you arguing the tarot cards have any bearing on what you tell each person, or are you admitting they are just an excuse and what you say to each people is based on other things? Because I can sort of understand the latter, but how would you even justify the former here on HN, a forum for tech and science oriented people?

SuoDuanDao 4y ago
The sense I get from the person, what the cards say, and what my own predispositions say, all have a bearing on what I say during a reading. As for justifying the part determined by the cards, I can offer two: -they might simply be a way of limiting what I can say since I'm not going to tell someone something completely counter to the traditional meaning. That limitation might force me to be more creative than if I was just going off my own predispositions alone. -I also would hope tech and science oriented people wouldn't rule out that the question being asked has a bearing on what cards show up before running an experiment. I'm agnostic on that point myself, but I could expound at least two theories that would allow for that kind of foreshadowing without contradicting any beliefs that are held by at least a plurality of the HN crowd. What is contradicted by that belief is our instincts based on Newtonian physics, but those have already been proven incomplete.
- generalizations 4y ago
  Sounds like a form of guided therapy.
- the_af 4y ago
  > I also would hope tech and science oriented people wouldn't rule out that the question being asked has a bearing on what cards show up before running an experiment Yes, we would rule it out, short of the Tarot reader secretly manipulating the deck. There's no polite way of saying this, so I'll be straight: that's magical thinking. You cannot influence what cards show up just by the question you ask: you can only do so by actually manipulating the deck with your bare hands (or having a trick deck). There's no two ways about this. Experiments have been conducted time and time again. Anyone able to reproduce the claimed effect would be rich by now.