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I like Tarot cards. IMO If you're going to cards to get a Truth, you're going about it the wrong way. What they do do very well is give you another way of looki

I like Tarot cards. IMO If you're going to cards to get a Truth, you're going about it the wrong way. What they do do very well is give you another way of looking at the situation you're asking about, maybe things to consider that you hadn't before. Like the question "how will my year unfold" isn't right, it's more like "what should I keep in mind this year?" They're also good as a creative game, in the vein of Burroughs' cut-up method, which David Bowie used and said about it "What I’ve used it for, more than anything else, is igniting anything that might be in my imagination. It can often come up with very interesting attitudes to look into." You can use Tarot cards the same way.

TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
Another example of something similar is Chakras. Chakras are a map for sensation, they're not meant to be taken literally. Another example is energy manipulation. This is also a map. It's not meant to represent energy in the sense of physics. It's weird that people who seem otherwise so smart aren't able to conceptualize such abstractions or see how they can be useful. The map is not the territory.
- mbg721 4y ago
  Cue the GTA rant "Chakra Attack", complete with the side-rant about coconut-water. I'm personally convinced that a lot of wisdom that's considered mystical and fringey is actually wise, and would be taken seriously under a different name. For all the woo surrounding something like feng shui, for example, nobody complains when their apartment is organized so that they can accomplish their daily tasks efficiently--then it's just "common sense".
  - the_af 4y ago
    Feng Shui is trivially debunked by the fact not two "specialists" will tell you the same thing about how to arrange your apartment; they will in fact often tell you contradictory things. If Feng Shui proponents are going to then argue "well, it's just common sense and/or the opinion of the practitioner", then that's just called "interior design" and there's no need to dress it as mystical oriental teachings. How you call things matters. The "woo" part of it is harmful, at the very least because it teaches magical thinking, which is a net negative.
    - maddumb 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - the_af 4y ago
        When lots of practitioners in the West are of the "magical home energy" kind, does it make any difference what the Chinese term really means? If in Chinese it just means the equivalent of "interior design", who here would object? There's no mystical implications, and everyone everywhere agrees interior design experts can have good advice (and are also capable of outrageous misses and dumb advice as well). In the West, calling it Feng Shui has implications. Bear in mind it was brought up in a discussion of Tarot, so let's not be disingenuous and pretend there's no undercurrent of the mystical here.
        maddumb 4y ago
        [flagged]
    - LoudFrog 4y ago
      Your argument sounds good on the surface. But this is true of any two professionals. If you find any two scientists, engineers, doctors and ask them for professional opinions separately you will likely get different answers. They may come to hold the same opinion after collaborating.
      - the_af 4y ago
        It's not true of any two professionals. Ask two biologists about the behavior of a given animal they are experts about and you will get more often than not the same response ("is it diurnal? Does it feed on insects? Can you find it in Africa?"). Ask two carpenters about which tool to use to cut a given piece of wood, and you'll get answers within a given subset of tools. Ask two poker players about which hand is better (for the same variant of poker) and you'll get the same answer. Ask two Feng Shui practitioners about how to best position your furniture and you'll get wildly different answers. And it's even worse with Tarot psychics. That's because, unlike carpentry or biology, there's no rhyme or reason to Tarot, Feng Shui or palm reading: there's no real system to them for their practitioners to draw answers from, they are bullshit. You cannot grab the Big Book of Feng Shui and tell one of the two experts "nope, here it states very clearly that, according to the Laws of Feng Shui, what you are advising is wrong." In fact, it's the sine qua non of that kind of fringe stuff: the ability to make shit up on the spot to best suit their customer/audience is a perk of their trade, but of course it harms reproducibility. The person reading your future in coffee stains needs to creatively make shit up as they go, which means a different coffee future reader will give you a completely different answer. Or Feng Shui expert, or Tarot reader. And you cannot even tell them they are wrong, because there's no right or wrong, because everything is made up. TL;DR: nothing they claim is falsifiable.
kukkeliskuu 4y ago
I agree. In my limited experience, the Tarot ”reading” is more avout drawing into the subconsiousness of the subject. The person doing the reading is more like a guide. This works, as we repeat patterns in our life, like getting romantically involved with partners who have same kind of traumas. We must know these patterns subconsciously, otherwise we could not repeat them. The reading then can, at best, bring into consciousness these subconscious patterns. When we become conscious about them, we can stop repeating them. So if Tarot reading is succesful, actually the ”reading” becomes false althought it would otherwise have been true.
inadequatespace 4y ago
Yeah, I think that’s even the way that they are meant to be used, at least if the guides that I’ve read are to be believed. Nothing occult at play according to the guides. So, ironically, the common culture actually misrepresents them as being prognostic.

TheAceOfHearts 4y ago

Another example of something similar is Chakras. Chakras are a map for sensation, they're not meant to be taken literally. Another example is energy manipulation. This is also a map. It's not meant to represent energy in the sense of physics. It's weird that people who seem otherwise so smart aren't able to conceptualize such abstractions or see how they can be useful. The map is not the territory.

mbg721 4y ago
Cue the GTA rant "Chakra Attack", complete with the side-rant about coconut-water. I'm personally convinced that a lot of wisdom that's considered mystical and fringey is actually wise, and would be taken seriously under a different name. For all the woo surrounding something like feng shui, for example, nobody complains when their apartment is organized so that they can accomplish their daily tasks efficiently--then it's just "common sense".
- the_af 4y ago
  Feng Shui is trivially debunked by the fact not two "specialists" will tell you the same thing about how to arrange your apartment; they will in fact often tell you contradictory things. If Feng Shui proponents are going to then argue "well, it's just common sense and/or the opinion of the practitioner", then that's just called "interior design" and there's no need to dress it as mystical oriental teachings. How you call things matters. The "woo" part of it is harmful, at the very least because it teaches magical thinking, which is a net negative.
  - maddumb 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - the_af 4y ago
      When lots of practitioners in the West are of the "magical home energy" kind, does it make any difference what the Chinese term really means? If in Chinese it just means the equivalent of "interior design", who here would object? There's no mystical implications, and everyone everywhere agrees interior design experts can have good advice (and are also capable of outrageous misses and dumb advice as well). In the West, calling it Feng Shui has implications. Bear in mind it was brought up in a discussion of Tarot, so let's not be disingenuous and pretend there's no undercurrent of the mystical here.
      - maddumb 4y ago
        [flagged]
  - LoudFrog 4y ago
    Your argument sounds good on the surface. But this is true of any two professionals. If you find any two scientists, engineers, doctors and ask them for professional opinions separately you will likely get different answers. They may come to hold the same opinion after collaborating.
    - the_af 4y ago
      It's not true of any two professionals. Ask two biologists about the behavior of a given animal they are experts about and you will get more often than not the same response ("is it diurnal? Does it feed on insects? Can you find it in Africa?"). Ask two carpenters about which tool to use to cut a given piece of wood, and you'll get answers within a given subset of tools. Ask two poker players about which hand is better (for the same variant of poker) and you'll get the same answer. Ask two Feng Shui practitioners about how to best position your furniture and you'll get wildly different answers. And it's even worse with Tarot psychics. That's because, unlike carpentry or biology, there's no rhyme or reason to Tarot, Feng Shui or palm reading: there's no real system to them for their practitioners to draw answers from, they are bullshit. You cannot grab the Big Book of Feng Shui and tell one of the two experts "nope, here it states very clearly that, according to the Laws of Feng Shui, what you are advising is wrong." In fact, it's the sine qua non of that kind of fringe stuff: the ability to make shit up on the spot to best suit their customer/audience is a perk of their trade, but of course it harms reproducibility. The person reading your future in coffee stains needs to creatively make shit up as they go, which means a different coffee future reader will give you a completely different answer. Or Feng Shui expert, or Tarot reader. And you cannot even tell them they are wrong, because there's no right or wrong, because everything is made up. TL;DR: nothing they claim is falsifiable.

kukkeliskuu 4y ago

I agree. In my limited experience, the Tarot ”reading” is more avout drawing into the subconsiousness of the subject. The person doing the reading is more like a guide. This works, as we repeat patterns in our life, like getting romantically involved with partners who have same kind of traumas. We must know these patterns subconsciously, otherwise we could not repeat them. The reading then can, at best, bring into consciousness these subconscious patterns. When we become conscious about them, we can stop repeating them. So if Tarot reading is succesful, actually the ”reading” becomes false althought it would otherwise have been true.

inadequatespace 4y ago

Yeah, I think that’s even the way that they are meant to be used, at least if the guides that I’ve read are to be believed. Nothing occult at play according to the guides. So, ironically, the common culture actually misrepresents them as being prognostic.