As a side note: blows my mind there are people over the age of 9 that persist in actually believing in tarot cards or astrology.
People believe in a god who sacrificed himself to save people from himself. Tarot is downright reasonable in comparison.
I’ve seen it. Tarot is like amateur therapy, with props. It’s a whooole lot of talking back and forth, with some cards to comment on.
Yeah some people take it way too seriously, but most people just enjoy it for what it is. Like I’ve got a lucky rock that I feel off without, but I know it’s just a fetish.
Just because tarot cards aren’t real doesn’t mean there isn’t something potentially very positive about the experience of it, especially if the person doing the tarot reading is a really good people person and makes the person being read felt seen and listened to. If the person giving tarot readings is a genuinely good person who is enjoys interacting and listening with others than it really doesn’t matter if the tarot part is just some props and bullshit. Sure you can argue someone should go to normal therapy, but there is just no denying there is a huge amount of people who aren’t going to do that and will sit down for a tarot reading.
I think whether tarot reading is real or not is the least interesting perspective to look at tarot reading from. You have to see tarot reading through the lens of theater where the point is you use a bunch of pretend bullshit to positively impact the audience. If someone treats tarot readings as a way to scam people out of money ok I dont like it, but if the person is genuinely pouring their heart and soul into giving tarot readings I just don’t think you can say it is a bad thing. Hell you can probably get way more people to take a tarot reading then try out doing community theater so shrugs…
Yupppp, very well said. I’ve seen it done at small gatherings, or sometimes someone will set a room aside at a house party, and it really gets people talking. Lots of heartfelt conversations go on around that area of the get together. The people talk about their lives - theirs goals, and fears, and relationships, etc. They aren’t talking about the cards, unless it’s like to comment on the nice art.
But just in comparison
So independent of any woo-woo, tarot cards are designed to be a potent conceptual microcosm. That means that when you shuffle the cards and do a reading, with a decent understanding of what each of the cards represents, you essentially make a little randomly generated conceptual perspective through which to view the problem. Extremely helpful for shaking out of an established mindset, finding an unexpected angle which reveals connections you hadn’t considered.
I can’t really speak to astrology, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be approximately accurate for some reason other than the stars themselves. Perhaps the changing temperatures of the seasons have a slightly noticeable effect on natal development.
Astrology is only accurate in that everything it says is vague and easily interpretable in multiple ways.
A teacher did an experiment where he handed his class custom astrology reports based on their birthdate, and asked them to rate how well they fit each of them. Everyone gave it a high rating, and said it was very accurate. He had them pass the paper to a different student, and everyone laughed because everyone got the exact same astrology report.
Mystery Hunters flashback out of nowhere. My man Doubting Dave did this experiment.
Certainly sometimes, not always. I was convinced to get a “proper” chart done, and the results were more specific and accurate than I expected. Certainly not vague newspaper predictions. I’m not going to claim the whole practice is authentic, but like I said I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to have some actual correspondence to some unknown tangible cause unrelated to the stars.
Certainly sometimes, not always
That’s not the basis of a good prediction. Imagine flipping a coin. You can “guess” the answer with 50% accuracy by just choosing heads each time.
But that’s cheating you say? You could also get 50% accuracy by just flipping another coin and using that choice. Or just choosing the opposite that just appeared (heads, tails, heads, etc.). That’s not good enough for a prediction.
I’m not trying to sell anyone on astrology here. All I said was sometimes it’s so vague as to to apply to anyone, but not always.
If it isn’t vague, it isn’t astrology.
They are just reading your body language and things they find online about you.
The location flaming balls of gas are have no influence on your life. Except for the sun.
It was automated so it wasn’t that.
Once more, not saying the stars have anything to do with, except that they’re in the sky in a particular time of year. If astrology is based on anything, it’s probably the effects of the seasons.
Nope, astrologers are masters at making vague answers sound specific. But they are still vague and interpretable in multiple ways, even in your proper chart.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you were omniscient. My mistake. Have a good day.
No, that’s all astrology is. Whenever it’s been put to the test it has been found to have no supernatural or real predictive power. Just vague statements, and reader bias.
Testing is the important part. Imo, the reason astrology persists is because of the lottery effect. One person out of 12 gets the perfect reading so promotes astrology as working when they were just lucky.
I tested it, I disagree. Or do you only respect tests that confirm your biases? Doesn’t sound very scientific to me.
I had some friends do astrology readings for themselves that depended on the exact time they were born. I asked one of them about how they accounted for time zones and DST. (They didn’t.) I may have gotten my point across.
I’m seeing a lot of deeply unscientific arguments in these comments. This “Cult of Science” mentality is a concerning trend, where instead of thinking rationally and scientifically about something, people blindly follow whatever the contemporary consensus is. Your friends using poor methodology is not a rational argument against a field, any more than solving a math problem incorrectly invalidates math.
For what feels like the tenth time: I don’t believe any star (other than the sun) has any direct significant effect on a person. However, correlation isn’t causation. I do believe that it is possible that there might be other factors which vary over the course of the year which may have some effect, and that those variations can be coincidentally correlated to the zodiac phases as a convenient reference.
I was just picking one critique that was easy to make without additional supporting evidence.
What you’re saying about astrology possibly working is just wrong. It has been studied and found to have no predictive power, a fact you easily verify for yourself by spending a few minutes with Google.
You’ve got a lot of nerve calling people unscientific while simultaneously defending one of the most thoroughly debunked pseudosciences in existence.
I doubt even the Earth’s rotation being completely out of phase due to inputting the wrong time will have any meaningful impact. The diameter of the Earth (7,917.5 miles) is extremely small relative to the distance to other planets. For instance, the average distance to Jupiter is 394.29 million miles away.
There’s also the position of the Earth relative to the sun. I assume that’s what the astrologers are pretending to account for, since that’s what knowing the date tells them.
Yes, the Sun is pretty darn far away too (93 million miles on average). Let’s say the date and time used as an input to their astrology algorithm is off by 12 hours, since this would place them on the other side of the Earth for a given day (7917.5 miles away). This represents only a 0.0085% and 0.0020% error in the distance to the Sun and Jupiter, respectively.
What I’m saying is that calling out errors in DST and time zone is not a very scientific debunk of your friend’s interest. I’m not a practitioner of astrology myself. However, I like to keep an open mind on nearly any topic, especially on something as harmless as astrology. I hope your friend didn’t take the criticism too hard. It’s always a bummer to find an interest or hobby that brings you joy, just to have it torn down by someone who you respect.
Also, just this week I saw an article posted on Lemmy about how studies show a full moon negatively impacts sleep quality, even if you are in a room with no windows and can’t be influenced by the additional light. There’s clearly still things about gravitational bodies we don’t yet understand.
I believe that the time of year people are born could well have an effect on their personality. Because so much of your personality is developed in your early years, how old you were when you had your first Xmas, or whether you were the biggest (oldest) or smallest (youngest) person in your school class and sporting team.
I don’t think this has anything actually related to the stars.
Same. Seems like a reasonable possibility to be open to.
You just made an excellent argument for why tarot is inefficient given its random nature. There are healthier more logical approaches to expanding your perspectives.
Anything more and it’s less about shaking out of an established mindset and more just wanting to play pretend
Logical approaches explicitly can’t expand your perspective that way, unless you mean a different word than logic. Logic can only operate after you’ve declared your axioms. Tarot allows you to stochastically test alternative axioms. They are different tools used for different stages of the problem-solving process.
I use tarot and other divination methods (primarily the I-Ching/Book of Changes). It’s less about trying to get magical communication from some sort of magical realm or helper for me, it is more a way to organize my thoughts. Often times, the advice associated with each card is just generic good advice, and it prompts me to consider situations from other perspectives. I take some time to think about a problem facing me and use the cards as creative prompts for ways to solve that problem. No supernatural stuff involved.
Horoscopes are mostly just (hopefully!) good advice packaged in what can only be described as a crime against astronomy. They’re good to read, because they tell you what people want to be thinking about themselves.
The way that I think about these things is that it’s like flipping a coin to make a decision. It doesn’t really matter what the coin says, but if you feel happy or disappointed in the result, that tells you what you really need to know. Tarot’s like that but with a bit more depth. The value from the reading is that it encourages introspection.
it’s like flipping a coin
That’s exactly what the I Ching is (or you flip yarrow stalks). And that’s exactly what it does, and it’s what the fellow above gets from it.
My mom was a hippy and I used to do it as a kid, as a sort of punishment when I was having a freak out. It’s easier to listen to random alternate views from a book than some woo-woo-guru.
Yeah, that’s how I use it too. Like sometimes, I feel like the cards are calling me out, but it’s actually just me calling myself out.
It reminds me of how I give great advice to my friends that I may not always follow myself. Tarot feels like a way of getting distance between me, the advice giver, and me, the dumbass who desperately needs to follow the advice
How often are you really using a goddamn elaborate version of a coin flip to make your decisions?
Tarot helps you gain perspectives by randomization and chance? Sounds like a horribly illogical system. You’re actively hindering yourself just for the sake of shoehorning tarot into your decision making process lmao
Similarly if you need to read horoscopes to learn what people want to think about themselves, you have bigger problems. It’s simply not true and indefensible. Who is defined by “people” here, as if it’s a true blanket statement on all born in that month or just at all. Fucking bullshit, why force this mindless drivel into your life at all.
Everything you mention can be gained more efficiently, meaningfully and accurately (no RNG needed) via other means. Just admit you’d rather play around
The human mind is not a computer. It is not “logical”. Also, chill.
You seem to assume that half the indian subcontinental populace doesn’t exist.
People will marry off their kids to donkeys, frogs and cows if it means no drought for a season.
Astrology runs rabid there.
Source: Am Indian.
nah there is definitely reason for both.
Disclaimer: I don’t believe in astrology. However, I always have this discussion with my students when we talk about pseudoscience and superstition (and this is likely an unpopular opinion here), but astrology can’t be entirely dismissed out of hand . Astrology doesn’t have much of a basis in reality, but there is some credibility and research to support the idea that some aspects of your personality can be shaped or impacted by the month in which a person is born, especially in rural/agrarian communities or areas with harsh climates.
It’s not the stars themselves and it’s not like your day-to-day life is affected by the current star sign or “mercury in retrograde,” but think about how formative experiences and your earliest memories can be influenced by the time of year. A child in the Dakotas in the 1800’s that has their first memory as a 2yo in February while the family is on the verge of starvation is going to have a very different experience than a child in the same time and geographical area that is born 6 months later whose first memory is of a harvest festival. Not to mention they are going to have very different nutrition and growth patterns, etc.
It’s purely anecdotal, but I’ve seen this occur to a small extent in my personal life. My oldest was born in January, and he learned to walk in the dead of winter in a snowy environment (so, inside at home), but my middlest was born in April and learned to walk at parks and baseball fields. Does that mean their long-term personality traits are based around that? Not necessarily, but it’s certainly plausible and early scientific research does support there being some correlation between season of birth and personality (Source 1, Source 2)
What you mean is.
A child born in winter will have a different personality than one born in summer. Because it also means they celebrate their birthday in summer or winter, which give a totally different vibe. It influences their life about as much as their name.
The part where Astrology fails is when you consider there are twins with opposing personalities.
Oh, astrology fails entirely; I was simply bringing up that the idea of the month of birth having some effect on personality has some merit, and that is also one of the most basic precepts of astrology (even a broken clock, eh?).
But like you said, there are many factors in personality, from genetics to name to birth order, etc. In fact, the very fact that one is a twin is going to influence a twin’s personality.
And I also want to make the point that one should not dismiss pseudoscience or non-scientific cultural practices out of hand, because oftentimes there is some sort of rational basis for since pieces of those beliefs. Not always, but a huge amount of modern medicine is built on the practice of ethnobotany, which is effectively applying the scientific method to traditional medicines from around the world.
and that is also one of the most basic precepts of astrology
But it’s not because astrology signs don’t match the weather. Signs close to each other by month have radically different results. Sagittarius in December and Capricorn in January should have similar results.
Then there’s all of Australia, South America, and Sub Sarahan Africa where astrology should be opposite because the seasons are opposite when you are south of the equator.
Agreed. That’s why I said astrology fails completely. When I said “it’s one of the most basic precepts of astrology” I meant the idea that season of birth can affect personality, no more. I didn’t mean that astrology gets any of the specifics right, for all the reasons you suggest and more.
Well Intended Leftist: I want to do something productive for society.
Tankie: I want to bash you
To be fair, the tankie in this situation said they are bashing because no one wants to plow fields. You can’t serve latte’s if no one is doing the hard work of growing and transporting the coffee.
How about working the oil rig to supply the petroleum needed to ship coffee from South America? You’ll probably lose a finger or two. Any unpaid volunteers?
To be fair, you’re talking about slave labour.
Typical tankie take.
I’d seriously like to know a solution to how to get people to do the hard work. I just don’t have faith that enough would sign up for the hard/dangerous work. Like most, I wouldn’t balk at serving latte’s for free.
Imo, there needs to be a reward for the harder work. But that introduces recording of the value contributed which leads to capitalism again. It’s like living under feudalism, knowing it’s wrong, but not having a solution.
The idea that capitalism rewards the hardest working is ludacris, and communism being “Everyone gets the same everything” is a massive misconception.
I want to do something productive for society.
Tarot
Yeah
She sounds like a magical thinking, deluded child.
I assumed she was joking tbh
I wish.
I hope so, don’t believe so
…that covers about 60% of America
Larpers hate it when you ask them to join the shit brigade/bathroom cleaning.
fight tankies, I guess.
Lol we found the cop
Not All Cops Beat Dirty Hippies Without Reason
A broken clock is correct twice a day. Sometimes even a calculator can be a clock.
But it’s the cop of the socialist system. That’s good!
Where is the line here? Art, music or writing fiction? Anything that isn’t needed to keep 20 people alive? Or are we talking a society that is more than just surviving? Want to keep people tired and dirty, that’s a good way make them shut up and submit I guess. I’m making my own commune, with black jack and hookers.
Entertainment can be labor. If someone is explicit and consistent about a tarot reading being just a game of make-believe then I suppose it’s fine, but I doubt most people who would do tarot readings professionally would be about to pull it off with at least winking at their audience.
Entertainment (and the arts) would probably not have a large central component. I imagine many more people would engage with arts than today thanks to shorter work weeks. Set building and performances and the like would probably occur on a more local level.
There’s definitely something cool about seeing a blockbuster movie with special effects, or an artistic film that makes deep points while showcasing actors at peak talent.
However, humans had oral tradition and just like people in robes acting for a long time. Our brains are probably better off with some storytelling that requires a little internal imagination and thought.
I guess what I’m getting at is, on my ideal commune the arts would be hobbies for everyone to enjoy and play a part in as they wish, not a “job” that constitutes pulling one’s fair share.
In a way, modern tabletop gaming has filled that niche for a lot of people
What will be the controls on quality though? More doesn’t always mean good.
That’s the beauty of communes. It’s up to the group to define what’s acceptable.
that sounds like a government but without the extra steps. i’m in
Except that you can’t just grab your stuff and leave your country to go join another country at will.
If there’s a version of communism that works, it’s definitely at the scale of a town or smaller where you can voluntarily leave whenever.
Yeah, I’ve always liked the idea of a town where we mainly just pool resources together. Buy products we can’t make on our own in bulk. Communal resources. Provide services within the commune for some kind of metered access to the resources, or live basically, etc. Still have your regular remote slog, have some sort of income pooling. Definitely seems like some kind of idealist utopia though, and the bigger it gets, the more complicated it gets, and the potential to represent some of the worst parts of society increases, like HOAs, government, insurance, etc.
That’s just… what your average county/municipality/local government already does, except with higher income tax/wealth redistribution.
Well, except that in reality you can’t ignore externalities and that quickly makes the “leftist commune” look a lot less like an idyllic hobbit village. Everybody must pitch in for national rail and highways, even if they aren’t the ones benefiting. Cities generate a LOT more wealth/capita and almost incalculably more wealth/km² than rural areas, are way more resource efficient and don’t contribute as much to the erosion of natural habitats, yet they are utterly dependent on rural areas. How does a hypothetical “small government communist” society deal with this fairly so that urban and rural communes don’t literally go at war with each other?
Here in Belgium the municipalities are, in principle, legally obligated to provide a certain amount of subsidized low-income housing. That’s exactly what you’re advocating for, and it’s great! … Well, except for the part where many rich municipalities simply refuse to build any such housing out of NIMBYism and would rather pay the fines. Making government “local” does not, unfortunately, lead to the left-wing utopia that some people think it would. This is not “big guberment” or “capitalism” or corporate lobbying, it’s the mundane evil of your average citizen voting against the interests and wellbeing of their less fortunate (would be) neighbors.
communism works if you take out the human element. otherwise you’re always going to have someone that inherently does “more” work than someone else and complains that they don’t get back what they put in.
Sadly once a society atomizes and a very strong sense of individuality of property rights emerges it is difficult to reassume a communal lifestyle where someone doesn’t try and exploit it for singular gain. It’s also really difficult to try and make it work without the social interconnectivity required because this individualist stance long ago fractured the family from community and a certain it requires work to maintain those social connections… Work that people generally don’t want to do anymore. It also tends to lock people in place as your support doesn’t extend as far to strangers so unless your community is nomadic moving basically breaks the bonds.
People have a really hard time even picturing a society without money and a lot of people believe that it just looks like a barter system ecconomy…which is kind of a capitalist lie. Barter isn’t really true to what we know of communal life from modern study of the few places that capitalism has spared. It’s more like social credit. It’s more like how we behave with our friends. You give because I do and when someone asks you give you do it because when you ask they give. You don’t keep mechanical score but if you feel like they aren’t reciprocating generally you stop being generous. A lot of societies that work/worked on this principle didn’t make it super complicated. Wealth and resource redistribution was more ritualized. Your success and standing as a community was measured by how generous you could be to your society not by how much you individually hoarded.
It’s not so much a utopia as it requires entirely different things from you. We have a hard time working backwards from that because capitalism demands a hierarchy based on numbers and once you’ve been trained to keep exact score people become very bitter about everyone putting in the exact same amount and kind of resource to play properly which makes for weaker social bonds.
I mean also it has to actually work sustainably, or else it’ll just collapse and everyone will diasporate to other communes lol
How does the community decide who gets to make art and how has to work making food and other tasks necessary for survival?
I think I’d like to design the dodgy ad-hoc series of aqueducts that bring water from the nearby river to the commune. It will be like a daily task of building Rube Goldberg machines.
The Political Officer has conscripted you… to also make Rube Goldberg machines that smack Astrolgers and Psychics upside the head. Not a bad gig!
So you’ll be the Bloody Stupid Johnson?
Is it made from bamboo?
If there is bamboo around it will be used. I’m also envisioning a donkey on a treadmill which lifts buckets attached to a rope.
I love it
My dream job is that post I noticed the other day about “white guy doormen in Japan who greet women with hello princess!”
Either that or the “Loud American” position also in Japan that tells the boss they’re doing something stupid. I seem to have recently developed a thing for Japan apparently lol
Image Transcription: Twitter Post and Replies
ascended dr. jade phd😇, @_jad…
whats your job on the leftist commune??
im gonna be leading discussion on theory some days, making clothes from scraps other days, and making lattes whenever needed.
Amtrak-Bidenism🚂🧭, @man_di…
political officer that beats the shit out of all the people who think reading tarot cards is labor
Good human! A Political Officer will not be visiting you anytime soon
We got real alive Ai helping the blind and visually impared
And that AI is not perfect and not avaliable to everyone
Defending people from tankies who think they have authority to tell others how to live.
It’s pretty clear to me that it’s attempting to destroy the misconception that some newer leftists have about Socialism and Communism, who have just learned about it and think it sounds great, but haven’t actually dug into the structures and realised that while a lot of it is indeed great, it also takes a lot of work still.
Would it be tankie to bash whoever thinks reading tarot is labor, peacefully? Absolutely, but I think it’s more tongue-in-cheek, and I actually think the original person the joke is replying to is also being tongue-in-cheek, to an extent.
At least, that’s my non-tankie interpretation. Dirty jobs would absolutely exist, and while it would be likely that this work would be split amongst the broader workforce, the idea that people can get by without actually contributing what they legitimately can is Utopianism.
Did I read too far into this, for what very well could be a tankie being an absolute piece of shit for no reason? Yes, but I hope I’m right and both are decent people making sarcastic fun.
I Don’t think it’s even that deep. For them, it’s not a political philosophy or any kind of real philosophy. It’s just a personality trait. Or LARPing.
Tankies sure like to joke about this stuff. Except it’s no more a joke than a Republican joking about beating up a minority.
I make excellent bread, but in order to receive it you have to go through a documentation vetting and once you’re in line you’re not allowed to step out or Amtrak-Bidenism will beat you.
Sounds like a poopy commune
Was my joke too soon?
Probably 😅
Guess who’s going to find out leftist societies still have prisons for pieces of shit that are intolerant of others?!
That sounds awfully intolerant. Ha. Gotcha.
Now I play the card pot of greed which allows me to draw 3 additional cards from my deck.
You should learn what the Paradox of Tolerance means. If you’re tolerant of the intolerant, you’re fucking it up.
Stop fucking it up.
It was a really really obvious facetious joke. You have to share your one sense of humor with everyone too, and it’s not your day?
You fell for the bait
Not even bait actually, a fairly obvious joke
Poe’s law is real, in addition to there being people who are that unironically stupid. Many, many people that unironically stupid. Don’t assume it’s a joke unless you know them.
unfortunately due to poes law i cant tell if this comment is a joke or not
Poe’s law doesn’t apply, there’s a clear signifier of it being a joke by including the unrelated Pot of Greed portion. If it was only the opinion, you’d be right.
Reading tarot cards IS labor.
And beating up people is labor too. Our utopia grows ever closer.
Beating up people who call tarot reading labor is a societal good, no two ways about it.
Listening to people talk esoteric bs is labor.
“It’s your fault it does not work, you don’t believe! You are not in the know!”
Kinda true though. The world you witness is filtered through your subconscious to turn raw data into concepts your conscious mind can deal with: book, car, chair, dog, etc. That’s why optical illusions work, your mind gets used to interpreting the raw data a certain way, and that can be cleverly exploited to make your conscious mind see things that weren’t in the raw data. “Belief” is just loading up a new subroutine to your subconscious to filter for something you value. But if you don’t really convince yourself, it won’t stick. You can’t just ask your subconscious nicely to do things, it’s to “dumb” for that. You have to imprint with rituals and such to strengthen associations.
I learned this by doing a lot of acid in high school.
I learned this by reading a great deal of interesting literature, but lots of acid certainly helped to experientially solidify the principle.
Same. I was reading a lot of Wade Davis and “doors of perception” type stuff at the time.
Robert Anton Wilson can claim the largest single portion of the credit for me
I ended up reading a bunch of Philip K Dick and stopped doing hallucinogens. Thinking about it now the timing was probably related lol.
Knock Knock
Political officer is outside!
Open up the door, it’s REAL!
With the non-stop, pop-pop of stainless steel
Hey, you want to read tarot cards after helping plow the fields in the commune, go for it.
Pfffffffffffffftttt
