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Geek Culture / Help me disprove Tarrot Cards in a cool experiment :P

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 06:57 Edited at: 22nd May 2008 07:00
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My girlfriend and I were having a pretty broad theological discussion the other day, and we ended up on the topic of tarrot cards. My mom believes tarrot card readings are an accurate way of predicting your future, whereas my girlfriend and I are of the school of thought that it's nothing more than random cards popping up, and people interpreting them as they seem fit. To prove that tarrot cards are bogus (or possibly prove that they're accurate), we devised a fun little experiment to settle it once and for all.

Here's what you'll need:
One deck of playing cards, as you'd use in poker or blackjack, with two "joker" cards in the deck.
About 2 minutes of free time each night, depending on how fast or slow you shuffle the deck
A partner to do this with, because it's more fun that way lol

Shuffle the deck as thoroughly as you see fit. Then, lay three cards down on a table. Red cards are "good things," because they're diamonds and hearts. Black cards are "bad things," because they're spades and clubs... clubs are weapons, and spades could be used as weapons, and this has to stay simple so don't argue about this lol. The numbers on the cards depict how "good" or "bad" the card is. Some people don't play card games I'd imagine, so the order (from moderate to extreme) goes 2 through 10, then Jack, Queen, King, and Ace. Ace is extremely good or bad, and 2 is moderately good or bad. Joker cards are "wild cards." Did you ever use a Magic 8-Ball and get the "Future is hazy" response? Joker cards will work like that. They're not to be interpreted as good or bad.

A quick note: Just for arguement's sake, the cards represent everyone in the room with you whose actively paying attention to what you're doing. IE, if two of your friends are with you and they're actually participating in what you're doing, the cards are supposed to represent what's happening to all of them. It doesn't affect people watching TV, or sitting in a restaurant, or the family dog whose asleep under the table.

Each day, lay down three cards, and see if they "predict" the events of the following day. In this thread, tell me what cards you laid down, and then explain how the cards did or did not work in predicting the events of the day. We'll do this for exactly one month, as of tomorrow (so, it'll go from May 22nd to June 22nd). It's the easiest widespread experiment I could think up, without costing anyone money (assuming everyone has a deck of playing cards lying around somewhere, anyway), and what better place for an experiment like this than the Geek Culture board? Sorry if this is lame or doesn't sound like fun, just figured it might be a neat experiment to participate in

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bitJericho
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 09:53
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That won't work.

Tarot cards do in fact work. They don't tell the future, per se, but they reveal a lot about a person's personality that you pick up subconciously.

My uncle used to give readings and he stopped because of how scarily accurate his readings were.

I played a bit with them too personally. It's pretty scary, and I won't be doing it again.

I recommend you do the same.

The issue isn't in the cards themselves, but how much do you really want to know about a person's dark emotions?


Hurray for teh logd!
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 10:48 Edited at: 22nd May 2008 10:48
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I can't see how regular playing cards could be used to prove or disprove Tarrot cards. One could also argue that the person laying the cards needs "magical" abilities etc. You can only disprove it by actually going to someone who does it professionally or at least claims to do it well. Also try more then one of these.

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dark coder
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 10:48
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Hmm, I'm having a hard time seeing your future(hears money slide across the table), ahh... it's so much clearer now. You will have great fortune in the future, (turns card) the money card, you will have to give someone close to you lots of money(hears nothing), DEATH card! You will di..(hears money again) oh wait, divine love card, my mistake...

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BatVink
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 11:46
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Ace of clubs, mid-term prediction, this thread will get locked as it spirals downward into anarchy.

Watch Derren Brown's personality trick. He took 6 people from 6 countries from different backgrounds. He gave them highly accurate profiles of their personality, as assessed by themselves. The trick was - they were all given exactly the same profile!

These things are all about being generic enough to fit a number of situations. When 1 in 12 people get hit by a bus on the same day, I'll start believing my stars.

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Roxas
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 11:47
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Quote: "Hmm, I'm having a hard time seeing your future(hears money slide across the table), ahh... it's so much clearer now. You will have great fortune in the future, (turns card) the money card, you will have to give someone close to you lots of money(hears nothing), DEATH card! You will di..(hears money again) oh wait, divine love card, my mistake..."




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Jeff Miller
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 17:53
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The black suit names indeed indicate weapons. "Spade" in the American deck does not refer to the common English word, but is a corruption of "espada" meaning "sword", and symbolizing the weapon of the miltary. "Club" is actually an accurate translation of the European words for a club or stick, which symbolizes the weapon of the peasants. The appearance of the suit symbols does not match: the suit symbols for spades and clubs come from French decks, and they do not relate to the names we use.
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tha_rami
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 19:35
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Heh, I once took one of those prediction readings but I kinda made up a lot of things they asked me. They predicted I'd become a good musician and a happy gay lover.

That pretty much cured any doubt whether such stuff is real for me.


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Matt Rock
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 19:42
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Well, ironically, we've been doing this for three days as of today. And in a broad sense of good vs. bad days, and how good or bad they've been, it's actually been highly accurate lol. But I don't know how much of that is "magic," and how much of that is personal interpretations... seeing it how we want to see it. Our cards the day before yesterday were Jh, 10c, Kd, and it was a pretty good day across the board, but dinner was burned lol. So it's been fun in the very least trying this, lol.

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Silvester
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 20:08
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If you think its "predicted" your mind will keep thinking about it somehow, And eventually something similar to it might happen. I myself don't think the cards or their readers have anything to do with it...
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IanM
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 20:14
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Quote: "The trick was - they were all given exactly the same profile!"

James Randi did the same with a horoscope and school class - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp2Zqk8vHw

In fact, it appears that Derron Brown has also repeated the same kind of experiment with the same results.

@Matt,
You are doing it the wrong way around - the cards may be influencing your experience of your day.

What you should do is pick 3 cards at random and put them in an envelope without looking at them. Then the next day, put together a diary of your day noting the good/bad experiences. Only then should you compare the cards to your day.

[b]Utility plug-ins collection (updated 01/05/08) and
http://www.matrix1.demon.co.uk
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 20:50
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There's a good South Park episode to watch that points and laughs at the occult, which manages to explain how they're actually done. They're like magic tricks, except they use their language, a wee bit of chance and people's emotions. I'm sure Houdini didn't manage to do the things he appeared to do, it wasn't magic, they were illusions - playing with your eyes, things like tarot cards are no different, they play with your mind instead.

We did our own Tarot card experiment - we had different readings done, sounded very appealing, meaningful and sounds like something that would happen. Then we compared readings and most of them tied together and made sense to each individual. Then I decided to read all of the answers in the tarot book and about 80-90% appealed to me.

It's the beauty and horror of language, using the right words in the right place can have any effect on a person's view or belief - read a tabloid newspaper and you will see how they utilise language in order to have the effect they want. Use of ambiguity in the right way can make anything apply to anyone.

If you get a reading like:

"In the next week you'll have struggles to over come, be strong and persist, you will reach your goal." (I made this up by the way)

Me handing in CVs next week.
Take it to last week (for this week), I had to look for job applications and a student loan form to sort out.
Take it a week before, I had to prepare my flat in halls to leave and hand my key in - involving tidying up my room.
The week before - elections for the Student Union Officers, I was running (And got my position)


All struggles and things I felt reluctant to do and had to persist and managed to break through and get those 'struggles' out of the way - if you got this in a Tarot Card, you may think "that's true!"

You can say one thing and leave the other person to interpret it and put it into context for you - the brilliance of the English Language.


If I got a Tarot that said:

"Don't worry about filling out your forms, they're not as daunting as they may seem, by the end of the week you'll be done, look forward to that." Then I'd consider them otherwise.

There's a lot of ways you can 'experiment' to prove against Tarot, heck try reading someone and use my 'struggle' example.

"Experience never provides its judgments with true or strict universality; but only (through induction) with assumed and comparative universality." - Immanuel Kant
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Zotoaster
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 20:52
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Richard Dawkins interviewed a guy who specialised in this stuff (or was is horoscopes? Same thing I guess). Anyway, he offered to do a scientific experiment on it, but the guy didn't want him to, because he didn't "have faith in the experiment". Regardless, Dawkins went ahead and did it. He gave random people horoscopes that weren't actually of their star sign, and most of them believed it. Infact, there was a woman who wouldn't shut up about how wrong it was, when it was actually her star sign!

Gotta watch more Derren Brown and James Randi stuff - they will debunk all this for you.

Don't you just hate that Zotoaster guy?
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 22nd May 2008 22:02
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Quote: "What you should do is pick 3 cards at random and put them in an envelope without looking at them. Then the next day, put together a diary of your day noting the good/bad experiences. Only then should you compare the cards to your day."

That's actually a really good idea, thanks Ian! I'll do that, that's the best way to do this. I have about four decks of playing cards lying around, so tonight when we do our "reading" we'll put them in an envelope. Good thinking .

The way I pictured it at first was, say you get, I dunno, Ac, As, and Kc one day... pretty much the worst prediction you could get. But then, the next day you win $100 on a scratch-off ticket, your boss gives you a raise, and you find out your favorite author is writing a new book. Clearly, the cards didn't predict all of the good things that'd happen the next day. But it isn't quite as scientific that way, especially since you'd probably only get readings like that rarely at best (we haven't so far, though reds seems to be coming up quite a bit). Or better still, since we have so many decks of playing cards, my girlfriend should do it the old way while I do it Ian's way. That way we have a control .

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 23rd May 2008 05:50
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Ick, so this is what you asked me about playing cards for LOL. Sorry, won't be participating.

My mother has an interesting history in things related to this and I don't feel I want to be part of it.

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn

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BatVink
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Posted: 23rd May 2008 11:26
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The biggest problem with this stuff (and an advantage to those that make money from it) is that believe that believe in it are by their very interest, easily influenced people. So if you tell them something, they will look for the manifestation of it. At the same time, they are quite forgiving of areas that don't match the prediction, or don't notice it at all.

I've been trying to remember the name of James Randi for years - thank you! I recall him analysing a palm reader, who named specific people. The subject hadn't noticed that she had in fact been fed over 20 names before she recognised one!

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 24th May 2008 15:49
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Quote: "and it was a pretty good day across the board, but dinner was burned lol"

I'm not sure that'd constitute a 10c - I was thinking 2c would be "you spill something and have to clean it up" and Ac would be "You get hit by a bus and have to have your leg amputated". But, then, the whole thing's subjective... which is the reason it works, of course. Or *appears* to work...

Yeah, I love it when you get a medium or something reading someone's mind... "Yes, I'm getting something. Do you know somebody with the letter J in their name?" "Well, I have a second cousin called James-" "Excellent! This person will have obstacles to overcome but everything will turn out basically OK" which, of course, can be applied to anybody. Of course, whether the result of this kind of stuff is useful or indeed the point of the activity is another intriguing question.

I'm not actually a Kiwi, I just randomly thought it up one day.
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Sid Sinister
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Posted: 25th May 2008 19:55
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Why not just use tarrot cards instead of playing cards? If your trying to disprove something, shouldn't you be using that against what ever evidence you find? Not playing cards?

Tarrot cards work no better than a good social engineer.

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Isaac Newton
-Computer Animation Major @Baker.edu-
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 25th May 2008 20:29
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Quote: "Why not just use tarrot cards instead of playing cards?"

Because not everyone has tarrot cards, but everyone has playing cards . If you spend much time in New Jersey, you'll see tons of tarrot card readers on the boardwalk in AC. They all have these cheesy neon signs that make comments like "predict your future" and whatnot. My mom claims they have multiple abilities, and one of those abilities is to predict your future. This is where I have a hard time believing in them... how can random cards predict your future, even in a broad sense? So I guess this experiment is a way to diffuse the concept of randoms having some magical tie-in with the universe or whatever. IE, randoms are just random... there's no magic involved .

I had a pretty funny/ interesting result after doing Ian's idea. On the 23rd, I put three cards in an envelope, and on the 24th, I wrote down what happened, and determined it was an extremely good day. When I looked at the cards, they were all red... Kd, 10d, and 3h. My sister works at Toys R Us and did me a favor by reserving an 80 gig PS3 for me (comes with MGS, can't wait ), my girlfriend won a $180 prize at her center meeting at work, and I found an unopened pack of cigarettes (good for a smoker anyway lol). I wrote down what cards *should* have come up based on what had happened, and it was all pretty close. I said A or K, 10 or J, and 3 or 4!!! Pretty cool results, eh?

That is, until I saw my girlfriend's results. She had a "reading" of 10c, 7d, and 2s. Two black cards and one red, but clearly, we both had a pretty good day yesterday, unless she's not telling me something lol. And she says she had an all-around good day at work, too. So eh, maybe you guys are right and this is just a poor experiment lol. Though so far, my results have been somewhat interesting to say the least .

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