Randomness in Tarot

[smw]

One thing you could theroretically do is to take the proposed test procedures from this thread and have some other people perform them, like people you like or trust better than me. Would that, in principle, work for you?

ok, thinking again in contradiction to what I have just said (I did enjoy the prospect of gonging there is a possibility that having people with identified biases might be helpful if they are balanced with both ways. At least they would be open and not hidden within interpretations or outcomes. I am not technically or scientifically minded though.... it's complicated, maybe you would need two tests with people with each of the two opposite biases..

 

[trzes]

I should have avoided the word 'dumb', as it sounds dismissive and isn't quite to point. Sorry for that. 'Not knowing things you could know' would have been more precise, with 'knowledge' meaning some theories that might be wrong as well of course.

There are bulkloads of reasons in favour of religious views. Many strictly rationalistic scientists are religious at the same time. And philosophically speaking all attemps to dismiss religious views for merely logical reasons, or scientific ones, have failed. These are strong reasons to respect religous and religion-like viewpoints even if you are not religious at all yourself.

However in the context of discussing statistical tests of some aspects of tarot, not even tarot in general, I am not willing to accept a religious argument like "in order to see the truth you have to believe it in the first place", where it is used as an attempt to dismiss our approach of adding some empirical research to the matter.

In a different context this claim might not be entirely wrong though. Painkillers are well known to work, even if the only thing they contain is wheat flour and color. The faith does all the work. So if we wanted to see tarot as a placebo the sentence would make sense indeed. I guess that sometimes it adds to the way tarot works, but in general I prefer to think that tarot is better than that.

 

[trzes]

ok, thinking again in contradiction to what I have just said (I did enjoy the prospect of gonging there is a possibility that having people with identified biases might be helpful if they are balanced with both ways. At least they would be open and not hidden within interpretations or outcomes. I am not technically or scientifically minded though.... it's complicated, maybe you would need two tests with people with each of the two opposite biases..

I wouldn't attempt to contribute my own reading to the test, simply because I am not experienced enough in reading tarot. The reason is not that my viewpoint is biased, of course it is. This test, and the others that have been proposed as well, are designed in a way that those opinions don't matter anyway, all biases should cancel each others out, statistically speaking, and in the long run.

What I actually wanted to say is that the people who would superwise the test, those who actually replace some of the spreads and so on, should be partcularly be trusted by everybody. I am fine if that's not me, I only wanted to contribute to the methodolgy.

 

[SunChariot]

Uh, that was one snotty and unnecessary comment. I normally don't talk about ideas as being crazy. "Speculative", "empirically unjustified" or "logically flawed" may be valid points sometimes. My apology: It wasn't me, it was the whisky talking last night



Occam's razor is a tricky thing. My mindset prefers a database to Loki because it seems more natural to me, but that's completely subjective.

Taking certain arguments out of context to see what they look like without something quasi-religious shining on them is definitely a good approach. Let's see how it works ...



Often people ask me to fix a problem on their computers. Sometimes when I look, the problem has just vanished. Then I say: "you see, the computer is afraid of me. It knows that here comes a professional, and that he will beat it into submission anyway." It's a joke of course. However a computer is a rather complex thing, very few people understand how I works in detail (me neither), still nobody seriously claims that a computer would have it's own mind and will power (yet). Pieces of cardboard are not complex at all. So where is the mind and the individual will of the cards meant to be located? I won't use the c-word here (today I am sober), but this idea looks really far fetched to me.



We had that dispute before. Your argument is a religious one: In order see the truth you have to believe it in the first place. This is the least credible type of argument I can think of.

I'll put this argument out of context, as chaosbloom has suggested: Consider this juggler trying to sell me a magic cloak I can fly with. He is standing on a 15th floor balcony with me telling me that he he doesn't know how the cloak works, but the main issue is that I need to have faith in it ...

Of course no one knows for sure how Tarot works, or can prove it to another person. All we can do is talk about what our experiences have been and what they have shown us.

I wasn't trying to make a religious argument per se. That is my personal belief on how Tarot works, and we all have our views on that and it's normal that we view it differently, but that was not the point I was trying to make.

Actually I was brought up a total atheist. No belief in G-d or anything related to religion or spiritual at all. Those were my beliefs as I was starting out in Tarot, and of course that Tarot could not work as IF there was nothing to guide it the card WOULD just be random.

But I turned off all my thoughts and tried. And what I had expected was not at all my experience. Meaningful, even deeply meaningful answers came up each and every time.Deep, beautiful, positive, love-based answers. Hundreds, thousands of time. WAY too many times for the cards to be coming up randomly. There came a time where it was so consistent that I had no choice but to admit to myself it was not possible this was mere coincidence or random.

5 times in a row when the perfect cards came up may be a coincidence, but there came a time for me when thousands of times in a row....logical I could no longer believe it was coincidence.

If it was not, then logically something was behind it. Those were the only two choices for me. It felt to me like there was an intelligence to the universe/life that could work behind the scenes to send the perfect cards when we needed to know something and whenever we asked.

That took A LOT of thought for me to reach that point as it was so opposite to my beliefs. But that many times in a row, for me, could not longer be thought of as mere coincidence. If it was not something meaningful was happening, over and over and over. Too many times for it to be random. Things are either random or directed. To me that said they were directed.

The more I thought of it, the concept of an intellegence to life that can direct things, many people would see that as God.

I am not a religious person still. I don't believe in any one religion more than any other. BUT I do believe there is an intelligence behind like that can guide us and send us signs to direct us and keep us on the right path. And that does and answers our Tarot questions when we ask. That is what Tarot taught me personally. And the more I believed that and opened to that, the more life talked to me in other ways. Sending me signs in my personal life as well to answer questions, even without doing readings.

That has been my experience. As well it has very much been my personal experience and those of many others that I have talked to that the cards will not answer and random cards will come up if you try to "test" then and see scienticially see if they will work and how. I have heard many other readers say the same as well. That is why I brought it up. It has always worked that way for me and I have heard many many other readers say the same.

And no, I did not mean to test the cards as though they themselves can answer. I am also very much of the belief that they are just pieces of cardboard as well. The answers come from somewhere else (whatever you believe that is) and through you. The cards are just the tool. "Testing them" is a shorthand way of saying all that in a shorter way.

About the juggler, if he has a magic cloak that can fly...it is not a question of faith. If it can do fly then it can do it. Whether he has faith in it or not. A tool that can do something, can do it, even though it sure is scary to try it out and risk falling 15 stories if you are wrong.

But this is more a case, to me, of having a magic cape that runs on the magic of faith. That is the magic that fuels it. If you take that away to some extent it will sputter and not run as well. If you take it away completely it likely will not work at all.

Again not saying my beliefs/opinions are better than anyone else's. And certainly not trying to start any kind of argument at all. No one knows how Tarot works. All we can all do to answer this is to give our experiences and what we learnt from them and how. Ecah of us will have had different experiences that taught us different things.

But that is the only way to answer a post. Everyone tells their beliefs and experiences. And take together as a whole, hopefully something meaningful forms.

Babs

 

[smw]

However in the context of discussing statistical tests of some aspects of tarot, not even tarot in general, I am not willing to accept a religious argument like "in order to see the truth you have to believe it in the first place", where it is used as an attempt to dismiss our approach of adding some empirical research to the matter.

Maybe rather than being dismissive, is the problem that conflicting approaches are hard to reconcile because of the perspective? I am trying to dredge up memories of the difference between qualitative and quantitative research.

If the study is on a small scale, with personal experience (of faith or otherwise) giving rise to evocative and meaningful data, a qualitative approach might suit. For a quantitative approach, the study or test would be applicable if it is done on a big scale where statistics and patterns can be looked at. I think in essence one is subjective, looking at meaningfulness and giving that validity and Quantitative is objective in patterns and results when over a lot of data, can be assessed more scientifically.

If this is in anyway applicable, or makes sense, then it suggests to me that an objective (empirical?) Tarot test would have to be on a much vaster scale than has been suggested so far. Otherwise you might be trying to apply objective principles, such as statistics, when there isn't enough real data in the first place to give credible patterns or results.

 

[trzes]

Maybe rather than being dismissive, is the problem that conflicting approaches are hard to reconcile because of the perspective? I am trying to dredge up memories of the difference between qualitative and quantitative research.

If the study is on a small scale, with personal experience (of faith or otherwise) giving rise to evocative and meaningful data, a qualitative approach might suit. For a quantitative approach, the study or test would be applicable if it is done on a big scale where statistics and patterns can be looked at. I think in essence one is subjective, looking at meaningfulness and giving that validity and Quantitative is objective in patterns and results when over a lot of data, can be assessed more scientifically.

If this is in anyway applicable, or makes sense, then it suggests to me that an objective (empirical?) Tarot test would have to be on a much vaster scale than has been suggested so far. Otherwise you might be trying to apply objective principles, such as statistics, when there isn't enough real data in the first place to give credible patterns or results.

What would be meaured in the test is the entirely subjective perception of the sitters, while the measuring itself is objective, in taking the responses and do the previously defined math with it. It would probably be advisable to have a rather large number of readings for the test.

Again, the major idea of the test I proposed is to give the readers all the freedom they want. They can read with whatever spread they want to, by whatever system they want to, they can read at full moon only or de-magnetize their cards before every reading and so on and so on. There is only one limitation. Half of the spreads they have laid will be replaced by randomly selected ones without reader or sitter knowing which these are. The sitter's perception of the reading is the only thing being measured at all.

All this should rule out as many side effects as possible.

If after all the test result shows no significant difference between the sitter's perception of unaltered readings versus random ones, there are strictly speaking three possible reasons:

1. There is no difference in the sitter-rated quality between readings using genuine versus random spreads.
2. There is a difference, but due to a rare coincidence this difference didn't show up in the test data.
3. There is a mischievious supernatural being that is aware of the testing circumstances and deliberately spoils the genuine readings, so the devine influence remains undetected.

No 2. (a false negative result or type-II-error) is an inevitable possibility in every empirical research. No 3. has been briefly discussed way up in the thread. As I understand it now this is basically what SunChariot's point was as well (please correct me if I am wrong). This is a logically irrefutable objection indeed, but IMHO it is void of any pracical relevance because it is way too far fetched. And it isn't necessary to preserve anyone's belief in divination. A negative test result strictly speaking doesen't proof anything anyway. To be fair, SunChariot stated her belief as an answer to JackOfWand's opening post, not as a critical answer to these tests.

Still as for judging the testing approach, and the post was dropped in the middle of that discussion, the whole point would be a bit like creationists saying that it was God himself who deliberatly laid all the dinosaur bones, DNA traces and carbon-14-infused bits and pieces on the day he created our planet from scratch. It wasn't necessary for his creation, but he wanted to fool all these heretics who would rather do science 5000 years later instead of going by the real stuff (the bible), and he wanted to test the faith of his congregation. Yes, perfectly possible.

 

[chaosbloom]

Although I think the scenario you described is extremly unlikely, nonetheless it has to be considered when trying to find a watertight experimental design.

This is the reason why I have proposed to use radioactive decay data (which are as close as you get to real randomness) in order to produce all the random numbers needed long before the start of the test.

I didn't explain it very well. I meant that if randomness is true and we firmly establish that Tarot can give us external knowledge (both are huge ifs), then we could build a machine that would be more efficient in being affected by the external supernatural factor and therefore better at predicting than Tarot is. It's basically an idea on the technomagic sci-fi theme we had going.

But I've also thought that your experiment is already carried out but nobody collects the data. There are android Tarot apps out there, obviously using PRNGs for the spreads. Do they collect any extra entropy from somewhere? Doubtful. If they don't, they're already rigged for all spreads. So how would a supporter explain any perceived accuracy resulting from a low quality PRNG? They could say that a small part of the tablet or phone can be influenced by the supernatural and therefore even PRNGs can yield meaningful results. They'd say the same if you hooked up the app to random.org or a decay source. Even if you had collected entropy 5 years before the experiment, they could claim that the supernatural factor anticipated the experiment and their questions long before they ever wanted to ask them and therefore, the supernatural planted the answers in the past. We're talking about a supernatural factor that is said to be able to predict the future after all.

But.. if you cut them off from a random source completely (for the false spreads) you can completely bypass that explanation. For example, using known integer sequences to make spreads with. No reader would notice (since you can assign cards to numbers arbitrarily anyway) if you used the Fibonacci sequence for example, or Euler numbers or chunks of Pi digits. Someone would have to claim that the answer for whether he's going to find a job in the next two months is embedded in the Fibonacci sequence, which is completely, by all accounts, crap.

Luckily reading tarot isn't quite as dangerous as that , well, as long as you avoid giving cancer diagnoseses with tarot spreads for example. So, playing the devil's advocate again, if there is no downside, why not have some faith in the first place? The upside may be immense. And the possibly false belief about how tarot works isnt' really an issue. Nobody knows anyway, and our well designed statistical tests won't improve our understanding either.

That's basically Pascal's wager. If God doesn't exist and you don't believe in him, you lose nothing. If God doesn't exist and you believe in him, you lead a life of moral principle (supposedly) but you don't lose anything. If God does exist and you don't believe in him, you go to hell. If God does exist and you don't believe in him, you go to heaven. Therefore, Pascal said, the safe bet is to believe in god. Even an undoubtedly smart man like Blaise Pascal could be full of it. He seemed to forget that belief in God entails following all sorts of religious rules and regulations, and given that you only get one life in either system, that corresponds with a large decrease in quality of life.

You definitely have less to lose with Tarot though, since you don't have to give up anything if you believe in it. But you're absolutely right on the principles.

That has been my experience. As well it has very much been my personal experience and those of many others that I have talked to that the cards will not answer and random cards will come up if you try to "test" then and see scienticially see if they will work and how. I have heard many other readers say the same as well. That is why I brought it up. It has always worked that way for me and I have heard many many other readers say the same.

Could you please substantiate your claim that many people have tried to test Tarot (scientifically) and have failed? Who where they? What did they do exactly? Are there any data available? Did they just think they can't test it or did they actually try? Besides basically saying that there have been multiple tests that have proven that Tarot doesn't deviate from random card distributions which is a complete negative for your case, talking about many nameless people who supposedly did this or that is a pretty bad way to cite sources.

 

[trzes]

I didn't explain it very well. I meant that if randomness is true and we firmly establish that Tarot can give us external knowledge (both are huge ifs), then we could build a machine that would be more efficient in being affected by the external supernatural factor and therefore better at predicting than Tarot is. It's basically an idea on the technomagic sci-fi theme we had going.

Oh yes, the two big IF's assumed to be true it would really be worth looking for better tools of divination than colored bits of cardboard. Definitely. Sci-Fi, and excitement, and fun!

That's basically Pascal's wager. If God doesn't exist and you don't believe in him, you lose nothing. If God doesn't exist and you believe in him, you lead a life of moral principle (supposedly) but you don't lose anything. If God does exist and you don't believe in him, you go to hell. If God does exist and you don't believe in him, you go to heaven. Therefore, Pascal said, the safe bet is to believe in god. Even an undoubtedly smart man like Blaise Pascal could be full of it. He seemed to forget that belief in God entails following all sorts of religious rules and regulations, and given that you only get one life in either system, that corresponds with a large decrease in quality of life.

You definitely have less to lose with Tarot though, since you don't have to give up anything if you believe in it. But you're absolutely right on the principles.

I have to confess that sometimes I wish I could believe in divination, exactly for that reason, it wouldn't cost me anything. Well, I would have to put faith in the first place. So no, it's a no-go after all. However in a similar way most of the christians I know seem to be rather happy with their regulated life meeting high moral standards.

If I remember it correctly the Pascal wager had an element of time in it though. Hell lasts forever, infinitely long. So weighing the inifinite pain of hell with a rather small chance of God existing you still outnumber the pleasure of a short and dirty and joyful life in this world. The refutation of that would be slightly more tricky. I have heard a nice point that no matter what God you follow there is always at least one other God of a different religion who would send you to hell in case that is the real one, a sort of catch 22 because you can't follow all the Gods at the same time without contradicting yourself. Of course you may as well question the concept of infinity straight away. Questioning the subjective perception of infinity would be enough actually.

Protestants don't have a hell, I have been told. So no point going with these guys at all

 

[smw]

Again, the major idea of the test I proposed is to give the readers all the freedom they want. They can read with whatever spread they want to, by whatever system they want to, they can read at full moon only or de-magnetize their cards before every reading and so on and so on. There is only one limitation. Half of the spreads they have laid will be replaced by randomly selected ones without reader or sitter knowing which these are. The sitter's perception of the reading is the only thing being measured at all.All this should rule out as many side effects as possible.

if the sitter has no idea which spread is genuine and which is random, doesn't that mean both are random? reading at full moon etc...sounds like preparation, but is that the same as the sitter's perception of the 'actual' reading which is being measured?

(probably me, I'm boggled now)

 

[trzes]

But I've also thought that your experiment is already carried out but nobody collects the data. There are android Tarot apps out there, obviously using PRNGs for the spreads. Do they collect any extra entropy from somewhere? Doubtful. If they don't, they're already rigged for all spreads. So how would a supporter explain any perceived accuracy resulting from a low quality PRNG? They could say that a small part of the tablet or phone can be influenced by the supernatural and therefore even PRNGs can yield meaningful results. They'd say the same if you hooked up the app to random.org or a decay source. Even if you had collected entropy 5 years before the experiment, they could claim that the supernatural factor anticipated the experiment and their questions long before they ever wanted to ask them and therefore, the supernatural planted the answers in the past. We're talking about a supernatural factor that is said to be able to predict the future after all.

But.. if you cut them off from a random source completely (for the false spreads) you can completely bypass that explanation. For example, using known integer sequences to make spreads with. No reader would notice (since you can assign cards to numbers arbitrarily anyway) if you used the Fibonacci sequence for example, or Euler numbers or chunks of Pi digits. Someone would have to claim that the answer for whether he's going to find a job in the next two months is embedded in the Fibonacci sequence, which is completely, by all accounts, crap.

I guess that the mischievious supernatural smart alec can kill whatever we try in any case, it could even bring poor humans to ask their questions in such a way that the meaningful answers come in accordance with the fibonacci series. But if we leave that aside for a while as a very speculative and unlikely idea, then your smart phone approach is actually pretty brilliant. It is probably best indeed to attach those 50% of the spreads that are called "random" to the fibonacci series or any other chaotic but deterministic source of numbers. A common PRNG is pretty much the same actually if you use a fixed seed. I would suggest to attach the other 50%, called "genuine", to seemingly random data from the many receptors on a smart phone, like temperature, angle the phone is held, micro, and stuff. This would account for the meaningful part, where the divination comes in. In this case the unconscious movements of the phone by the reader, the temperature of the reader's hand holding the phone and so on will do the job that would otherwise be done by the reader shuffling the tarot cards.

We need such an app! Those who always wanted to get something more genuine for a smart phone app will get it, well at least in 50% of the cases. If a reading turns out to be insignificant users can always claim that the spread was probably one of the random ones. And the users will collect the test data along the way. !