Indeed, this is called cold reading and is how most of these things work.
Let me guess, you’re someone who, hmm, finds information on Wikipedia and, aaah, has an interest in decentralised open-source projects. The spirits tell me you are not a fan of Windows and you dislike genocidal maniacs.
Oh my god it’s like you KNOW ME
You also like Linux and Star Trek
Half correct! I never got into Star Trek.
Never got into star trek, yet.
IT WAS FORTOLD
Well shit in that case I wonder where I should start
Lower Decks seems like the most accessible, though I haven’t seen it.
I mean Star Wars
Same thing
RIP 🪦
Also no! At this point I’d probably just start helping the person out.
I don’t like Battlestar Galactica, either. I’m more of a Last Starfighter guy.
Easy mistake. They meant star gate
Well you’re here so it’s bound to happen
I once saw someone with a name tag get bent out of shape when the “reader” somehow managed to get her name from the ether. And then she got mad at me for pointing out her name tag.
To add to this, tarot and other divination methods are a great way to tap into your subconscious to get this kind of insight even if you can’t do it normally. Every card can be a lot of things and having a bunch of them in various places could be interpreted in many ways, but (if you’re good at it) your mind will snap into one specific interpretation according to your unconscious biases and convinces itself it is the only way to read that configuration.
Yeah. This is why some people can genuinely believe in the magic while performing the trick.
This is what AI/LLMs do also.
The fact that so many people fall for cold-reading tells us why there are so many people that think that LLMs are intelligent.
Our office brought one of these “management mentalist” guys to a retreat as entertainment and I just got a kick out of lying to them so they would always be wrong.
A management mentalist at a work retreat. I’m amazed you are alive to tell the tale, I would’ve offed myself.
Btw this guy recently got jumped and had hot grease poured over his foot causing nerve damage while walking home from pride because his car got stripped for parts by thieves. He needs money for surgery and moving out of Detroit and has yet to reach his initial goal of $50k https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ceros-after-car-theft-and-attack
Ah, so he is American then?
I mean you could tell by the fact that people go get tarot readings lol
Wtf? Why are people so shit
My guy doesn’t realize he’s actually reading tarot. 🤣
So he does know how to read tarot cards.
My favorite part of this is when people do it to me and they are almost always 100% wrong.
they get really mad and call me an asshole. because apparently i’m suppose to just agree with their shit takes about me.
I take a little pride in this too. Not because I’m not easily judged (you would be right about a lot of things based on my looks) but I keep quite a few hobbies that no one would suspect and don’t have many interests that are in the orbit of what might be guessed.
It lets me know when someone starts treating me like they’ve “clocked” what type of person I am since it’s clear when someone thinks they’re appealing to you/flattering you but completely whiffing.
yeah, it’s a big tell for narcissistic personalities. they do a lot of cold reading to flatter people and win them over so they can start manipulating you.
But I’m the asshole if I don’t take people seriously when they go on about astrology and how it’s the perfect system.
They hate it when I mention that the stars move in the sky, so the constellations not only move but also change shape.
Because if my parents had banged 3 days earlier I’d be much more agreeable
you wouldnt exist. they would’ve had one of their other possible children.
3 days… I think the same sperm could have made it… It’s possible strictly speaking
it would have to be the identical sperm to produce you, which is highly unlikely. which sperm gets there first would be highly chaotic, so even if it was the exact same load just a small difference in time would likely mean a different sperm would get there. theres potentially hundreds of millions of sperm in a single ejaculation, so with even odds for each you have a better chance of winning the lottery than existing in this scenario.
Yeah, this also means that you wouldn’t have to go back and kill your grandfather for the grandfather paradox. You wouldn’t even have to cock block him. Just shake his hand. Hell, just be on the same busy street or sidewalk as him, or exist at all far enough ahead of the event, and chaos will take care of the rest.
That’s some Scorpio skepticism. You’re a victim of the influence of the stars smh
Tbh most people into astrology don’t take it that seriously either it’s just for fun.
I been doing the same thing casting hot wing bones over a cardboard map of Atlanta
What do the bones tell you?
They told me how many snakes we would catch in the woods by Asheville (6 copperheads)
Told someone where to find their friend at the burn accurately
Told some people their children would find success, others that their music career would go nowhere
It told someone their relationship was failing while they bargained with the board asking additional questions
If anyone asked something like, “should I move to Atlanta?” “Is there anything for me in Atlanta?” The board always emphatically said FUCK NO
I probably spent about 15 hours doing readings over last weekend at a regional burn, been working on creating the set for a few months. Surprisingly magical, surprisingly accurate, at least if you ask it questions that can be verified within a day or two
The map is a work in progress, adding little sketches to it periodically until it’s filled out completely
My partner and I doing readings, I’m the elf :p
Can you ask the board when the RAM crisis will end?
This is amazing, thank you for sharing.
Interested foreign language guy question:
Is this a correct use of the word “literally”?I don’t think it’s technically correct, but that word has been mangled so badly at this point that I would say the way it’s used here counts as common usage.
It has come to a point where literally means both literally and figurativelly depending on context.
You are literally correct
Thanks! Got me confused when reading the whole post but then I guessed something like what you just said already.
Just wanted to have some confirmation.“foreign language guy”
speaks better English than most native English speakers
Speaks
better EnglishEnglish closer to an arbitrary standard than most native English speakersThat’s what usually happens when you focus on learning the “standard” in isolation instead of being exposed to stigmatized non-“standard” dialects as a child as you acquire your mother tongue.
Happens with literally every language.
It’s not mangled, it’s just used as a hyperbole. When you say someone is tall as a mountain you’re not mangling the word “mountain” in doing so.
When you say someone is literally as tall as a mountain, that literally means that they would be at least 2,000 feet tall.
Yes. In that case it’s not used as a hyperbole.
Right, so “literally” indicates that the statement is not a hyperbole.
Not always. When I say my head literally exploded, the word “literally” absolutely is a hyperbole.
That defeats the purpose of the word. It makes it mean literally nothing.
There’s literally no difference in the usage.
This comment is literally correct, and all of the responses to it are /c/badlinguistics, so of course this comment is the one that gets downvoted.
Literally literally means metaphorically now
And has since at least the 1700s.
Yeah both of those uses are fine in English. The first usage is “more” correct I would say. Literally is supposed to be used to basically say that the thing is actually happening. The second usage is also common at least in American English. Usually it’s used with common figures of speech. “I was literally judging books by their cover.” Technically he wasn’t, he was judging people. Some people will be pedantic and call you out for that. So if you’re taking an English class I’d avoid that usage but it’s really common to hear it used that way. “I would literally die.” It strengthens the phrase.
Thanks!
And I’ve heard similar expressions like in the last example you mentioned being used before, so should have known by myself…
yeah. it maybe looks like it isn’t because because he’s not literally looking at books but “judge a book by its cover” is an idiom so i’d say this is a correct literally rather than the shitty 2010s literally that means figuratively.
It’s emphasis in this context rather than its actual definition.
ceros is pretty cool, his youtube channel can be a trip
I love him, it’s so obvious most of his stories are made up bs for clicks and I’m here for it!
It’s like hearing a wildly exaggerated story being told by that one friend but you don’t say anything and don’t interrupt because he’s a good storyteller.
Yeah I was gonna say the same!
He makes good content, is often quite funny, has insightful and honest takes… I don’t agree with him on absolutely 100%, but, he’s a straight shooter, not shilling anything… kinda guy you could actually agree to disagree with on less consequential stuff… which is rare, and admirable.
Hope his foots doing better… fuck, that shit was crazy.
What happened to his foot?
It is a long story that he tells better than I will, but the short version is he got acid thrown at him, and suffered some pretty serious damage from that.
I love the mobile seat + table setup.
This is a Chapelle’s Show bit.
Not racist or sexist enough lol
This isn’t even remotely how tarot works lol. I now he said that, but like… I’d be pissed if I paid for tarot and got whatever the hell he’s doing.
I mean if you want your tarot readings to be accurate, you’d want exactly that. And I’m pretty sure that every remotely successful tarot reader does that.
Wtf the cards gonna do on their own? lmao
The sign does say “FREE” so it’s not like anyone is paying for this…
Sounder like he’s getting just as much entertainment as his clients. Everyone’s going home happy.
and thus began the saga of the bene gesserit
Butlerian Jihad when?
at least a thousand years hence
Good for him. Get that moonay.
I have a friend who is pretty spooky at it. Believe me I use to be a tarot doubter but she is legit in tune with something.
When she told me she couldn’t go to antique stores because of energies I was sure she was full of shit. Then I kept seeing things that made me be more open to it.
Like pulling the death card then a random downpour of rain type shit. One of many.
She’s a witch.
Now count the times that no card corresponded to anything.
death
rain
Yeah close enough.
I don’t believe in tarot reading at all, but I did enough middle school goth witch cosplay to know that death is a water card.
The death card signifies change, actually. Surely you’ve seen the Simpsons bit?
