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Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

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Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#71

Post by a9h74j »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #47
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #8

I’m confused by the idea that “Professor Scofield plotted and ordered the murders” is a statement of opinion. It seems like a clear example of what I’d consider a factual claim; it’s objectively true or false based on what happened in the physical world. Why does the factualness of her reasons for speaking the claim affect whether the claim itself is defamatory?

The thing you're missing here is that "opinion" is a term of art in this context, and has a meaning broader than its usual one. Importantly, for these purposes, any inference is considered "opinion". So "Professor Scofield plotted and ordered the murders" could be a statement of fact, but "The evidence I've shown you demonstrates that Professor Scofield plotted and ordered the murders" is necessarily a statement of o…

Suddenly I am wondering whether reports of "police have at times consulted with psychics" will enter in any way.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#72

Post by [deleted] »

Beltalowda wrote: post #32
squokko wrote: post #11

If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.

The problem is that "changing the law" usually changes the legality of more than just the specific situation at hand. So a law banning "my tarot cards tell me person X is a murderer" may also ban "I've carefully reviewed all the evidence, and I think person X is a murderer" where this is a reasonable accusation. And we can go from murder to "rape" or "abuse" etc. You need to be very careful with this kind of stuff; i…

[deleted]

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#73

Post by [deleted] »

jakeinspace wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #2

Fascinating: this is a defamation case that could conceivably turn on the conventional interpretation of specific tarot cards. You can make up a completely batshit but purely subjective reason to accuse someone of a crime, and the "subjective" part insulates you from liability, but if there's a shred of objectivity in the claim to latch onto, and you lied about it, you can be liable.

How great would it be if the defendant were forced to perform a tarot reading on the stand? I’d pay good money to see that.

[deleted]

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#74

Post by thaumasiotes »

bawolff wrote: post #58
thaumasiotes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could generate evidence that they came to a conclusion most other Tarot readers wouldn't have come to, though even that would be very difficult. But that would be irrelevant against the defense "I have a superior understanding of how to read the messages in the cards than other people do". Which seems like a pretty likely defense. If you can prosecute "the cards told me X is the murderer", you can also prosecute…

> If you can prosecute "the cards told me X is the murderer", you can also prosecute "God told me X is the murderer"; they are identical claims. Can't you prosecute the latter though? Its not like freedom of religion is a get out of jail free card. Like you can't murder someone and then say $deity made me do it.

> Can't you prosecute the latter though?

No, you can't; it might be true.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#75

Post by blondin »

mongol wrote: post #52

> I know I’m like a broken record about it: defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, This is actually not true in all jurisdictions. In Sweden a statement can be defamatory even if true. A Swedish politician was found guilty of defamation for mentioning on Facebook that the legal counsel of an opposing party in a civil law suite she was involved in had been sentenced for a a child sex crime. It was fac…

Japan has a similar law about defamation. it does not matter whether the defamatory statement is true or not. so long as one can show damage to one's reputation.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#76

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jcranmer wrote: post #69
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #8

I’m confused by the idea that “Professor Scofield plotted and ordered the murders” is a statement of opinion. It seems like a clear example of what I’d consider a factual claim; it’s objectively true or false based on what happened in the physical world. Why does the factualness of her reasons for speaking the claim affect whether the claim itself is defamatory?

It probably makes more sense if you read "opinion" here not as a professed statement of belief but rather as "conclusory statement." Note that an incorrect conclusory statement based on undisclosed premises is potentially defamatory, as is one based on incorrect disclosed premises. The seeming loophole is that an incorrect conclusory statement that is based on correct disclosed premises (i.e., it was incorrectly deri…

What I don’t get is how that loophole doesn’t nullify the entire concept of defamation. Someone says “Mr. Zest was the man who stabbed my father to death last Tuesday”, I show them proof I was out of town, and they continue to tell the story because they incorrectly and unreasonably concluded that my proof was false. Surely that doesn’t mean they’ll win my defamation lawsuit - if it did how could a defendant ever lose?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#77

Post by system2 »

bagels wrote: post #55

I took a look at some of the videos on the tik tok. One video in, I see the a bunch of factual claims about a relationship between the professor and one of the students (which the professor denies) with no reference to them being opinion or even derived from tarot cards (though there are out of cards appearing on a table). https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleyisinthebookoflife/video/717838... I'm curious if one of the other…

It is fascinating to see HN people using tiktok.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#78

Post by metadaemon »

kortilla wrote: post #65
tarotuser wrote: post #44

Greetings. I'm rather new here and a friend steered me towards here. I'm a pagan, and unfortunately this has caused a rather ugly stir in our communities. In recent (last 1.5 years), TikTok has been the primary contributing 'terrible occultists, witches, and pagans'. Their practices equate to what we would describe as cargo cultism, commercialism, and general lack of any understanding what we do. Most of us look down…

> tool... But without any of the science. There is no science to tarot reading. There may be a well-defined methodology, but that doesn’t make it a science because it’s not testable and doesn’t make any predictions falsifiable more so than chance.

Hypothetically, wouldn’t the presence/absence of statistical significance (in reference to tarot-derived predictions) count as testable?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#79

Post by system2 »

tarotuser wrote: post #44

Greetings. I'm rather new here and a friend steered me towards here. I'm a pagan, and unfortunately this has caused a rather ugly stir in our communities. In recent (last 1.5 years), TikTok has been the primary contributing 'terrible occultists, witches, and pagans'. Their practices equate to what we would describe as cargo cultism, commercialism, and general lack of any understanding what we do. Most of us look down…

I don't mean to disrespect but there is absolutely no difference between rolling dice then adding meanings to the results and tarot deck shuffling and picking randomly. It sure looks fun though.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#80

Post by bowsamic »

system2 wrote: post #77
bagels wrote: post #55

I took a look at some of the videos on the tik tok. One video in, I see the a bunch of factual claims about a relationship between the professor and one of the students (which the professor denies) with no reference to them being opinion or even derived from tarot cards (though there are out of cards appearing on a table). https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleyisinthebookoflife/video/717838... I'm curious if one of the other…

It is fascinating to see HN people using tiktok.

Why?
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