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Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

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Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#151

Post by maxbond »

pvg wrote: post #136
maxbond wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think generic tangents should be taken to include relevant tangents . I read this part of the guidelines (in context, with the surrounding language about flamebaits & tropes) as being about using something tangentially related as an excuse to pivot the conversation to your pet issue, not as forbidding you to add color to a conversation. That doesn't seem at all compatible with promoting curious conversation.…

I mean, they're table manners for a nerd messageboard so a lot more subjective than defamation law. You can always reverse engineer something out of them explaining the quality (or lack thereof) of some specific comment, after the fact. Less subjective are the effects and you can see them here - if a comment mostly produces corrections and rules lawyering, it's not a great comment and fills up the thread with meta an…

> Less subjective are the effects and you can see them here - if a comment mostly produces corrections and rules lawyering, it's not a great comment and fills up the thread with meta and fluff.

This is circular. I complained about this comment, therefore the comment is bad, and you can tell because I complained about it. I'd suggest it is the complaints that are noisy and should be avoided.

> To take an even broader view - if the goal of the forum is curious conversation, good toplevel comments have to look like invitations to curious conversation to others.

Anyone looking for something to nitpick and fight about will succeed. That can't be a motivation for guidelines because it's just a treadmill. My understanding is that one of the reasons the guidelines are so terse and loosely worded in the first place is to discourage rules lawyering. They aren't a book to throw at someone and say, "your comment is wrong, because you went on a tangent." (And I'm not really even convinced discussing defamation on a post about defamation should be considered a tangent.)

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#152

Post by burkaman »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #132
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #103

I would ask the Tarot reader if he/she believes he/she is telling a fact or an opinion. First would make him/her liable, but second would probably hurt their business. Tarot cards are very interesting by the way. Jung’s archetypes are based on major arcana cards, and as most personality tests (such as MBTI) are based on Jung’s theories, actually the HR department is kind of playing Tarot when they make you take perso…

As someone who reads Tarot for friends, and may do so professionally in the new year, it depends a lot on the reading and the type of reading. Any reading that offers advice is opinion, but some opinions should be stated with more confidence than others. Given identical cards I might tell one person "Get out, he'll hurt you if you stay!" and another "I'm not sure this relationship is right for you, if you stay there'…

> The kind of questions people bring to a tarot reader are of necessity the kind where there's no obvious way to determine facts.

If they are paying for a tarot reading, that means they believe there is a supernatural method of getting a factual answer. They do not believe you are just telling them your own personal intuition. You need to understand this if you're going to be taking people's money and not just playing a game with friends.

> Any reading that offers advice is opinion

Your customers will not understand this unless you explicitly state it.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#153

Post by rwmj »

Totally off topic, but when I was at school, one of my friends had a trick Tarot deck where every card was Death, which was obviously a lot of fun for playing tricks on people. I cannot find such a deck made commercially anywhere today. It could be my inability to search Amazon/Aliexpress, but were such decks once available? Or did they buy dozens of decks and make one themselves?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#154

Post by jjulius »

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.

Huh? This article discusses Tarot videos on TikTok, and that made someone want to go see for themselves so that they can form a better opinion. What's so surprising/fascinating about that?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#155

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

borbulon wrote: post #149
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #103

I would ask the Tarot reader if he/she believes he/she is telling a fact or an opinion. First would make him/her liable, but second would probably hurt their business. Tarot cards are very interesting by the way. Jung’s archetypes are based on major arcana cards, and as most personality tests (such as MBTI) are based on Jung’s theories, actually the HR department is kind of playing Tarot when they make you take perso…

I like Tarot cards. IMO If you're going to cards to get a Truth, you're going about it the wrong way. What they do do very well is give you another way of looking at the situation you're asking about, maybe things to consider that you hadn't before. Like the question "how will my year unfold" isn't right, it's more like "what should I keep in mind this year?" They're also good as a creative game, in the vein of Burro…

Another example of something similar is Chakras. Chakras are a map for sensation, they're not meant to be taken literally.

Another example is energy manipulation. This is also a map. It's not meant to represent energy in the sense of physics.

It's weird that people who seem otherwise so smart aren't able to conceptualize such abstractions or see how they can be useful.

The map is not the territory.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#156

Post by pyuser583 »

kukkeliskuu wrote: post #103

I would ask the Tarot reader if he/she believes he/she is telling a fact or an opinion. First would make him/her liable, but second would probably hurt their business. Tarot cards are very interesting by the way. Jung’s archetypes are based on major arcana cards, and as most personality tests (such as MBTI) are based on Jung’s theories, actually the HR department is kind of playing Tarot when they make you take perso…

Claiming your opinion is fact does not make it fact.

Plenty of people would claim it’s a fact that humans have rights.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#157

Post by mbg721 »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #155
borbulon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Tarot cards. IMO If you're going to cards to get a Truth, you're going about it the wrong way. What they do do very well is give you another way of looking at the situation you're asking about, maybe things to consider that you hadn't before. Like the question "how will my year unfold" isn't right, it's more like "what should I keep in mind this year?" They're also good as a creative game, in the vein of Burro…

Another example of something similar is Chakras. Chakras are a map for sensation, they're not meant to be taken literally. Another example is energy manipulation. This is also a map. It's not meant to represent energy in the sense of physics. It's weird that people who seem otherwise so smart aren't able to conceptualize such abstractions or see how they can be useful. The map is not the territory.

Cue the GTA rant "Chakra Attack", complete with the side-rant about coconut-water.

I'm personally convinced that a lot of wisdom that's considered mystical and fringey is actually wise, and would be taken seriously under a different name. For all the woo surrounding something like feng shui, for example, nobody complains when their apartment is organized so that they can accomplish their daily tasks efficiently--then it's just "common sense".

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#158

Post by the_af »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #132
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #103

I would ask the Tarot reader if he/she believes he/she is telling a fact or an opinion. First would make him/her liable, but second would probably hurt their business. Tarot cards are very interesting by the way. Jung’s archetypes are based on major arcana cards, and as most personality tests (such as MBTI) are based on Jung’s theories, actually the HR department is kind of playing Tarot when they make you take perso…

As someone who reads Tarot for friends, and may do so professionally in the new year, it depends a lot on the reading and the type of reading. Any reading that offers advice is opinion, but some opinions should be stated with more confidence than others. Given identical cards I might tell one person "Get out, he'll hurt you if you stay!" and another "I'm not sure this relationship is right for you, if you stay there'…

Are you arguing the tarot cards have any bearing on what you tell each person, or are you admitting they are just an excuse and what you say to each people is based on other things?

Because I can sort of understand the latter, but how would you even justify the former here on HN, a forum for tech and science oriented people?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#159

Post by kukkeliskuu »

borbulon wrote: post #149
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #103

I would ask the Tarot reader if he/she believes he/she is telling a fact or an opinion. First would make him/her liable, but second would probably hurt their business. Tarot cards are very interesting by the way. Jung’s archetypes are based on major arcana cards, and as most personality tests (such as MBTI) are based on Jung’s theories, actually the HR department is kind of playing Tarot when they make you take perso…

I like Tarot cards. IMO If you're going to cards to get a Truth, you're going about it the wrong way. What they do do very well is give you another way of looking at the situation you're asking about, maybe things to consider that you hadn't before. Like the question "how will my year unfold" isn't right, it's more like "what should I keep in mind this year?" They're also good as a creative game, in the vein of Burro…

I agree. In my limited experience, the Tarot ”reading” is more avout drawing into the subconsiousness of the subject. The person doing the reading is more like a guide.

This works, as we repeat patterns in our life, like getting romantically involved with partners who have same kind of traumas. We must know these patterns subconsciously, otherwise we could not repeat them.

The reading then can, at best, bring into consciousness these subconscious patterns. When we become conscious about them, we can stop repeating them.

So if Tarot reading is succesful, actually the ”reading” becomes false althought it would otherwise have been true.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#160

Post by swayvil »

pyuser583 wrote: post #156
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #103

I would ask the Tarot reader if he/she believes he/she is telling a fact or an opinion. First would make him/her liable, but second would probably hurt their business. Tarot cards are very interesting by the way. Jung’s archetypes are based on major arcana cards, and as most personality tests (such as MBTI) are based on Jung’s theories, actually the HR department is kind of playing Tarot when they make you take perso…

Claiming your opinion is fact does not make it fact. Plenty of people would claim it’s a fact that humans have rights.

I think that the difference between fact and opinion is the strength of your defense.
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