Astrology fucking debunked after 50 year study...

[haas mark]

I will reply when my meds don't decide that I'm too tired and dyslexic to be able to do so. Just letting you know why I haven't yet.

~ver

[Korvan]

A) amazing coincedence. (buy a lottery ticket, you have alot of luck) or
B) You're lying.

It would have to be one hell of an amazing concidence.

Once, when playing poker (for M&Ms), in three consectutive hands I got, four of a kind, a royal flush, and five of a kind (playing with a couple of wild cards). It was part luck and part the fact that I'm a crap shuffler .

If your interested in doing a test of yer tarot cards, I'd suggest trying it using a double blind method. The reading will consist of three people, the reader, the readee and an impartial observer. Both the readee and the reader are blindfolded (making this a literal double blind method).

The boserver would record the reading and seal the record. After a set amount of time in which the reader and the readee have had no contact what so ever, the observer will first interview the readee on the events of his life during the set time of the test. He will then disclose the reading to the reader and allow him to make his predictions. The predictions are then matched against the interview.

As long as everyone's honest, this should be a pretty good test of the card's predictive powers.

[Sindai]

Well, then maybe it's untestable then, because that's another factor that I believe in. I'm not saying that it's the case with everyone, because I don't honestly know. It's just in my experience, that I find when I try to do a reading for my skeptic friend, the results just don't come up. I'm sorry if you think that's a "tired excuse" by those are my experiences. I've mainly only done readings for myself, my best friend Joey, and my other best friend Jason. And Jason is highly skeptical of them. In the case with Joey and myself, the results come up. But Jason's seem always off.

"Off" by whose criteria? Do you each evaluate how accurate your own readings were? I ask because the obvious explanation is that Jason simply doesn't twist his experiences to match what the cards say.

This is why - if you ever want to seriously prove anything - you must do a double-blind test.

[Gil Hamilton]

Well, then maybe it's untestable then, because that's another factor that I believe in. I'm not saying that it's the case with everyone, because I don't honestly know. It's just in my experience, that I find when I try to do a reading for my skeptic friend, the results just don't come up. I'm sorry if you think that's a "tired excuse" by those are my experiences. I've mainly only done readings for myself, my best friend Joey, and my other best friend Jason. And Jason is highly skeptical of them. In the case with Joey and myself, the results come up. But Jason's seem always off.

In other words, it only works when the person already has the preconceived notion that it will work. Self-fulfilled prophecy anyone?

I'm not going to bother with the rest, since I'm going to respect your beliefs and ignore the fact it reads like you've been watching "Ghostbusters" while using a serious mind-altering substance.

[Darth Wong]

I'm going to have to disagree with you. My tarot is always right, every fucking time.

Then use it to make a killing on Wall Street.

It's why I stopped doing it for so long. I didn't want to know if the relationships I was in were going to end up bad. It's the price I would pay for the foresight.

Either that, or you subconsciously sabotaged relationships via mistrust if you were already convinced that they wouldn't work out because of this tarot nonsense, and you might have ruined what could have been a perfectly good relationship through a combination of mysticism and paranoia.

Furthermore, my tarot have a tendency to assert their power to me when they tell me something I don't want to know. For instance, I once drew Transition in a relationship card, (Which means big change, or end, and possibly a new beginning) and I didn't want to hear it. I reshuffled the deck 3 times again, cut it, and bam. Transition. In shock, I repeated. 3 more shuffles, and another cut. Bam. Transition. I think the odds of that happening are ridiculous.

There's 78 cards, of which there are 22 Major Arcana (which is what Transition is) and then 4 suits of Minor Arcana making up the rest. If someone could please come up with a forumula to calcuate these odds for 3 triple shuffles, and three cuts, with all those cards, then be my guest.

I'm a little disillusioned in our good readership that no one else has seen fit to answer this question, so I will.

This is an extremely simple combinatorics problem: since you do not remove the drawn card from the deck between shuffles, you have a 22 in 78 chance of drawing transition in each draw. The probability of successive draws is multiplied in order to give a total probability, so the odds of drawing Transition 3 times in a row after three consecutive reshuffles is ( 22/78 )^3, or approximately 1 in 45. The fact that you triple-shuffled rather than single-shuffling is irrelevant; we assume perfect randomization of the deck for these figures.

This is slightly better than your odds of drawing three of a kind in poker. Hardly something that I would chalk up to miracles or mystical tarot powers.

[Gil Hamilton]

I think he means that Transition is a specific Major Arcana card, not that all Major Arcana are Transition cards.

The reason I didn't try to do the probability of drawing the Transition card three times is that I didn't know the rules under which he was drawing it. I'm not familar with how Tarot cards are draw, and thus I wasn't clear if he drew the Transition cards from the whole deck, or if he drew it from a stack of Major Arcana cards.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

And yet everyone who strongly believes in astrology will continue to believe in astrology, regardless of this test. It, unfortunately, only preaches to the choir.

I once considered getting into astrology. Not because I believe the planets and the stars and their positions have any meaning that exclusively applies to individuals, but rather because it would get me paid and laid for life. There are astrologers that are payed six figure incomes by companies (six figures!) for their services and there are an endless supply of bimbos in the world who will gladly jump into bed if a smooth player like myself convinces them that the planets approve. In the end, the only thing rising when the stars are right is my bank account and my wang as the airheads line up to give it a pre-ordained sucking... yeah, baby!

That... *sniffle*... that was beautiful, man...

[SirNitram]

I love Tarot. It's fun. Know a few things about the person beforehand, you can spin a convincing yarn. Now, I do have a question for those who can work out probabilities, because I've wondered about one time I did a few on myself.

What are the chances of drawing at least one card from one suit(Wands), ten times in a row? I know it won't be high.

What are the chances that, in that block, one specific card(Five of Wands) will show up four times in a row?

I'm sorry I gotta ask for the help, but I'm pants at statistics.

There was also the time I got the Tower seven times in a row... But I have my suspicions on that deck.

[Darth Wong]

Those questions cannot be answered unless the configuration of a tarot deck is described for us (eg- how many cards of each type, etc). Do not assume that we all know what a tarot deck looks like.

[Darth Wong]

I think he means that Transition is a specific Major Arcana card, not that all Major Arcana are Transition cards.

I can only work with the information I'm given. If he gave numbers which actually had nothing to do with the probabilities he was looking for, that's not my problem.

Why are people assuming that anybody should actually know what the fuck a tarot card deck looks like, or what its rules of use are?

[Gil Hamilton]

I can only work with the information I'm given. If he gave numbers which actually had nothing to do with the probabilities he was looking for, that's not my problem.

Why are people assuming that anybody should actually know what the fuck a tarot card deck looks like, or what its rules of use are?

OK, as it turns out, I was wrong. After doing a little research, I found that there is no Major Arcana card that is "Transition" card, so you were probably right when in assuming that all Major Arcana cards are transitions. To be honest, I know very little about Tarot and less about the rules under which you play it.

[kojikun]

And if its succesfull you can claim the 1 million dollars from James Randi.

www.randi.org

I just went past the JREF. Its cool that I live near James Randi's foundation. Its a neat little mediterranean style place, very pretty.

[Darth Gojira]

Listen to the song Your horoscope (Or something like that) By weird al...it's HILARIOUS! And deadly Accurate, too!

I was singing it after I came across this thread.