To be fair. Cold reading has been the core of most such mysticism for a long long time.

So there’s one approach to fortune-telling where you convince them that you have some magical ability to figure out their secrets, and then you use cold-reading techniques to trick them into thinking you have mystic powers.

But there’s a better approach where you give someone an open-ended set of symbols, and you use those to help the person think through the issues in their life. You’re giving them the opportunity to reflect on things from a new perspective.

• a Tarot card might have symbols for “loss in worldly matters” and be in a position that represents their past
• another card might have symbols for “an older person, very patient” and be in a position that represents their current circumstances
• another card might have symbols for “the end of a time of plenty” and be in a position that represents the conflict of their current circumstances
• another card might have symbols for “gain through cooperation” and be in a position that represents their future

So you talk to the person and describe what each card means, and they think about how it applies to their life. They might ask questions like: “does ‘loss in worldly matters’ mean money?” and you say “sure, it can, or it can mean something else like being reprimanded at work.” and they might say “oh, I think in my case it means (whatever).” And then you can think together how that applies to the rest of the reading. People have a lot of things going on in their lives, things can just slip by, and this gives them a chance to step back and think it all over.

To a surprising extent you can infer a lot about a person directly from appearances and circumstance. I learned this through people watching when I was in school. It can be a fun hobby realizing how much you can conclude, but there’s a dark side to the skill of judging a book by its cover.

It’s a dangerous and addictive path because it’ll feel like the sheer number of times you’re right outweighs the scarce few when you’re wrong, diminishing the significance of those people who you misjudged. The moment you begin taking actions based on those inferences you must realize there’s a difference between statistical likelihood and fact. Being right 99% of the time is a fascinating skill. Being wrong even once and treating a person based on those assumptions makes you an asshole. Rhetorically speaking, ask me how I know.

Yes, I understand the point of this post is in the gullibility, but I wanted to share anyway because I find it fascinating that it seems simultaneously true that you can judge a book by its cover, but at the same time you can’t because those are still assumptions and not completely infallible.

Its always been cold-reading with props. I respect him just going for it though.

I actually find this wholesome because while dude was initially mocking tarots, what he was really doing was being an active listener and being available for people.

So I’m all for this type of “prank”.