Tarot for Hackers(christine.website)
christine.website
Tarot for Hackers
https://christine.website/blog/tarot-for-hackers-2019-07-24
49 comments
Certain versions of UNIX even had a command for casting the I Ching on stdin, though I can't seem to find a modern system (of any heritage) that does: https://www.unix.com/man-page/v7/6/ching/
It's in NetBSD. It somehow went missing from BSD at some point, but NetBSD added it back later.
Your exact dates are debatable; here's a good piece (https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-surprising-ori...) that has a good history of the older decks. (tl;dr: a bit older than that, though the 'divinatory' use was much more like kids playing MASH (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MASH_(game)))
The thing is, when they did make up the Tarot meanings, they were basically just mappings onto ideas with an older provenance: the four suits became the four elements, elements map onto astrological meanings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_the_classical_el...), and so on and so forth. You get to those astrological houses, and you've gotten back to the Babylonians. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(astrology)#Early_forms_...)
From my understanding, the interpretations and methods of the I Ching have been just as historically variant. I think there's nothing more or less serious about these different systems if you like one or another better.
What's the point of being serious about magic? I doubt that the I Ching works better at predicting the future than other RNGs.
Tarots, the I Ching etc. can guide creativity. Not because they are magic in any way; it's just that their rulesets act as a framework for thought processes.
See: The Man in the High Castle (PKD wrote it by using the I Ching) and The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Calvino (based on tarot readings).
See: The Man in the High Castle (PKD wrote it by using the I Ching) and The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Calvino (based on tarot readings).
Brian Eno (Producer on Bowies Heros) actually produced a deck of cards to help with inspiration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
Also Anthony Piers’ Tarot series. It was interesting..and I guess, confusing?
Anything that makes you stop and think and maybe reflect is worthwhile in my opinion...
divination helps you navigate the field of potentiality.
If this intrigues you, Oblique Strategies[1] (online version[2]) might also interest you.
Although created for artists (musicians in particular), it can help reframe almost any creative endeavor in interesting ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
[2] http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
Although created for artists (musicians in particular), it can help reframe almost any creative endeavor in interesting ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
[2] http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
Along similar lines, Pretend Store (purveyors of fine goods such as the Pocket Developer[1]) have a set of Prompting Cards[2].
[1] https://pretendstore.co/collections/all/products/pocket-deve...
[2] https://pretendstore.co/products/prompting-cards
[1] https://pretendstore.co/collections/all/products/pocket-deve...
[2] https://pretendstore.co/products/prompting-cards
Tarot cards and similar forms of divination can be really useful if you use them right.
The cards you draw are random and have little significance. A GOOD tarot reading asks you to reflect on how your life fits to the cards you drew. It doesn't tell you anything you don't already have in your head. It just provides a context to present your personal crises and reflections to yourself. Done well it gives you a chance to reflect and learn about yourself. It has no power over anything but your own mind.
I consider myself a "Rationalist Chaote" Ritual, Faith and "Magic" have power, abet a small one. They are useful tools for intentionally modifying your own behaviors and outlooks. They are not a replacement for therapy or medical attention when you are having issues but they are a tool you should keep in your arsenal of self-improvement.
The cards you draw are random and have little significance. A GOOD tarot reading asks you to reflect on how your life fits to the cards you drew. It doesn't tell you anything you don't already have in your head. It just provides a context to present your personal crises and reflections to yourself. Done well it gives you a chance to reflect and learn about yourself. It has no power over anything but your own mind.
I consider myself a "Rationalist Chaote" Ritual, Faith and "Magic" have power, abet a small one. They are useful tools for intentionally modifying your own behaviors and outlooks. They are not a replacement for therapy or medical attention when you are having issues but they are a tool you should keep in your arsenal of self-improvement.
I've been doing quite a bit of research into the origins of the tarot deck.
From what I've found is heavily based in hebrew mysticism, aka Qabbalah. The 22 major arcana are symbolic representations of the meanings of the 22 letters of the 22 alphabet[1]. My most recent finding is even more exciting. The 4 suites numbered 2-10 come out to to 4×9=36 cards. 36×2=72. The myth about the 72 3-letter names of God matches here, where each of the numbered suite cards Carrie's the meaning of a pair of 3-letter names from the set of 72.
[1] I've been researching why the 5 final forms used in the 27 letter alphabet were not included and I dont really know why. I've made a deck adding new major arcana cards for to include this discovery.
From what I've found is heavily based in hebrew mysticism, aka Qabbalah. The 22 major arcana are symbolic representations of the meanings of the 22 letters of the 22 alphabet[1]. My most recent finding is even more exciting. The 4 suites numbered 2-10 come out to to 4×9=36 cards. 36×2=72. The myth about the 72 3-letter names of God matches here, where each of the numbered suite cards Carrie's the meaning of a pair of 3-letter names from the set of 72.
[1] I've been researching why the 5 final forms used in the 27 letter alphabet were not included and I dont really know why. I've made a deck adding new major arcana cards for to include this discovery.
Sounds a bit like rubber-duck debugging: you solve problems by explaining them outside of your head and hope that can get you to think about them in new ways.
A great explanation of the rubber-duck method: http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174....
Someone else has already linked to Oblique Strategies, but I wrote a ~response to Christine's blog post. Mine is about randomness, Tarot, and Oblique Strategies: https://lesser.occult.institute/introducing-randomness-into-...
My girlfriend used read them.
One day I said to her: “Maybe they don’t predict the future, maybe they make the future.”
I don’t think she’s touch them since.
One day I said to her: “Maybe they don’t predict the future, maybe they make the future.”
I don’t think she’s touch them since.
That’s a great use of tarot cards. I’ve heard of it being used to help on therapy and decrease anxiety, but using it to help debugging is an ingenious one.
I believe it helps anytime you have a difficult challenge and don’t know where to start, or your previous attempts failed, by introducing some randomness and instigating lateral thinking.
I believe it helps anytime you have a difficult challenge and don’t know where to start, or your previous attempts failed, by introducing some randomness and instigating lateral thinking.
I don't think drawing a random tarot card will help me write a better postmortem. If I started doing so my colleagues would probably start to doubt my judgement. Maybe skimming through all the tarot cards in order to pick relevant ones might be useful though.
Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate.
Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate.
> Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate.
I wonder how many tech employers know for sure that their in-person interview process has a higher accuracy than this one. If you've passed a resume filter / internal referral and can demonstrate that you're not simply lying about being able to code (or whatever the job is) does the rest of the in-person interview reliably, provably add signal?
That's sort of the implied argument of the article - that we deal with complex systems so complex that systematic and rational debugging isn't obviously higher-signal than picking things at random.
I wonder how many tech employers know for sure that their in-person interview process has a higher accuracy than this one. If you've passed a resume filter / internal referral and can demonstrate that you're not simply lying about being able to code (or whatever the job is) does the rest of the in-person interview reliably, provably add signal?
That's sort of the implied argument of the article - that we deal with complex systems so complex that systematic and rational debugging isn't obviously higher-signal than picking things at random.
I'm curious what the significance of the tarot cards is here. Why not just write the following article: (this also serves as a TL;DR)
When you encounter a problem with your program, consider the following in order:
- your Motive
- Facet (localize the failure)
- Immediate Past (what changed to cause this problem)
- the Action (that you need to take)
- the desired Result
While the message is valuable, I'm not a fan of the obfuscation.
When you encounter a problem with your program, consider the following in order:
- your Motive
- Facet (localize the failure)
- Immediate Past (what changed to cause this problem)
- the Action (that you need to take)
- the desired Result
While the message is valuable, I'm not a fan of the obfuscation.
The tarot card is helpful as a source of random thoughts. Other equivalents could be just as good - pick a random word from the dictionary for example might be a decent one. Another good alternative (that is designed for this) is Oblique Strategies [0]. It helps give you hand holds for your brain to latch onto and work around. Without the randomness, it is too easy to get stuck in a rut.
[0]: http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
[0]: http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
I’m grateful for Christine. I had the pleasure of working with them before, and one of the things I appreciate is their openness around idea sharing. Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the negativity.
> Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the negativity.
I mean, you can talk about reading tarot at home and I'll support your hobby. No problems there, I'll ask you what you've done with it recently with genuine interest, and I'm not going to even think about saying you shouldn't do what you enjoy.
But you talk about using tarot for debugging at work, there's basically no chance I'll ever take you seriously again. I apologize for my negativity for not wanting to use tarot cards for debugging or a Ouija board for requirements gathering.
I mean, you can talk about reading tarot at home and I'll support your hobby. No problems there, I'll ask you what you've done with it recently with genuine interest, and I'm not going to even think about saying you shouldn't do what you enjoy.
But you talk about using tarot for debugging at work, there's basically no chance I'll ever take you seriously again. I apologize for my negativity for not wanting to use tarot cards for debugging or a Ouija board for requirements gathering.
Author here. Give me a tool that works better to understand Kubernetes than a tarot deck and I'll use it happily.
It's just a form of rubber ducking.
Frankly, a Ouija board for requirements gathering might be a lot less mysterious and esoteric than some of the scrum practices I've seen...
Frankly, a Ouija board for requirements gathering might be a lot less mysterious and esoteric than some of the scrum practices I've seen...
I would like to hear more about those practices if possible ;)
Plus, if it works, who cares?
It's a bit strange to have an objection to a thing based on the idea that it's impossible.
I once objected to the idea that colors look fundamentally different in darkness than in light. When put like that, it's kind of silly to imagine that one could object to it. But my objection was mostly to do with the way it was presented: Someone told me to stare at a picture and let my brain "buy into it." I was younger and practically laughed it off. But sure enough, after actually doing it, the picture looked much more vivid.
One possibility presents itself as to why Tarot debugging might be effective: Perhaps it gets you to try more things than you otherwise would have.
The post begins:
envision the product or service you are trying to understand more about. Think of the plans that went into it, the users of the service, how this understanding will help them, and where the missing part of knowledge fits into the larger whole. Write this all out if it helps, the more detail the better.
So, user stories. Right?
From further down:
draw The Action. This card will help you decide what action you need to take. This could be restarting a server, fixing a communication pattern (or lack thereof), or even just doing nothing and waiting a few minutes. Sometimes it means that you need to stop what you are doing and try to do the read again later. It’s okay for that to happen, though that should only be a very rare occurrence.
This sounds pretty similar to ad-hoc debugging techniques I've seen.
I'm not saying it's a great idea to, y'know, restart a production service based on a card telling you. But on the other hand, have you tried restarting it to see if that helps? Who among us hasn't tried that, honestly? And being told to do it just to see what happens seems like it has a decent chance of being effective.
I kind of want to go the other direction and make a deck of cards for debugging. You shuffle the deck, draw a few cards, and see if you've tried all the techniques it mentions. You could even have decks for designing systems, refactoring code, etc.
It seems like there's a deeper disconnect here: We want to believe so badly that programming is scientific work. But it's craftsmanship. Are these rituals really so much stranger than the rituals of Japanese swordsmiths? Why engrave a sword with such embellishment when it serves no functional purpose? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#/media/...
It's a bit strange to have an objection to a thing based on the idea that it's impossible.
I once objected to the idea that colors look fundamentally different in darkness than in light. When put like that, it's kind of silly to imagine that one could object to it. But my objection was mostly to do with the way it was presented: Someone told me to stare at a picture and let my brain "buy into it." I was younger and practically laughed it off. But sure enough, after actually doing it, the picture looked much more vivid.
One possibility presents itself as to why Tarot debugging might be effective: Perhaps it gets you to try more things than you otherwise would have.
The post begins:
envision the product or service you are trying to understand more about. Think of the plans that went into it, the users of the service, how this understanding will help them, and where the missing part of knowledge fits into the larger whole. Write this all out if it helps, the more detail the better.
So, user stories. Right?
From further down:
draw The Action. This card will help you decide what action you need to take. This could be restarting a server, fixing a communication pattern (or lack thereof), or even just doing nothing and waiting a few minutes. Sometimes it means that you need to stop what you are doing and try to do the read again later. It’s okay for that to happen, though that should only be a very rare occurrence.
This sounds pretty similar to ad-hoc debugging techniques I've seen.
I'm not saying it's a great idea to, y'know, restart a production service based on a card telling you. But on the other hand, have you tried restarting it to see if that helps? Who among us hasn't tried that, honestly? And being told to do it just to see what happens seems like it has a decent chance of being effective.
I kind of want to go the other direction and make a deck of cards for debugging. You shuffle the deck, draw a few cards, and see if you've tried all the techniques it mentions. You could even have decks for designing systems, refactoring code, etc.
It seems like there's a deeper disconnect here: We want to believe so badly that programming is scientific work. But it's craftsmanship. Are these rituals really so much stranger than the rituals of Japanese swordsmiths? Why engrave a sword with such embellishment when it serves no functional purpose? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#/media/...
> Plus, if it works, who cares?
Exactly. I don't really have many beliefs, but one of them is something like "if it works (for some definition of "works"), do more of it".
Programming is basically a ritual where we create runes that empower lightning we tricked into thinking (with sand) in order to think about the things we want it to.
Exactly. I don't really have many beliefs, but one of them is something like "if it works (for some definition of "works"), do more of it".
Programming is basically a ritual where we create runes that empower lightning we tricked into thinking (with sand) in order to think about the things we want it to.
> I'm not saying it's a great idea to, y'know, restart a production service based on a card telling you. But on the other hand, have you tried restarting it to see if that helps? Who among us hasn't tried that, honestly? And being told to do it just to see what happens seems like it has a decent chance of being effective.
Yeah, restart the malfunctioning thing and throw away what precious state you had for meaningful debugging of a potentially hard to reproduce problem.
If I ever encounter someone guiding their engineering or administration tasks with tarot cards somewhere I have the authority to, they'll be promptly dismissed.
Yeah, restart the malfunctioning thing and throw away what precious state you had for meaningful debugging of a potentially hard to reproduce problem.
If I ever encounter someone guiding their engineering or administration tasks with tarot cards somewhere I have the authority to, they'll be promptly dismissed.
Restarting the server because the tarot deck said to is certainly a way better reason than the ones I occasionally see in practice - e.g., "because the uptime was unusually high and that seemed suspicious," well did you suspect that it was manually configured and nobody was rebooting it for a reason? That one is an actively bad reason to reboot a server during an outage, at least the tarot deck isn't making decisions contrary to evidence.
Also, if you read the article closely, it's not advising you to trust the deck blindly, it's advising you to use it as a way to think about the problem from a new angle. If you're restarting it blindly based on a tarot deck, you're the sort of sysadmin who's ready to restart it blindly based on finding a five-year-old wiki page with a vaguely similar error message on a totally different platform. Should that be a fireable offense? (Maybe! Or at least maybe the company should find you a different role that recognizes that making decisions about production servers is not actually one of your skills.)
Also, if you read the article closely, it's not advising you to trust the deck blindly, it's advising you to use it as a way to think about the problem from a new angle. If you're restarting it blindly based on a tarot deck, you're the sort of sysadmin who's ready to restart it blindly based on finding a five-year-old wiki page with a vaguely similar error message on a totally different platform. Should that be a fireable offense? (Maybe! Or at least maybe the company should find you a different role that recognizes that making decisions about production servers is not actually one of your skills.)
You can say that about any aspect of debugging: "Yeah, avoid restarting the server and limp along at 10% performance in hopes of debugging the spaghetti code that some intern wrote over the weekend."
No one was recommending throwing away state that might help you debug a problem. But I think that there are people who will dislike the idea of controlled randomness regardless of any merits, counterexamples, or evidence in support of its effectiveness.
Doctors hated the idea that washing their hands would save lives, because it implied they had been doing their jobs wrong their entire lives.
No one was recommending throwing away state that might help you debug a problem. But I think that there are people who will dislike the idea of controlled randomness regardless of any merits, counterexamples, or evidence in support of its effectiveness.
Doctors hated the idea that washing their hands would save lives, because it implied they had been doing their jobs wrong their entire lives.
OP of the article here.
To be honest, I miss working with you.
I've been working on a few more "woo-woo" things for a number of years that I've been unsure how to properly approach in a work setting (but do actually use it as an advantage in a work setting). Been working on a book for it for years. DM me on Twitter (@theprincessxena) if you want a link.
It's actually really hard to be open enough to talk about this kind of stuff in a work setting. It's easy to let fear of being labeled the "weird one" stop you, even when nothing else prevents you. However, when you do get known as the "weird one", you can get away with saying basically anything without people questioning it too much (EG: "it's Christine, she's weird, I don't have to care about $THING").
To be honest, I miss working with you.
I've been working on a few more "woo-woo" things for a number of years that I've been unsure how to properly approach in a work setting (but do actually use it as an advantage in a work setting). Been working on a book for it for years. DM me on Twitter (@theprincessxena) if you want a link.
It's actually really hard to be open enough to talk about this kind of stuff in a work setting. It's easy to let fear of being labeled the "weird one" stop you, even when nothing else prevents you. However, when you do get known as the "weird one", you can get away with saying basically anything without people questioning it too much (EG: "it's Christine, she's weird, I don't have to care about $THING").
Placebos have been scientifically proven to be effective in many circumstances, including when the patient knows they took a placebo.
But if my workplace started handing out magical "productivity-increasing" placebo pills and some people defended the practice by saying to stop being so negative and be more open-minded, I would leave. Part of our jobs in tech is to minimize the bullshit to its absolute smallest possible surface area, not embrace it and pretend, with the power of imagination, that it's a good thing.
But if my workplace started handing out magical "productivity-increasing" placebo pills and some people defended the practice by saying to stop being so negative and be more open-minded, I would leave. Part of our jobs in tech is to minimize the bullshit to its absolute smallest possible surface area, not embrace it and pretend, with the power of imagination, that it's a good thing.
What if all the employees who took the placebo pills were more productive? It’s still a sugar pills, but you can’t argue with the results.
And what if I told those employees that the water in the building has been shown to invert the effect of the placebo pills and make them less productive? Now their productivity goes down. See how this can go wrong?
Buying into the bullshit and tying your abilities to something as flimsy as a placebo pill is not a great idea.
Buying into the bullshit and tying your abilities to something as flimsy as a placebo pill is not a great idea.
If anything, belief is a powerful tool.
[deleted]
For me, it’s tarot is almost just like oblique strategies.
mlang23(2)
If you're serious about your magic, you should probably cast the I Ching for this sort of thing (imo).