this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Indeed, this is called cold reading and is how most of these things work.
Let me guess, you're someone who, hmm, finds information on Wikipedia and, aaah, has an interest in decentralised open-source projects. The spirits tell me you are not a fan of Windows and you dislike genocidal maniacs.
Oh my god it’s like you KNOW ME
You also like Linux and Star Trek
Half correct! I never got into Star Trek.
Never got into star trek, yet.
IT WAS FORTOLD
Well shit in that case I wonder where I should start
Lower Decks seems like the most accessible, though I haven't seen it.
Lower Decks is made of at least 50% inside jokes and organic fun-pokery. Which is brilliant if you already know Star Trek but probably very whooshy if not. Is what I'd say if I didn't know there are indeed people who got into Star Trek starting with Lower Decks which confuses me endlessly.
It is reference heavy and you can usually tell when they're making a reference but it's usually funny or charming enough that not knowing the references doesn't take away enjoyment. Then you watch tng, ds9 and voy save rewatch lower decks and realize most of that insane cartoon stuff was actually pulled from the old shows. It's great.
I mean Star Wars
Same thing
RIP 🪦
Also no! At this point I’d probably just start helping the person out.
I don’t like Battlestar Galactica, either. I’m more of a Last Starfighter guy.
Easy mistake. They meant star gate
Are you telling me I should try to watch Star Gate too?
I saw the movie when I was little but I remember so little about it I thought the movie starred MacGuyver.
Well you're here so it's bound to happen
I once saw someone with a name tag get bent out of shape when the "reader" somehow managed to get her name from the ether. And then she got mad at me for pointing out her name tag.
To add to this, tarot and other divination methods are a great way to tap into your subconscious to get this kind of insight even if you can't do it normally. Every card can be a lot of things and having a bunch of them in various places could be interpreted in many ways, but (if you're good at it) your mind will snap into one specific interpretation according to your unconscious biases and convinces itself it is the only way to read that configuration.
Yeah. This is why some people can genuinely believe in the magic while performing the trick.
This is what AI/LLMs do also.
The fact that so many people fall for cold-reading tells us why there are so many people that think that LLMs are intelligent.
Our office brought one of these "management mentalist" guys to a retreat as entertainment and I just got a kick out of lying to them so they would always be wrong.
A management mentalist at a work retreat. I’m amazed you are alive to tell the tale, I would’ve offed myself.