Taking woo seriously but not literally
Meditation was once dismissed as woo—could Tarot be next proven practice?
Kaj_Sotala’s LessWrong essay, 'Taking woo seriously but not literally,' challenges scientifically-minded readers to reconsider practices like Tarot, chakras, and energy healing. He draws a parallel to meditation: in the 1960s, Transcendental Meditation practitioners made outlandish claims (Maharishi Effect, Yogic Flying), yet Herbert Benson’s research later validated meditation’s effect on blood pressure, culminating in therapies like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Sotala argues that dismissing all woo because of its metaphysical packaging throws out genuinely useful practices.
Focusing on Tarot, Sotala compares it to chess: the rules are arbitrary yet optimized through centuries of play for a specific purpose. Tarot’s card meanings, though not literally predictive, are designed to jolt intuition and break mental ruts. For a tech audience conditioned to value empirical rigor, this stance offers a pragmatic middle ground: treat practices systematically, drop the supernatural explanations, and test what works. The implication is that premature dismissal of ‘woo’ risks missing valuable cognitive tools—much as early skeptics of meditation nearly did.
- Meditation was initially dismissed due to bizarre claims (Maharishi Effect, Yogic Flying) but later validated by RCTs for health benefits.
- Tarot’s arbitrary card meanings are analogous to chess rules—optimized over centuries to guide intuition and break mental ruts.
- Sotala proposes taking woo 'seriously but not literally': treat practices as tools for insight, ignore metaphysical explanations.
Why It Matters
Professionals can gain cognitive flexibility by testing historically dismissed practices rather than rejecting them outright.