#todo - [[tarot]] - [[I Ching]] how is [[divination]] related to [[poetry]]? there seems to be some resemblance; both activities call forth a sort of [[lateral thinking]] from the practitioner [[divination]] is related to randomness--incorporating into practice some elements outside of "[[rational]] behavior" ## [Steelmanning Divination](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnkbdwckdfHS2H22Q/steelmanning-divination-1) - “One performs [[divination]] and only then decides on important affairs.” Often one is faced with a challenge that is “above one’s pay grade,” and having a prescribed [[ritual]] for what sort of cognition needs to be done encourages reflection and popping out of the obvious frame. Simply thinking about a situation in the way one naturally would doesn’t correct for biases, while attempting to make sense of a situation from a randomly generated frame does help expand one’s conception of it. #annealling - comment 1 - The point, in other words, is not simply the fact of using a random table. The point, rather, is: just what exactly is *on* that random table, and what is *not* on it; and what is the *distribution* of the listed things. Not all random tables are created equal; not all are equally ‘fun’. The details are everything. - comment 2 - Xunzi sees [[ritual]]s as social forms that support social order, so there's a rich conversation about how the [[I Ching]] may or may not be related to that domain, which the OP barely touches upon. - my take - This post is less about [[divination]] in general and more about the [[I Ching]] specifically--see comment 1 about the importance of the underlying content of the system which you're randomly sampling. i.e. it's a [[nonlinear narrative]]