The experiment wouldn't show this at all. It would simply provide some evidence there's some kind of "objective" reading of a given Tarot result, not that it was predetermined by the cards.
It's easy to provide a counterexample: suppose I ask the same question N times, and N times the cards show different results, and each time the "experts" agree on a single interpretation. This in no way shows that the question determines the result; it merely shows there is an agreed upon procedure to interpret the result of cards.
Let me give you a simple example: let's say the question is "what lies in my future?" and each time it gets asked, a single Tarot card is drawn. Each time a different card gets drawn (for the same question and same person asking), but all experts agree on this interpretation: "the card is a picture of (thing)".
This interpretation is deterministic, every expert agrees on it, yet the card drawn doesn't get determined by the question.
I hope I have shown your experiment is flawed.
As for the rest of your comment re: meaning vs fact, I'm sorry but it's the same old cop-out all mystics end up claiming whenever backed against a wall.
What I'm proposing is a variation on an experiment that's been run many times in remote viewing settings and it goes as follows:
1. Person A puts a picture in a vault.
2. Person B draws a picture of what they think is in the vault.
3. Person A groups the picture person B drew with three other pictures and hands them, along with the picture in the vault, to person C.
4. Person C compares the picture in the vault to the four drawings they've been handed and decides which is the closest.
If the picture person B drew is judged closest, it's a positive result. If positive results happen to a statistically unlikely degree, it's evidence for psi being real[1].
What I'm suggesting is replacing the picture in the vault in step 1 with a life event and the drawing in step 2 with drawing a card from a deck. The 'life event' makes it a difficult experiment to run practically, but nothing is impossible about the basic experiment of having a double-blinded judge match a prediction with an outcome.
Note also, while there's ample evidence that a qualified remote viewer can draw an accurate picture better than chance, I remain agnostic as to whether a qualified tarot reader can pull an accurate card better than chance. The skill might be entirely in the interpretation. But that just narrows down the question of how it works as something weird in the human nervous system, there might also be something weird in how random events happen. It helps my practice to leave that question open, though if there were an experiment like the one I suggested which did answer it, I'd be very interested in reading the results.
[1] since we're talking about backing against a wall, what do you do when presented with evidence like this?
P<10^-4. Note I pulled this one from google scholar at random after searching remote viewing experiments, there are many more like it. Parapsychology reproduces much more reliably than regular psychology, there's too much scrutiny not to.
> 1. Person A puts a picture in a vault. 2. Person B draws a picture of what they think is in the vault. 3. Person A groups the picture person B drew with three other pictures and hands them, along with the picture in the vault, to person C. 4. Person C compares the picture in the vault to the four drawings they've been handed and decides which is the closest.
Without knowing the details of the experiment, just from that description there are so many potential methodological problems there! Especially if conducted by someone on the fringe of science which doesn't understand how to do a proper experiment. For example, what's the communication between persons A, B & C. Is this double-blind? How are the other drawings chosen? What does "closest" mean, and is it mentioned verbally, do they fill out a form with rankings, or what? How are candidates B & C chosen?
What I'm telling you may seem unfair, but it's reasonable to cast these doubts because the people who would conduct and participate in this kind of experiment belong to a self-selecting group that doesn't understand how to conduct scientific experiments. They could of course be doing everything right, but there is good reason to be doubtful before we know the details.
Since, as you know, mainstream science doesn't currently consider PSI a real phenomenon. Would you say this is because of a conspiracy to suppress the truth, a dismissal because mainstream science is narrow minded, or what? Claims about PSI aren't nothing new, so this isn't "new stuff" they are skeptical about.
> Note also, while there's ample evidence that a qualified remote viewer can draw an accurate picture better than chance
Where is this ample evidence? Does the mainstream scientific consensus agree with your assertion?
> Parapsychology reproduces much more reliably than regular psychology, there's too much scrutiny not to.
This is not established, but also: we are comparing parapsychology to science; if you want to argue some or all branches of psychology aren't science either, feel free, but that's a different argument. There's no reproducibility and no scientific method to it. If you (you == not just you, Suo, but anyone) can reproduce parapsychological "experiments", how come you did not win the Amazing Randi challenge?
PS: the two experiments you posed don't even seem equivalent! We are still not demonstrating the question determines the cards!
It's easy to provide a counterexample: suppose I ask the same question N times, and N times the cards show different results, and each time the "experts" agree on a single interpretation. This in no way shows that the question determines the result; it merely shows there is an agreed upon procedure to interpret the result of cards.
Let me give you a simple example: let's say the question is "what lies in my future?" and each time it gets asked, a single Tarot card is drawn. Each time a different card gets drawn (for the same question and same person asking), but all experts agree on this interpretation: "the card is a picture of (thing)".
This interpretation is deterministic, every expert agrees on it, yet the card drawn doesn't get determined by the question.
I hope I have shown your experiment is flawed.
As for the rest of your comment re: meaning vs fact, I'm sorry but it's the same old cop-out all mystics end up claiming whenever backed against a wall.