Victor's Pursuit of Serenity Chapter 12

The ancients hated the incomprehensibility of the myriad phenomena just like us, but they were more decisive than us. In a few words, they established a model and put everything in it. In their view, the natural world has mysteries, and whoever can find them will find the key to explain everything. Whether it is the Five Stars and Three Enclosures, the Four Pillars and Eight Characters, or any other system, they all reflect the same belief. The Eight Characters are popular in later generations because of their simplicity, and there is no Chinese who does not know them. But I am curious, do people who use such a simple method to establish a destiny model, such as Li Xuzhong, believe in it themselves?

This question can also be asked to people in other fields, such as those who establish a certain historical theory or a certain world theory. Do they believe it themselves? To establish a system of eight characters, one task is to calculate the ancients whose birth dates are known and make them consistent. There are not many people with such detailed records, such as Duke Zhuang of Lu, Emperor Wu of Han, and Zhuge Liang, so this work is not difficult. After the system is established, it will naturally be threatened by facts, but one way for a theory to survive is to constantly deny facts that cannot be explained and to constantly modify itself to make it consistent with facts that cannot be denied, just as we have seen in places other than fortune-telling. The ancients understood this principle long ago. Historical records record countless accurate calculations and praise them loudly. As for those inaccurate calculations, no matter how many there are, they are not paid attention to. They are passed around and become what Han Yu said, "One or two out of a hundred are not wrong." The key is whether a theory agrees to be denied by facts.

I think the founders of such systems must be quite confident in their own systems; at the same time, they believe even more in the persuasiveness of the systems, and believe that human cognitive weaknesses will make the systems very popular.

So, do the fortune tellers on the lower classes believe in the theories of the eight characters? Of course they do. In their opinion, these things are thought up by learned people, so they must make sense. Moreover, whether they are true or false is not their turn to think about it. They don't want any right to self-determination, but just want a convenient tool to rest their brains and exercise their stomachs. Of course, every fortune teller who has not starved to death knows that they cannot respond to customers completely according to the teachings in the fortune book. They decide what to say by themselves. As for the principles in the fortune book, they can just randomly involve them. After all, you and I don't read the "Fate Book" and don't know what it says.

Don't read "Yao Yu"