3/9/2020 pref_5_Reading 1.

5: Revisión del intento


Juan Miguel SUAREZ AREVALO

ÁREA PERSONAL MIS CURSOS 21980 FIRST TERM PREF_5_READIN…

Comenzado el jueves, 3 de septiembre de 2020, 15:25

Estado Finalizado
Finalizado en jueves, 3 de septiembre de 2020, 15:28
Tiempo empleado 2 minutos 54 segundos
Puntos 100,00/100,00
Cali cación 5,00 de 5,00 (100%)

https://202065.aulasuniminuto.edu.co/mod/quiz/review.php?attempt=193788&cmid=311277 1/3
3/9/2020 pref_5_Reading 1.5: Revisión del intento

Información
Read carefully, and answer the questions. Pay special attetion to the tenses within the reading:

Fortune-Telling: Fact, Fiction & Fantasy

By Benjamin Radford

Adapted from: http://www.livescience.com/28593-fortune-telling.html

 

Fortune-telling has been practiced for millennia. Humans always want to know what the future has in store for us. Who
doesn't want a glimpse — even if only for a few moments — of the cosmic plan to see if our destiny lies in riches or
ruin? What is going to happen next?

Divination by laughter and cats

Some of the claimed methods for divining the future are simply bizarre. Gelomancy, for example, involves carefully
listening to hysterical laughter (and even animal noises) for clues about what is going to happen in the future. Those
who practiced felidomancy claimed to know the future by observing cats; everyone knows that a black cat crossing
your path predicts bad luck, but did you know that sneezing is a cat's way of predicting rain?

Numerology, phrenology & palmistry

Many believe that a person's name (or even how many letters are in a name) give important clues to what their future is
going to hold. One form of divination held that bumps on the skull could accurately predict not only a person's
personality but indeed their future. This "science" of phrenology was not a weird, fringe belief but instead wildly popular
even among well-educated Americans and Europeans in the 1800s.

There are many hundreds of long-discredited (and self-evidently absurd) fortune-telling methods. Many equally unlikely
techniques are practiced today, including numerology, reading tea leaves, consulting tarot cards, and examining the
lines on a person's palm.
Dream interpretation

For millennia, dreams have universally been considered a fortune-telling tool, and there is a thriving cottage industry of
books, DVDs and fortune-tellers who claim to divine your future by interpreting your dreams. For example, dreaming
about an attic means that you are going to renew an important friendship, and dreaming about walnuts indicates
that you are going tohave losses and nancial ruin. (If you repeatedly dream about eating walnuts in an attic with an
important friend while you lose money, you may want to seek therapy.)
The psychology of fortune-telling

Whatever form the fortune-telling takes, the basic process is the same: seeking meaning in random patterns and
phenomenon. Some essentially random event is observed in nature (animal sounds are created, dreams are recorded)
or caused to happen (tea leaves are stirred, cards are shu ed), and people closely examines the results trying to make
meaning or sense of them. The human brain is very good at nding (or creating) meaning even when there is none,
such as in random patterns. That's why people see faces and other images in clouds, Rorschach blots, and coffee
stains. This phenomenon, called pareidolia, is well known in psychology.
Validity of fortune-telling

Do any of these fortune-telling tools work? Unfortunately not, and it's not a di cult question to test. Fortune-tellers
failed to predict the September 11, 2001, attacks, the recent global economic collapse, the 2011 Japanese tsunami and
nuclear meltdown, and countless other important world events that would have saved innocent lives if they'd been
accurately predicted.
The most obvious problem is that different fortune-telling methods discredit each other (and themselves) by giving
inconsistent and contradictory predictions. Not only do answers vary between methods, but they even vary between
consultations of the same signs. Two tarot card or tea leaf readings minutes apart with the same person asking the
exact same question about the future should come up with the same answer, but they don't.

Let's say, for example, that someone wants to know if they are going to move to Paris in the next 10 years, or whether
the current president is going to be re-elected next term. If any of these fortune-telling methods worked, they should all
give the same answer; it shouldn't matter whether you ask a psychic, read tarot cards, or sprinkle a handful of ower
petals on the ground and look for guidance. The answers should all be the same. Instead, the answers are often no

https://202065.aulasuniminuto.edu.co/mod/quiz/review.php?attempt=193788&cmid=311277 2/3
3/9/2020 pref_5_Reading 1.5: Revisión del intento

better than chance (which, in these examples, is 50/50 anyway). This is the same reason that a person can consult 10
different psychics and get 10 different answers about the future. If these fortune-telling methods are so fallible and
ckle, why use them at all?

One doesn't need to consult a psychic or fortune-teller to come up with a possible, potential vision of something that is
going or isn’t going to happen. Anyone can do that; if you want to know if something good or bad could possibly
happen to you — from meeting a tall dark stranger to being killed in a plane crash to winning the lottery — the answer is
always yes. If you want to know whether these things are going to happen to you, the future — as always — remains
uncertain.

Pregunta 1
1. When you dreaming about walnuts, it means that you are going to have  (have) nancial ruin.
Correcta

Puntúa 50,00
2. When a cat sneezes, it means it is going to rain  .(rain)
sobre 50,00

3. Dreaming with an attic means that you  are going to renew  (renew) a friendship.

4. If you see a black cat, it means that you  are going to have  (have) bad luck.

5. Passing beneath a ladder means you  are going to have  (have) bad luck.

Pregunta 2  
Correcta
According to the previous reading, select true or false for the following statements.
Puntúa 50,00
sobre 50,00 1. A brown cat crossing your path predicts bad luck.                                                                                     False 

2. Dreaming about an attic means that you are going to lose money.                                                         False 

3. The human brain is very good at nding meaning even when there is none                                         True 

4. Fortune tellers predicted the September 11th, 2001 attack.                                                                     False 

5. Different fortune-telling methods discredit each other by giving contradictory predictions.              True 

Ir a...
◄ pref_5_Listening 1.5 pref_6_Vocabulary 1.6 ►

https://202065.aulasuniminuto.edu.co/mod/quiz/review.php?attempt=193788&cmid=311277 3/3