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A New Astrology Paradigm

fossilhound

Thinker
fossilhound
Joined
Aug 7, 2010
Messages
170
Greetings friends. I have a question for astrologers.

Assume for the sake of argument that it's true that a person's daily horoscope can predict his or her fortune with high accuracy - not perfect accuracy, but enough accuracy that a skeptic like me would have to do a double-take and reassess his conclusion that astrology is simply silly woo. Shouldn't the process be reversible?

IOW: an astrologer should be able to look at all the facts concerning my day, compile them into categories, and by applying the rules of astrology determine my astrological sign, and eventually my exact day, date and place of birth?

If the process isn't reversible, why not? And wouldn't admitting that it's not reversible be a tacit admition that a horoscope is spurious in the first place?
 
Wait, are you appealing to astrologers with...logic? What were you thinking?
 
fossilhound said:
If the process isn't reversible, why not? And wouldn't admitting that it's not reversible be a tacit admition that a horoscope is spurious in the first place?
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I am not an astrologer, but I studied it a little back in my neopagan days. Back then I would have said that astrology doesn't predict events with a one-to-one, predictable relationship. Astrology predicts trends. So you wouldn't be able to work back from specific events the way you suggest.
 
fossilhound said:
If the process isn't reversible, why not? And wouldn't admitting that it's not reversible be a tacit admition that a horoscope is spurious in the first place?
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Think of a multi-valued function, like arcsin. For each value between -1 and +1 there are an infinite number of solutions. In your case, there may be a one-to-many relation between the birthdate and the sign.

Also, you admitted that the astrology might not be perfect. The analogy I'd use in this case is a shotgun blast. From the spread on a target you might be able to say roughly where the shooter was standing but not exactly.

All this, of course, admitting without reservation your hypothetical.
 
I have a co-worker who knows me well. She's into astrology big time. Although we work together closely, she did not know my astrological sign. One day she asked me what it was. I told her it was exactly the same as one twelfth of the rest of the population. She wasn't satisfied with that answer. I told her to guess. She knows me well enough that it should be easy to figure out based on my personality. It took her ten guesses to get it right. She still believes, though.

Ward
 
If trends are predicted by my astrological signm then a study of my trends should lead straight back to my sign. There's really no logical way out. If astology really worked, then it would work in both directions.
But let me posit the same conundrum in another way: Shouldn't a second astrologer be able to take a reading about me from my first astrologer, and figure out what my sign is (assiuming all actual allusions to my sign were scrubbed from the prediction)?
 
ETA to remove typos.
If trends are predicted by my astrological sign then a study of my trends should lead straight back to my sign. There's really no logical way out. If astology really worked, then it would work in both directions.
But let me posit the same conundrum in another way: Shouldn't a second astrologer be able to take a reading about me from my first astrologer, and figure out what my sign is (assuming all actual allusions to my sign were scrubbed from the prediction)?
 
I sometimes lie about my sign to bleevers, let them cheerfully name off all the ways I fit it, then tell them when I was really born. :p

- Scott
 
fossilhound said:
If trends are predicted by my astrological sign then a study of my trends should lead straight back to my sign. There's really no logical way out. If astology really worked, then it would work in both directions.
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No, it wouldn't. Your assertion is a strawman. Astrology has enough logical problems without us making up **** about it.

fossilhound said:
But let me posit the same conundrum in another way: Shouldn't a second astrologer be able to take a reading about me from my first astrologer, and figure out what my sign is (assuming all actual allusions to my sign were scrubbed from the prediction)?
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This is, more or less, true - except inasmuch as much of a single reading relies on the astrologer's interpretation of a chart. Two different astrologers will interpret the same thing in a natal chart (say, Saturn in the third house in opposition to the Moon) in different ways. Also because the interpretation of the natal chart depends on cold-reading the client.

Your argument relies on astrology being a whole lot more precise than it really is. Part of the reason astrology is as successful as it is, is that it is so vague and general that the Forer Effect applies very strongly.

Damn, I never thought I'd find myself defending astrology against straw men.
 
There used to be a website that did that. Asked you a bunch of personality quiz type questions and then guessed when you were born. But it's gone now. Also, it was a spoof.
 
Almo said:
Well, it's really important to dis astrology for the right reasons. So, good job there.
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Well, it is.

Consider someone who is on the fence about astrology - unsure whether to believe the claims of the astrologer or the skeptic. When the skeptic makes a strawman argument against astrology, the astrologer can simply dismiss it as a fallacious argument - exactly the way skeptics dismiss other fallacious arguments - and the skeptic looks bad. The fence-sitter is unconvinced by the skeptic's argument for very good reasons and wanders off with the astrologer.

We complain when the evolution-deniers make strawmen. Why shouldn't astrologers complain when we do, and for exactly the same reason?

Like I said, there's already plenty of ways to take down astrology without debunking claims that astrology does not make.
 
arthwollipot said:
I am not an astrologer, but I studied it a little back in my neopagan days. Back then I would have said that astrology doesn't predict events with a one-to-one, predictable relationship. Astrology predicts trends. So you wouldn't be able to work back from specific events the way you suggest.
Click to expand...

Even if it predicts trends, with enough you should be able to constrain the ranges of possible birth dates to produce a useful test.

Likewise, even if you allow something like the suggestion of SezMe (regarding multivalued functions) you should be able to constrain things usefully still and produce a test. If I'm told that there's a function that has given an output of 1 and I believe it's a sin function, I can tell you what inputs it can or can't have even if I can't specify one exactly, and we can go and check that after the fact.

As another example, I might have a function that takes two numbers as inputs and returns one number as an output. It is known to be irreversible. I might believe that the function is straightforward addition, and you have an example with which we can test this idea. I can't tell you with much certainty that I'm right based on just one example perhaps, but I can certainly tell in a lot of cases if I'm wrong.

So the process of creating a horoscope from a birth date might not be reversible, but that doesn't mean you can't test astrology by looking at things in that direction. That said, I'm not sure it has any practical benefits here.
 
It's not a straw man

arthwollipot said:
No, it wouldn't. Your assertion is a strawman. Astrology has enough logical problems without us making up **** about it.

This is, more or less, true - except inasmuch as much of a single reading relies on the astrologer's interpretation of a chart. Two different astrologers will interpret the same thing in a natal chart (say, Saturn in the third house in opposition to the Moon) in different ways. Also because the interpretation of the natal chart depends on cold-reading the client.

Your argument relies on astrology being a whole lot more precise than it really is. Part of the reason astrology is as successful as it is, is that it is so vague and general that the Forer Effect applies very strongly.

Damn, I never thought I'd find myself defending astrology against straw men.
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it's a logical induction. If it works one way it should work in reverse. By the way: does the topic deserve even this level of animosity? Mine is a new logical attack on astrologiy. I'm not simply making up "****.*

Edited by LashL: 
To properly mask profanity. Please see Rule 10.
 
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My gestalt definition of a strawman argument is this: I deliberately mis-state an opponents argument to make it as weak as possible so that I can then knock it down - like a man of straw. This is not what I did. I started with an "if" statement, "If astrology really works more or less as claimed [paraphrase] (THE SAME CLAIM EXACTLY THAT ASTROLOGERS MAKE) then went to a quite logical "then" statement "shouldn't the process work both ways?." arthwollipot - you don't know what a strawman argument is.
 
Sorry, but you are doing exactly what you have defined as a strawman. "If it works one way it should work in reverse". Astrologers claim that it should not work in reverse. Strawman, by your definition.
 
I think astrologers are the ones claiming it works (in the usual way), and fossilhound is the one claiming it should work in reverse.
 
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