Astrology Readings.

[SlayerofCliffracers]

Well, if you agree with me that astrological standards of accuracy are weak, then you should understand why I think astrology doesn't work.

I understand why people don't believe in Astrology. However the only way to establish standards would be to gather all the Astrologers together in one place and get them to agree on common standards.

However this is not a problem that is limited to Astrology. As I see it, the mindset of 'skeptical' people on this forum is ridiculously close to exactly the mindset of forcing evidence to fit theory. Not so much with Astrology but with Ghosts and such.

I think that "the need to constantly be right" is a necessity for astrology, because otherwise it becomes obvious that there is nothing to it. Since most of the predictions astrology makes are very general and vague, they darn well should be constantly right. If they aren't, it's identical to astrology not working.

This is exactly the problem. The predictions are very general and vague because it is neccesery to be never definately wrong. If you are then people will quickly declare that 'Astrology is wrong'.

However every Science needs to be able to be wrong. People (other than perhaps Creationists) don't tend to derive from a specific failiure the total bunkness of a particular Scientific discipline.

Someone doesn't say. "Scientists were wrong about X or Y" And then proceed to declare all Science bunk on this basis.

It is an unwarrented conclusion to go from specific misses 'X discipline is wrong'. The only way you can debunk an entire discipline would be to destroy it's 'founding hypothesis'.

The founding hypothesis of Astrology is I believe the following.

That the position of stars in the sky at specific moments has some sort of identifiable positive or negative correlation with what happens on earth which is beyond what is explainable by the physical laws

Yes, since I realize that I am probably going to fail to convince you that astrology is bunk, then at the very least I can give you some advice about how to test these things properly for skeptics. Naturally, any information you try to provide after the reading, in response to what people say, is going to be seen by skeptics as finegaling/cheating. So, you need to make sure that the reading is complete... there should be no room later for you to qualify misses as "good misses."

This kind of thing is not how you test Astrology itself Detective. Skeptics are always telling me of the unreliability of human testimony for ghosts and ghoulies and yet they believe that human testimony can be taken as some kind of definate disproof of Astrology!

You test Astrology by taking the planetery bodies and where they are in the sky and seeing if they have any effect whatsoever on what human beings do that is beyond the rate of chance. If you find that the planets are Neutral factors in human affairs, then you have debunked Astrology.

So are you saying you think the failure is your own, and not astrology's? That if you had just interpreted his chart better, you would have been more accurate? I disagree. Astrology says that the stars/planets determine our personalities. If that's true, then it shouldn't need so much interpretation from you, it should be apparent.

Perhaps the reason it is so "inhumanly complex" is just to obscure the fact that it doesn't work. What exactly is it that makes you so sure it's working? Is that something you know, or something you feel? Because I personally believe that you don't "know" astrology is working, but rather that you "feel" like it is working. In fact I would go so far as to speculate that you desire it to work. Would you say I'm right?

Of course now I desire it to work, because I don't want to admit being wrong of course.

How do I know that Astrology works? Because I have seen how it works on myself and others. I weighed up what didn't work against what did and decided that they were onto at least something that deserved further investigation. I investigated things in the following order.

Sun Sign.
Moon Sign.
Planets.
Aspects and Houses.

Actually, it would be very easy to do so. In fact any scientist would love to prove some commonly accepted theory to be false, because they would get a lot of attention for doing so. The difference is that scientific theories are [bfalisifiable. They say that if you do a certain thing, there will be a certain result. This is very easy to test, and you can even do it yourself, just do that certain thing and see if the result is what science says it should be.

You certainly have a rose-tinted view of Science Detective that's all I can say. In actual fact, few key major Scientific Theories are Falsifiable. Evolution is accepted for instance, despite the fact that without a time machine, it is impossable to falsify it. In reality people will accept unfalsifiable theories in Science, if the alternative is to admit they don't know.

BUT ASTROLOGY, BIOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY ETC AREN'T THEORIES THEY ARE DISCIPLINES!

Astrology has theories. Jupiter has to do with Religion/Philosophy is a theory. You can falsify the theories (in theory) by determining that people who are little concerned with such things don't have weaker Jupiters than anyone else.

However Astrology itself is not a theory. It is a discipline which throws up theories, some accurate, some poorly based.

Yes, unfortunetly astrology is difficult to disprove, but not because it's real... rather because it's claims are non-falsifiable, like I said before. Astrology doesn't say anything concrete, it vaguely makes a lot of predictions that sometimes are true, and sometimes aren't. Because the core hypothesis of astrology is so wishy-washy, and non-falsifiable, that makes it hard to disprove, in the same way that if I sell you a pen and tell you it's a lucky pen, it would be incredibly hard for you to prove it isn't.

Both astrology and the lucky pen are very hard to disprove; but both are also weak, suspect claims. Do you see what I mean?

Now please explain to me how you would falsify Chemistry, Biology, Medicine etc? If a single theory is confirmed, you have failed in your falsification.

Not disprove particular theories, I mean the disciplines themselves? This is why your whole project is totally oppressive in nature. What you are doing is trying to narrow down and limit human investigations by closing down entire disciplines.

Well, obviously it's not surprising to me that the charts would be drastically wrong, however I do want to comment that I sincerely appreciate your honesty in mentioning this. I like people like you... you argue fairly and will even mention a fact which seems to undermine your case. As I also try hard to argue fairly, I am certainly not going to take that fact and shove it down your throat, but I will mention that perhaps you should pay less attention to your charts, and more attention to why Randi disbelieves in astrology, and what his reasons are.

If you want to truly know about a person, the best way is to talk to them. It's a far better method than any chart. Perhaps this is something that we even agree on...!

Well James Randis reasons for disagreeing with things tend to be so poor that I certainly aren't going to take any advice for him. It reads as if all that happened is that James Randi realised he 'could' be wrong because he found out about Barnum Effects and whatnot.

I will pay attention only to my charts. My charts are what matters because they are Astrology itself. I do not uphold to the following maxim which he obviously does.

"If it is possible to concieve of how one can be wrong, you are wrong,"

This sadly sums up what James Randi's whole position. He believes and disbelieves absolutely.

Well, I hate to play the word police on you, but using the word "theory" in this way will confuse people. If you are using the word "theory" to mean "claim," my suggestion is to just use the word claim (maybe "factor" was a bad suggestion on my part.) If you've noticed, I've been using the word "predictions," but "claims" works equally well.

Theory is the word to use. Because it is not a prediction or a claim, it is a specific theory about what a planet, aspect or whatever does in practice. A factor has certain theories attatched to them in Astrology.

Our job is to work out which theories have basis in reality and which one's were simply hasty conclusion drawn essentially on coincidence.

No, I'm afraid it doesn't. I'll go ahead and quote Hokulele's answer on why it doesn't, since he says it better than I could:

This is exactly why it is a waste of time dealing with Skeptics. If the Gunter Sachs study debunked Astrology, then I doubt you'd be raising any flaws whatsoever.

So the Gunter Sach's study you quoted uses a flawed testing method. I asked him for a better testing method, and this was his suggestion:

Utter BS. All the flaws below mentioned were addressed in the methodology of the study. The point is not that there are correlations, the study accepts that there will be random correlations. It specifically eliminates any correlations that are within the range of chance.

Of course there remains a very small probability of error, however the sheer number of significant correlations means the odds of all of them being wrong (needed to disprove Astrology) are rather small.

You can scream "Statistical Artifacts" at me, but the burden of proof is on you to find them.

Do you know of any studies like this which show positive results for astrology?

Ertel mentions a study on nurses which turned out well for Astrology on the Gunter Sachs criticisms page.

But the demand is invalid. Because you are presuming that the theory in question is necceserily Astrologically valid to start off with.

All it would ever constitute would be definate proof of the invalidity of a specific Astrological theory, not Astrology itself. All that 'Astrology' must do to survive is jettison the theory that was torn down.

Nope, afraid not. I admit that I am a pretty unique person, personality wise, so even if astrology were true it would probably not work so well on me.

Since I've given up guessing and admitted I have no clue what were you?

But it's not simply "possiblity," it's a valid counter-explanation for why astrology seems to "work," even if the stars were "neutral factors." So it's not even worth considering alternative explanations? Why not?

It does not constitute a valid objection until you have established Neutrality. Once you know Astrology is invalid, you can apply the theory but not until then.

Otherwise it comes up well for Astrology, because it means that no Astrological theory can be trusted to be completely accurate even if Astrology were actually true, since a high internal error rate can be expected given human nature as you have proven it to be.

 

[Pixel42]

Skeptics are always telling me of the unreliability of human testimony for ghosts and ghoulies and yet they believe that human testimony can be taken as some kind of definate disproof of Astrology!

You couldn't be more wrong. It's precisely because sceptics know that human testimony is unreliable that they require more than anecdotes to convince them of anything. The fact that you could type this makes me wonder if you have actually understood anything that has been so patiently explained to you.

"If it is possible to concieve of how one can be wrong, you are wrong,"

This sadly sums up what James Randi's whole position.

Please point to where James Randi, or anyone here, said any such thing.

What you seem to be wilfully misunderstanding with this statement is an important part of the scientific method, which several posters here have tried to explain to you, and which can be summarised as "If it is possible to conceive of how one can be wrong one must first eliminate those sources of possible error and still get the same results before concluding that one is right".

Here's Richard Feynman on the subject: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

You can scream "Statistical Artifacts" at me, but the burden of proof is on you to find them.

No the burden of proof is on the person claiming a correlation to show that it isn't a statistical artifact by repeating the experiment with multiple large data sets and consistently getting the same result. Otherwise all they are doing is data mining. And even if they do repeatably find an effect that tracks with the positions of planets all they've shown is correlation, not causation. That's why experiments which test specific predictions of astrology, rather than using the "measure everything and then data mine" approach you favour, are so much more meaningful.

 

[Klimax]

I know, I just add that because the first person gave me someone elses data. I like to remind myself of this so as to discourage cold reading on my own part.

Hmm.Ok.

Call this a devious copout but I wouldn't expect you to give a particularly definate answer anyway. What I basically did there is invert Tauros, my own sign because Scorpio is the opposite sign to Tauros. I constructed basically an Anti-Me. Maybe too strongly. But then you asked for precision, which in practice means an extreme claim.

Correct (underlined) as I needed reduced partially and vague statements.

I honesty knew nothing about you before you appeared on my thread.

Let's say so,but it didn't look so.

I was not going to add that on the basis of the kind of person who goes on an internet forum doesn't tend to be of that nature. However that would be Cold Reading, so I added it anyway.

This is both ways.

Ouch! I guess I should have determined based upon the fact the Sun has 2 more planets backing it up, that the Sun would dominate the Moon and not the other way around. The worst miss in the bundle definately.

Maybe...

Well actually it's a dilemma. Because the nature of the 12th House is actually a false perception of weakness which leads to exaggeration in actual reality.

Interesting,but don't think so in my case anyway...

Partially correct.

That makes sense because the nature of Scorpio is at loggerheads with what the opposition in question would mean.

Trouble is in practice is if I am to give a precise answer that isn't internally contradictory I must choose one side of the other in a contradiction. Or do I?

Maybe...

Completely wrong.(No psychiatrist or psychologist seen) I note you said stretch.

Happy to hear it. I said stretch because it isn't the case that Jupiter is that weak in your chart. It can definately hold it's own against a puny rock like Mars even if it happens to be allied with the eastern horizen.

...

Yes I could have derived the latter by application of Cold Reading though.

Actually the meaning of the Trine aspect wouldn't be strong enough to make one a Libertarian. Really it means something more like not a Fascist. But how many people would admit to not being Fascists?

I must remind myself again that Trines are not positive, they mean simply a lack of something (conflict) not anything positive.

Interesting explanation for fail...

Venus can be a pain in the backside when it comes to interacting with other planets in anything other than a simple oppose/conjunct way.

...

I guess that interpretation is sort of contradictory with the rebellion theme I mention later, anyway it is only a Trine which only represents harmony. You are wise not to give me any definate answers on the rest, however it is annoying to not know given as I mentioned the striking nature of the Jupiter square to Midheavan.

Interesting problem,but cannot be of help.

What do you mean by every major influence? You mean like your education and such or your interests in life. I am trying to nail the meaning of Cancer+7th House Jupiter square. If what you are saying is what I hope you are saying, I am rather overjoyed.

I noticed that I said underlined and used bold,great...
Anyway I took related as influenced and "history, your family, your heritage or in a final stretch your country" is listing too many things making it vague and applying to majority/all of people therefore unusable!

It isn't future though. It's future, present and past. That you definately disagreed with my above statement on Venus suggests that your development cannot be entirely harmonious.

One would think so...

You should have classified misses on stretches differently from other misses, taking that into account I still am not unhappy with my results. The main reason is that I have previously identified what was as I said 'a stretch' in many of my failiures.

Let's seee then:
Partially:2
Wrong:4
Wrong-stretches:3
Correct: 3
Correct-stretches:2
Neither:1
Unrated(future):3

No that big difference.
Advice:If it is written in reading it should count fully,no stretches otherwise reading becomes meaningless and totaly unusable.

Don't worry about cold reading. The die is sort of cast already. I am just interested in getting feedback which Astrologically you shouldn't give me (isn't that reverse psychology?) about your life in order to establish how things are working/not working in practice.

I am particularly interested in the meaning of the Jupiter 7th House orb which squares the MC at such a tight orb.

Good,good.
But note for others,so far I believe that any cold reader using my posts would get similar info as astrologger here.Can be proven wrong obviously...

Anyway thank you for your time.

 

[dafydd]

Still waiting for how and the why re clergymen and Jupiter.A strange,vague force that all the blinkered scientists have missed will not do as an answer.

 

[L The Detective]

However this is not a problem that is limited to Astrology. As I see it, the mindset of 'skeptical' people on this forum is ridiculously close to exactly the mindset of forcing evidence to fit theory. Not so much with Astrology but with Ghosts and such.

Then you and I see things differently. I don't see any skeptics on this forum forcing evidence to fit theories, in fact I don't see any skeptics pushing theories at all, in general. By definition, "skeptics" don't push theories, they analyzing the theories that are pushed. There doesn't necessarily need to be a competing theory for every claim, right? We can analyze the claim on it's own merits.

On the other hand, if you think that skeptics here should be just as harsh on scientific theories as they are on stuff like ghosts, I think you'll find that they absolutely are. Scientists are their own worst critics; that's what's so cool about science. It would be wonderful if astrologers would follow suit.

This is exactly the problem. The predictions are very general and vague because it is neccesery to be never definately wrong. If you are then people will quickly declare that 'Astrology is wrong'.

Exactly!! As you say, the nature of the predictions necessitates that they be somewhat general. And yet, astrology still often seems to be definitely wrong, about as often as I would expect random chance to make it so. The fact that it has to be very vague, and still can't be accurate, why is that not ringing alarm bells for you? Are you willing to stop for a moment, and take a skeptical look at your own ideas?

However every Science needs to be able to be wrong. People (other than perhaps Creationists) don't tend to derive from a specific failiure the total bunkness of a particular Scientific discipline.

Someone doesn't say. "Scientists were wrong about X or Y" And then proceed to declare all Science bunk on this basis.

Of course not. But in the case of astrology, what I am talking about is the core belief that the stars affect our personalities. That's what I've been talking about all along. It's silly to analyze each claim that astrology makes on it's own when we haven't even established that the core idea is true.

Of course, I realize that you think this has been established, but please realize that I disagree. Since that is the case, let's focus on examining that disagreement, shall we?

The founding hypothesis of Astrology is I believe the following.

That the position of stars in the sky at specific moments has some sort of identifiable positive or negative correlation with what happens on earth which is beyond what is explainable by the physical laws

Yes, I agree. However, just a small suggestion... let's forget about that last part "beyond what is explainable by physical laws." That may or may not be the case, but it wouldn't change the fact that if astrology worked, we should be able to identify that it works. First, let's establish that it works. Once that's established, we can get into the "how" later.

This kind of thing is not how you test Astrology itself Detective. Skeptics are always telling me of the unreliability of human testimony for ghosts and ghoulies and yet they believe that human testimony can be taken as some kind of definate disproof of Astrology!

You are absolutely correct, these are by no means formal tests. Even if all your readings here were dead on accurate, it of course wouldn't prove anything, as it could just be coincidence. But it would definitely get people's interest, who would ask for more tests, and at some point down the road would demand a more formal test to see if there is really something to all this.

My advice was simply meant to help your informal tests be more useful, that's all. If you withhold information that would've helped make your reading look more accurate until after the reading is over, obviously no one is going to believe you after the fact. That's all I was trying to say. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Of course now I desire it to work, because I don't want to admit being wrong of course.

Haha, of course. No one does, it's an ego thing. But I try my hardest to keep my ego out of discussions like this, because it won't help anything. I believe that the only way for me to convince you that I am right is if I am also open to being proven wrong, so I try my hardest to have an open mind to everything you say. At the same time, I'm trying to be careful not to insult you, because if I do your ego will absolutely prevent you from listening to anything I have to say. Besides, this also complements my personality, which is to tend to want to have friends who disagree with me.

So I like people like you, who disagree with me, but at the same time are able to fairly discuss those disagreements. It actually bothers me when some forum members on here give people like you a hard time for no reason.

How do I know that Astrology works? Because I have seen how it works on myself and others. I weighed up what didn't work against what did and decided that they were onto at least something that deserved further investigation.

So you admit that personal bias could be at play here, but your response is to say that it could be true for me as well. Fair enough, but I disagree...

You certainly have a rose-tinted view of Science Detective that's all I can say. In actual fact, few key major Scientific Theories are Falsifiable. Evolution is accepted for instance, despite the fact that without a time machine, it is impossable to falsify it. In reality people will accept unfalsifiable theories in Science, if the alternative is to admit they don't know.

Yes, I can certainly understand why you might think I have a rose-tinted view of science, but I want to correct you on something. It's not science, per se, that I love, but rather the scientific method. Or perhaps a better way to say it is that the heart of "science" really is the scientific method. It's like I was saying above, science is incredibly harsh on itself, and that's what makes the theories that do become accepted so trustworthy for me.

Now, another correction. You say that "few" major theories are falsifiable, and give evolution as an example. But actually, you're compeltely wrong. Evolution is actually *very* fasifiable, that's what so beautiful about it. It makes certain very specific predictions about common ancestors and various things, all of which have turned out to be true. If just one of those things had been wrong, it would have falsified the entire theory. I wish I could give you some specific examples, but I am not a biology expert and retaining facts is not my strong suit; but the great thing about this forum is that there are many experts here, I'm sure they can back me up on that.

"If it is possible to concieve of how one can be wrong, you are wrong,"

This sadly sums up what James Randi's whole position. He believes and disbelieves absolutely.

I can understand why you'd see it that way. But you're being a bit unfair in how you state his position, aren't you? If you don't mind, please allow me to restate for you:

"If there are two equally valid explanations, one natural and one supernatural, it makes more sense to go with the natural one."

In other words, it's not just that it is possible to concieve of how one is wrong... it's that one can concieve it, and that this explanation fits with everything else we know about the world better than your explanation does. Now, does this position make sense to you? If not, why not?

Theory is the word to use. Because it is not a prediction or a claim, it is a specific theory about what a planet, aspect or whatever does in practice. A factor has certain theories attatched to them in Astrology.

Very well, we shall agree to disagree. I have warned you that this may cause confusion in your future discussions, and you may want to keep that in mind. But in my particular case I now know what you mean, and will interpret accordingly.

This is exactly why it is a waste of time dealing with Skeptics. If the Gunter Sachs study debunked Astrology, then I doubt you'd be raising any flaws whatsoever.

Well, you're probably right, but it doesn't change the fact that the study was done in a flawed way, and I'm sure that it would be possible to realize that regardless of the results. However, the point is that the study was done in such a way that they looked for any correlation that would validate astrology. That's what makes it flawed. So it was already a forgone conclusion that they would find something, and if I may be so bold I think connecting accidents to Taurus's "stubborness" a bit of a stretch.

I'm very sorry if you think it's a waste of time talking to me, but if you would be so kind I'd appreciate it if you'd not just lump me in with a particular group. Although I may share many beliefs with a lot of people here, I have come to these conclusions on my own. So please, don't say that it's a waste of time talking to skeptics, say that it's a waste of time talking to me, if that's what you truly think. I will try to be as fair and honest with you as possible, so hopefully you will not think I am wasting your time.

Utter BS. All the flaws below mentioned were addressed in the methodology of the study. The point is not that there are correlations, the study accepts that there will be random correlations. It specifically eliminates any correlations that are within the range of chance.

Right, but the flaw of the study is that it looks at a whole range of things, and picks out correlations that can be seen as favorable to astrology. So this isn't a good study. Hokulele's example of a testing method was better because it examines something specific, and it is obvious from the result whether astrology has passed the test or not. These are the kind of tests we should be doing, if we want to see if astrology works or not.

Of course there remains a very small probability of error, however the sheer number of significant correlations means the odds of all of them being wrong (needed to disprove Astrology) are rather small.

I don't think you're using statistics the right way. If I pick a single blade of grass from a field, the odds of me picking that grass were a million to one, but that is not statistically significant. If the people in that study were just looking for any correlations that would be in their favor, the odds of them finding a correlation like that are 100%. So the study is flawed.

Since I've given up guessing and admitted I have no clue what were you?

Sagittarius.

It does not constitute a valid objection until you have established Neutrality. Once you know Astrology is invalid, you can apply the theory but not until then.

Well, the way I see it, neutrality is the assumed default position. Let me explain why I think that is. If you believe that astrology is correct, it must be because you have evidence that it is correct, right? In other words, you started from the position that the stars were neutral, and were then convinced that it was not. So you have reasons for believing what you believe. Obviously, it wouldn't make any sense to believe in something without a reason.

Now me, I don't have a reason to believe that astrology is correct. I don't have the evidence that you apparently have, so I stay at the default position that the stars are neutral, and that astrology doesn't work. I will be convinced that it does work when I see sufficient evidence.

Now, you and I may disagree on what is "sufficient evidence." But the point is that for both of us, "the stars are neutral" is the default assumption. does that make sense?

That's why it matters to me that there is a competing theory which explains astrological results in an ordinary way. I agree with Randi; If there are two equally valid explanations, one natural and one supernatural, it makes more sense to go with the natural one. Do you see where I'm coming from?

 

[L The Detective]

Thanks for your kind words, and I wanted to say I enjoy reading your posts in this thread as well, since a fresh set of eyes on old issues are always helpful.

But as a minor nitpick, I'm a she.

Thanks! So you're a she... seems like I have the sexist tendency of always assuming people on here are guys. Sorry about that!

 

[Hokulele]

Thanks! So you're a she... seems like I have the sexist tendency of always assuming people on here are guys. Sorry about that!

No worries, I can certainly think of worse things to be labeled with! I only point it out because I like breaking the stereotype of a skeptic as a grumpy old man.

To expand on one of the points you just made in your response to Slayer, one of the things I have noticed with the type of testing being done in this thread is that it is almost the opposite of the scientific method. There seems to be a scatter-shot method of putting out information and hypotheses without really trying to tie one to the other formally. It would be like trying to determine a genetic basis for personality by looking at someone's genome and asking them to subjectively agree or disagree with various statements based on such a reading. Leaving out the whole issue of nature vs. nurture, it would take millenia to come up with an entire theory of the genetic make-up of personality based on such a methodology, if in fact one can be made.

As I have stated before, pick one aspect of astrology that can be reasonably tested, create a hypothesis, and test that specific hypothesis. If it passes, expand on that. If it fails, back to step one.

SlayerofCliffracers, would you be willing to undertake such a process?

 

[SlayerofCliffracers]

Correct (underlined) as I needed reduced partially and vague statements.

I know, but it causes problems in practice since Astrologically your nature appears to be highly changable and flexible. Taking this into account, it should be rather difficult to pin you down so to speak. Call this is a copout but it follows Astrologically.

Let's say so,but it didn't look so.

The reason it doesn't look so is either that Astrology works, or it's a very clever illusion.

This is both ways.

9.0 degrees is not exactly close. I am unsure I can derive that definate a conclusion from that.

Maybe...

I tend to see the Sun as overly passive maybe.....

Interesting,but don't think so in my case anyway... Trouble is that Squares are generally considered BAD. Obviously this gives to negative interpretations, but this is still particularly humiliating.

I noticed that I said underlined and used bold,great...
Anyway I took related as influenced and "history, your family, your heritage or in a final stretch your country" is listing too many things making it vague and applying to majority/all of people therefore unusable!

The problem is that there are only 4 things that mark your 'path of development in life', 2 of them essentially contradictory (harmony and rebellion). What I mean by what I said is does your educational/career interests have to do with history and politics.

Let's seee then:
Partially:2
Wrong:4
Wrong-stretches:3
Correct: 3
Correct-stretches:2
Neither:1
Unrated(future):3

No that big difference.
Advice:If it is written in reading it should count fully,no stretches otherwise reading becomes meaningless and totaly unusable.

Stretches are important since they are what I am not quite certain would follow from the Astrology. I add them for research purposes, since as far as I am concerned, I am here to do tests on you lot not be tested myself.

Good,good.
But note for others,so far I believe that any cold reader using my posts would get similar info as astrologger here.Can be proven wrong obviously...

Anyway thank you for your time.

It's useful to have labrats that tell you are wrong on occasion. I hadn't read your posts before or least I don't remember doing so.

The only things I could have cold read about you is that you are the kind of person who frequents a skeptical forum. Everything else is pure Astrology, which I would have come up with had you been a complete and total anonomous person with a number.

Still waiting for how and the why re clergymen and Jupiter.A strange,vague force that all the blinkered scientists have missed will not do as an answer.

Other than the Astrologers who have known about the strange vague force for millenia perhaps.

The link between Clergymen and Jupiter is because Jupiters 'vague strange force' reminds people of Religion. The gas giants meanings follow very easily symbolically from their physical properties, indeed often the Astrological meaning of a planet was derived long before the Astronomy finds out stuff about a planet that confirms it's Astrological meaning.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and is highly stormy and well gaseous. Therefore it reminds people of bigger and higher things that are also somwhat nebulous but not completely (Jupiter does have faint rings). The ability to concieve of the 'bigger picture' is also crucial in hope and optimism.

Saturn is next and is somewhat smaller than Jupiter. However it has seriously neat, spherical and many layered rings (just look at the picture on wiki). Because it is like Jupiter, but smaller and with strong rings, it reminds us of limits, boundries, restrictions, but more positively rationality, scepticism and science. It 'tells us' that there are serious boundries, established laws and formal systems of testing.

Uranus is next, but it's rings are the wrong way around (from the Saturnine/Jupiter norm)! This represents quite literally Revolution the turning up side down of the rules. (The rings of Uranus weren't discovered until 1977 after the rebellious Astrological properties of the planet were known for about 200 years). What Uranus thus represent is the Saturnine rules can be turned around, inverted.

Neptune is last and has no rings. Neptune therefore represents the dissolution of everything solid, the realm where True and False are murky and difficult to determine. It represents therefore the most vague and nebulous things in the universe, mysticism, prayer, the paranormal, music (apparantly), imagination and most importantly delusions, illusions and false ideas. The real question is whether anything Neptunian is actually true at all?

You couldn't be more wrong. It's precisely because sceptics know that human testimony is unreliable that they require more than anecdotes to convince them of anything. The fact that you could type this makes me wonder if you have actually understood anything that has been so patiently explained to you.

And yet you demand a method of testing Astrology that maximises the human element involved, by preffering to test using humans rather than pure statistical number crunching.

Please point to where James Randi, or anyone here, said any such thing.

What you seem to be wilfully misunderstanding with this statement is an important part of the scientific method, which several posters here have tried to explain to you, and which can be summarised as "If it is possible to conceive of how one can be wrong one must first eliminate those sources of possible error and still get the same results before concluding that one is right".

Here's Richard Feynman on the subject: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

It is my summary of his whole attitude to things and the attitude of a lot of people here. It isn't anything he specifically said, it's a summary of what seems to be his attitude when anything comes along that is strange and 'paranormal'. He immediately comes up with any explanation as to how it could be wrong whatsoever and then practically dismisses the evidence on that basis.

Richard Feynman alliegances are cast when he states.

But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me
into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of
mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and
so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

If 'Science' consists of dismissing experiances of anything outside of some pre-determined Scientific box simply because it could be possible that it was all illusion then I really hate Science. Everything at all could be illusion, even the whole universe.

No the burden of proof is on the person claiming a correlation to show that it isn't a statistical artifact by repeating the experiment with multiple large data sets and consistently getting the same result. Otherwise all they are doing is data mining. And even if they do repeatably find an effect that tracks with the positions of planets all they've shown is correlation, not causation. That's why experiments which test specific predictions of astrology, rather than using the "measure everything and then data mine" approach you favour, are so much more meaningful.

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. That's what you like to say to us and I am determined to bring it all back to roost. It is claimed that statistical artifacts are at work, you have to go and prove what artifacts they are.

You make a claim that there is a Statistical Artifact that destroys the validity of a rather large amount of statistically significant data, you have to prove the Artifacts exist.

Just as you are Skeptical of Astrology, I am Skeptical about these invisible statistical artifacts evidence for whose existance seems to be rather lacking but whose existance is taken as an article of faith by the so-called Skeptics when faced with Statistical evidence for stuff they don't believe in.

If you wish to test specific claims, especially if you do using human feedback then what you are doing is resting the validity of an entire discipline on the basis of a single theory which might well be disputed by other Astrologers.

Such a study would be of massive value, to Astrology itself ironically but it cannot be used as evidence against Astrology itself only the Astrological theory/theories being tested.

 

[Hokulele]

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. That's what you like to say to us and I am determined to bring it all back to roost. It is claimed that statistical artifacts are at work, you have to go and prove what artifacts they are.

You make a claim that there is a Statistical Artifact that destroys the validity of a rather large amount of statistically significant data, you have to prove the Artifacts exist.

Just as you are Skeptical of Astrology, I am Skeptical about these invisible statistical artifacts evidence for whose existance seems to be rather lacking but whose existance is taken as an article of faith by the so-called Skeptics when faced with Statistical evidence for stuff they don't believe in.

The statistical errors are described in depth in the article by Herbert Basler, a translation of which can be found at the bottom of this page.

http://www.rudolfhsmit.nl/s-crit2.htm

If you wish to test specific claims, especially if you do using human feedback then what you are doing is resting the validity of an entire discipline on the basis of a single theory which might well be disputed by other Astrologers.

Such a study would be of massive value, to Astrology itself ironically but it cannot be used as evidence against Astrology itself only the Astrological theory/theories being tested.

Exactly. So why hasn't any single theory been upheld by such a test?

 

[fromdownunder]

The link between Clergymen and Jupiter is because Jupiters 'vague strange force' reminds people of Religion. The gas giants meanings follow very easily symbolically from their physical properties, indeed often the Astrological meaning of a planet was derived long before the Astronomy finds out stuff about a planet that confirms it's Astrological meaning.

Can I take this one up?. I have 5 dates below, and all these people were born in Geelong,Victoria Australia. All were also born in the wee hours of the morning, although I cannot provide exact times - somewhere between Midnight and 5 AM.

Male, 20 September 1949
Female, 26 October 1950
Female, 16 October 1971
Female 13 December 1972
Male 6 October 1986

I don't expect entire readings, but I would be interested simply in your view of the religion/Clergy aspects of each of these people.

Norm

 

[Pixel42]

IAnd yet you demand a method of testing Astrology that maximises the human element involved, by preffering to test using humans rather than pure statistical number crunching.

Pure statistical number crunching is fine but is liable to statistical artifacts, which must be eliminated by ensuring that results are repeatable.

Testing using people is fine but is liable to human biases, which must be eliminated by careful blinding.

The whole point of the scientific method is to carefully and methodically eliminate all possible sources of error with whatever technique is being used, so that the conclusions drawn are reliable. No kind of test, when properly conducted according to the scientific method, produces results which suggest there is any truth whatsoever to astrology.

If 'Science' consists of dismissing experiances of anything outside of some pre-determined Scientific box simply because it could be possible that it was all illusion then I really hate Science.

For the umpteenth time science does not dismiss anything "because it could be possible it was an illusion". The scientific method simply helps us to eliminate all possible sources of error. It's not science's fault that when you do that with supposed paranormal phenomena they simply disappear.

You make a claim that there is a Statistical Artifact that destroys the validity of a rather large amount of statistically significant data, you have to prove the Artifacts exist.

I make no such claim. I simply point out that data mining has been proven to be an unreliable method of reaching conclusions. As Feynman put it: "Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work." So it's up to the experimenter to show that his results are repeatable, i.e. not the result of statistical artifacts; if he publishes his results without doing so he may end up looking very foolish.

 

[dafydd]

Lots of meaningless waffle from Slayer but still no explanation about Jupiter and clergymen.Could this be because there is no connection?

 

[Klimax]

I know, but it causes problems in practice since Astrologically your nature appears to be highly changable and flexible. Taking this into account, it should be rather difficult to pin you down so to speak. Call this is a copout but it follows Astrologically.

Good.But that was the exact reason,why I even submitted myself for reading.To see how well an Astrologer can do with me...

The reason it doesn't look so is either that Astrology works, or it's a very clever illusion.

I think the latter and it spans both astrologer and astrologed.

9.0 degrees is not exactly close. I am unsure I can derive that definate a conclusion from that.

???

I tend to see the Sun as overly passive maybe.....

Interesting,but don't think so in my case anyway... Trouble is that Squares are generally considered BAD. Obviously this gives to negative interpretations, but this is still particularly humiliating.

What is the deal with interpretations anyway.(Beware rhetorical question!)

The problem is that there are only 4 things that mark your 'path of development in life', 2 of them essentially contradictory (harmony and rebellion). What I mean by what I said is does your educational/career interests have to do with history and politics.

It might,but picture of me is awfully incomplete still anyway.(Interesting addenums...)

Stretches are important since they are what I am not quite certain would follow from the Astrology. I add them for research purposes, since as far as I am concerned, I am here to do tests on you lot not be tested myself.

This is why I like math,physics and computers.And then you were tested.By me.
(FTR I don't know nearly anything about astrology)

It's useful to have labrats that tell you are wrong on occasion. I hadn't read your posts before or least I don't remember doing so.

The only things I could have cold read about you is that you are the kind of person who frequents a skeptical forum. Everything else is pure Astrology, which I would have come up with had you been a complete and total anonomous person with a number.

OK.Now if only cold reader could come in...

 

[Femke]

Originally Posted by dafydd
I'm still waiting to find out how and why Jupiter is connected to clergymen. What was Jupiter's job before there were any clergymen Slayer?

Jupiter has nothing directly to do with clergymen. Instead Jupiter has to do with 'bigger things', that is the bigger questions or reality. The kind of stuff religion claims to answer.

Therefore Jupiter is assosiated with Clergymen, because Clergymen are assosiated with Religion. The reason Jupiter is associated with Religion is because Jupiter is assosiated with the kind of big questions that religion is concerned with.

Dafydd, maybe you missed it in the Wall o'Text, I think this is what Slayer meant as an answer to your question on the clergymen.

Sorry for the intrusion, I'll go back to lurking now. This is very fascinating.

 

[Belz...]

What sort of failiure would be enough to convince the Chemist, the Physicist, the Biologist that their respective disciplines were bunk?

The only way to disprove all Astrology would be to demonstrate that the position of the planets was a Neutral variable that has no correlation to events on Earth. That is to kill the core hypothesis of Astrology.

Then I submit that this was already done numerous times before.

Or perhaps you'd care to test your "abilities" ? No one ever has.

Besides the onus would be on YOU to prove astrology right. But that wasn't my question. I asked you what sort of FAILURE would convince you. Basically, you have to test astrology in some way, it fails, and you admit that you were wrong about it. So far your track record isn't impressive. So when will you admit the truth ? What does it take ? Or will you cling to your beliefs no matter what ?

 

[Belz...]

Still waiting on Slayer to do MY hilarious horoscope.

 

[Frinkiak7]

my information

Slayer, if you need another subject, I volunteer.

Birthdate: August 13, 1975, ~4:50 PM CDT
Birthplace: Shreveport, LA
Current residence: McKinney, TX

 

[SlayerofCliffracers]

Good.But that was the exact reason,why I even submitted myself for reading.To see how well an Astrologer can do with me...

We Astrologers hate Scorpios. And Leos too.

I think the latter and it spans both astrologer and astrologed.

And I considered that Astrology may in fact be an Illusion. You would consider that progress correct?

???

Oh the wonders of Astrological theory. There is naturally dispute about how close a planet has to be degree wise to the perfect angle of an Aspect (special angle with magical properties basically).

Logically, the closer an aspect is to perfection, the more powerful the aspect would be. 10 degrees is the degree system used by Astrotheme (this is pretty far in the sky actually).

Anything at 9 degrees is therefore weak.

It might,but picture of me is awfully incomplete still anyway.(Interesting addenums...)

What sort of answer is 'it might'.

This is why I like math,physics and computers.And then you were tested.By me.
(FTR I don't know nearly anything about astrology)

Maths, Physics and Computers? Well that might well be something to do with the Mercury conjunction to Sun, but these are pretty common obviously since Mercury doesn't go very far from the Sun anyway.

Pure statistical number crunching is fine but is liable to statistical artifacts, which must be eliminated by ensuring that results are repeatable.

As long as they are repeated using exactly the same age group of people so as to remove statistical artifacts of an Astrological nature (aka outer planets known and unknown) and using similar statistical methods then do that.

Testing using people is fine but is liable to human biases, which must be eliminated by careful blinding.

Testing people even using blinding is inferior to statistical methods because they require that the Astrologer is flawless in his understanding of Astrology (assuming Astrology is true), it is impossable to set a definate chance ratio if you are testing line by line and if you are relying on people selecting their own horoscopes, it presumes that people are neutral and objective judges of their own character who won't take the most 'positive' or 'negative' horoscope depending on their own self-esteem.

The whole point of the scientific method is to carefully and methodically eliminate all possible sources of error with whatever technique is being used, so that the conclusions drawn are reliable. No kind of test, when properly conducted according to the scientific method, produces results which suggest there is any truth whatsoever to astrology.

Obviously. If they had produced such evidence, then it would be obvious that something was wrong with the test.

For the umpteenth time science does not dismiss anything "because it could be possible it was an illusion". The scientific method simply helps us to eliminate all possible sources of error. It's not science's fault that when you do that with supposed paranormal phenomena they simply disappear.

Maybe Science doesn't, but James Randi and a large number of other Skeptics seem to use exactly this standard when dealing the paranormal.

The philosophically moribund nature of this is a source of great amusement and annoyance on my part.

I make no such claim. I simply point out that data mining has been proven to be an unreliable method of reaching conclusions. As Feynman put it: "Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work." So it's up to the experimenter to show that his results are repeatable, i.e. not the result of statistical artifacts; if he publishes his results without doing so he may end up looking very foolish.

And unless the repetition is done with the exact same age-range of people and from the same place so as to eliminate cultural differences, then failiure to replicate the exact same results wouldn't prove much. Basically you have to use the same data or extra data from the same area in order to replicate the study in a definate way without generating more artefacts in comparison.

And given these are demographic artefacts in BIRTHDAY, the only statistical artefact involved is likely going to be the conception time of parents.

Really the question is what would cause particular social groups tend to concieve more or less Tauros babies than Scorpio babies. Where there is a definate cross-sign pattern, like the farmers I definately suspect some sort of statistical artefact.

Lots of meaningless waffle from Slayer but still no explanation about Jupiter and clergymen.Could this be because there is no connection?

This may be so. It may be that Jupiter in the modern world has a far more diverse effect than it did in medieval times or whatever.

However, Paximperiums brother came close to confirming the theory rather well.

The statistical errors are described in depth in the article by Herbert Basler, a translation of which can be found at the bottom of this page.

http://www.rudolfhsmit.nl/s-crit2.htm

I read the article. What was intelligable within my own limited mathematical ability is generally obviously a load of BS. It's just there is so much BS, that if I did a point by point refutation of it I would be here until tommorow. But one piece of waffle stood out in need of a good mocking.

"Let us assume 100 people are ill with an unknown disease. All 100 receive a new medicine. 75 patients are cured. According to our criteria this is not significant, as the curing power of the drug is statistically not proved. When 95 of 100 sick people are cured, we can describe the action of the drug as lightly significant. Only at 99 cures can we call the curing power significant" (p.70).

. Basically he is forgetting that there is no active agency involved in testing Astrology itself. All you have to do is compare the total % of each sign that make up the population with the total % number of 'sinners' of each sign and as long as you get a result that is higher than attributable to chance then you have proven there is a correlation. It's so simple that a child could get it.

It's very simple and deadly really. For whichever side happens to get on the wrong end. The only get out clause if there is a positive result is to determine something else that isn't Astrology that would generate the connection. And then work out this eliminates every single statistical correlation.

Exactly. So why hasn't any single theory been upheld by such a test?

That is actually false. In order ironically to contradict Sachs, Ertel mentions that a claim about nurses was tested and is an example of an astrological claim being tested and found to be right. I can't seem to find it though, so it might just be a figment of Ertel's imagination.

Then I submit that this was already done numerous times before.

Or perhaps you'd care to test your "abilities" ? No one ever has.

Besides the onus would be on YOU to prove astrology right. But that wasn't my question. I asked you what sort of FAILURE would convince you. Basically, you have to test astrology in some way, it fails, and you admit that you were wrong about it. So far your track record isn't impressive. So when will you admit the truth ? What does it take ? Or will you cling to your beliefs no matter what ?

My track record is annoyingly indeterminable since I would have to know what the base accuracy rate for purely random personality claims would be. The first doesn't really count in my book because I was negatively cold-reading stuff out that had I left in would have scored me some hits.

What would it take for me to convince me Astrology was bunk. Well to do that you would have to do something like Gunter Sachs study, with same or better methodology and come up with no positive hits that cannot be non-astrologically explained easily away. If Gunter Sachs study had come up bad, I would consider Astrologically disproved definately.

 

[Hokulele]

I read the article. What was intelligable within my own limited mathematical ability is generally obviously a load of BS. It's just there is so much BS, that if I did a point by point refutation of it I would be here until tommorow.

Really? And you are basing this judgement on what, exactly?

. Basically he is forgetting that there is no active agency involved in testing Astrology itself. All you have to do is compare the total % of each sign that make up the population with the total % number of 'sinners' of each sign and as long as you get a result that is higher than attributable to chance then you have proven there is a correlation. It's so simple that a child could get it.

Incorrect. There are many characteristics of people that occur at rates much higher than chance, such as recovering from uknown diseases. Lethal illnesses are acutally fairly rare. This is why to be statistically significant, it must occur much greater than chance, and it must be reliably repeatable (something that never happened with Sach's results).

It gets even worse when you are talking about personality traits that are self-reported. If I were to ask 100 people selected at random if they consider themselves to be stubborn, do you think the results would be 50% yes/no? Do you think it would be 1 in 12 (matching sun signs)? What happens if you ask them if they consider themselves to be stubborn on occasion?

 

[SalG13]

I had followed this topic for a while and am just jumping back in here. I see SlayerofCliffracers has given some readings and the hits and misses (and partials) are being counted. Just for fun, I read Klimax's reading as if it were my own. I ended up with 10 hits and 5 misses (I didn't break it down further).

I would be curious to see how many hits and misses others would see, and if 90% of the people got 70% hits, wouldn't that tend toward the Forer effect?