Michael Shermer vs Jeffrey Armstrong

[Limbo]

Yeah, it's simply unimportant to me.

That's pretty much what my wife says when she loses at something. "Meh, I don't care, it's unimportant" or something like that.

I just grin.

 

[fls]

That's pretty much what my wife says when she loses at something. "Meh, I don't care, it's unimportant" or something like that.

I just grin.

I wasn't arguing as to whether or not Shermer looks foolish. I think he does look a bit foolish in the video, but I don't know him or anything, so why should I care?

Unless of course, that's all I have.

Linda

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Let me relate an anecdote that will explain what was going on here: In my first psychology class in college, the instructor informed us that he had undertaken personality analyses of the class, and wanted some feedback on how accurate his analyses were. So he called out one of the student's names and said something like: "You are a strong, but sensitive person. You enjoy popular music, but have some unusual interests. Blah, blah, blah . . . Now, how did I do." Student: "That was very accurate." The instructor then did a few more "analyses" and received about the same feedback. He then let us in on his little secret: He actually had not undertaken personality analyses of the class, but had simply made a number of general statements about students selected at random.

That's pretty close to the Forer experiments that I've mentioned several times. I've also pointed out that the Armstrong's success was actually a bit lower than what Prof. Forer got.

So all Armstrong has demonstrated is what is called the Forer Effect.

Maybe you should read about it here.

ETA: As always, I'm late. Linda has already said this. Oh well--at least I provided the link!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

That's pretty much what my wife says when she loses at something. "Meh, I don't care, it's unimportant" or something like that.

I just grin.

Whether Shermer looked foolish or not is completely irrelevant to whether the demonstration on this video support the claims of astrology.

Personalities and such really don't count in trying to figure out what is true. There have been a few very likable characters who've applied for the MDC, but they still failed. There have also been some scurrillous characters. They also failed. Their success or failure didn't depend on things like whether or not someone looked foolish.

I also don't care whether Shermer looked foolish. As I said earlier, I also don't care what his motivations were.

The fact remains, this video does nothing to support the claims of astrology.

 

[Provoker]

Vedic astrology can't possibly be correct. It uses trivial data like your location of birth, time of birth and gender, and extrapolates that data to predict a lifetime's worth of experiences and hardships. The coordinates in space and time aren't even required to be very accurate... Granted it's not a 12-category travesty like in newspaper astrology columns, but still, if Vedic astrology is considered to be true, it has to predict that hospital nurseries deliver babies in "batches" of personalities depending on what time and day it is.
Not only that, but if Vedic astrology is retroactive (which it has to be in order for it to be scientific), one might do the experiment of running some hypothetical numbers until the cosmic lottery churns out the personality of a genius, then using those numbers to figure out where and when that person will be born, in order to stimulate their success every step of the way. Of course, the nursery room will be full of equally gifted babies as predicted by the theory, but hey, I'm willing to turn a blind eye to that at this point.

I suppose I needn't go on, but as a thought experiment, just think about the following things:
-the theory takes zero input from lifetime experience on the person's behalf. It literally only requires coordinates and gender.
-twins can have very different lives or personalities, yet they'll get the exact same reading.
-Jeffrey Armstrong knows what you do, how you think, who you get married to and even what your children are like (I guess astrology goes hand in hand with heredity now).
-not only that, but a theory that can blindly predict past events can also blindly predict events in the future. Jeffrey Armstrong knows how you're gonna die, folks. To me, that just reeks of superstition and fraud.

(sorry if my post turned out to be a bit of a rant )