The new defence of Astrology

[8enotto]

I once had a very nice coffee table book of Chinese astrology that used your birth date and to the hour of your birth as data.

And then read a fairly accurate if fairly vague read of personality and personal habits. It did come fairly close to everyone that used it's scheme to come to a -close enough- result.
Enough to be varied and distinct between people.

But only as a strange form of entertainment.

Vague is as vague does and still managed to use an X of ten points scoring system.
Something most won't see as selective shotgunning.
It was different than the standard charlatan that it had a bit more accuracy in it's goal. But the same on that it relied on ancient mystic something that would not be explained in the book or elsewhere.
Thus dismissable as anything really worth using.

 

[Caroline13]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

No that's a lie. Some of us don't just believe whatever we want and actually at least try to use facts in deciding what is true and don't depend on glib, anti-intellectual "Just believe whatever you want, it doesn't matter" nonsense.

Try it sometime.

 

[Pixel42]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

Astrology makes testable claims. Those claims have been tested, and they don't stand up. People have the amount of "astrological traits" they would be expected to have by chance, no more and no more less. The perception that the correlation is more than would be expected by chance is a false perception, an artifact of well known and well understand cognitive biases, principally confirmation bias.

If you didn't think "looking for science" was "a waste of time" you could have easily discovered such facts for yourself, and avoided all sorts of erroneous beliefs.

 

[Resume]

Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned.

Looking for science is the last thing a snake oil peddler would do.

 

[arthwollipot]

I once did an astrological reading for a coworker. I told her that my method was foolproof. I got the time, date and place of her birth, then threw them away. I went to three different astrology pages on the internet, typed in three completely random dates and three completely random locations, copied one random paragraph from each of the three results, put them together, and sent them to her.

She said that not only was it the most accurate reading she'd ever had, but that it said things about her that no-one else knew.

Even when I told her what I'd done, she still expressed enthusiasm over how accurate it was.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I once did an astrological reading for a coworker. I told her that my method was foolproof. I got the time, date and place of her birth, then threw them away. I went to three different astrology pages on the internet, typed in three completely random dates and three completely random locations, copied one random paragraph from each of the three results, put them together, and sent them to her.

She said that not only was it the most accurate reading she'd ever had, but that it said things about her that no-one else knew.

Even when I told her what I'd done, she still expressed enthusiasm over how accurate it was.

That's just it. You don't know your own abilities! That's basically what Randi did when he produced an astrology column for a newspaper when he was young. Part of what started him on his road to skepticism.

 

[marting]

I once did an astrological reading for a coworker. I told her that my method was foolproof. I got the time, date and place of her birth, then threw them away. I went to three different astrology pages on the internet, typed in three completely random dates and three completely random locations, copied one random paragraph from each of the three results, put them together, and sent them to her.

She said that not only was it the most accurate reading she'd ever had, but that it said things about her that no-one else knew.

Even when I told her what I'd done, she still expressed enthusiasm over how accurate it was.

Classic!

 

[arthwollipot]

That's just it. You don't know your own abilities! That's basically what Randi did when he produced an astrology column for a newspaper when he was young. Part of what started him on his road to skepticism.

Indeed. This was when I had first discovered Randi's Swift newsletter, and that story is what inspired me. Though I was expecting the trick to work, I was a little taken aback at how well it worked.

 

[8enotto]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

The part about this that I respect is the " as far as I am concerned " as it places it firmly in personal opinion.

No evidence or anything else required to validate astrology or anything else.

I personally like to see the things I might base a decision off of having substance and credibility.
Not just what I chose to believe with or without any substance behind it.

It avoids embarrassing situations and costly errors. Probably might even be safeguarding my health and money from snake oil salesmen.

 

[arthwollipot]

Personally, I find that it is both fundamentally useful in day-to-day life and tremendously satisfying to know that there is a reliable method of determining what is real and what is not.

 

[theprestige]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

I'm curious what mechanism you believe the stars and planets use to influence your emergent personality at birth.

We know it can't be gravity (ask me if you want to know how we know this). By the same token, we know it can't be electromagnetism (again, ask). So what do you believe is going on at Jupiter, that can reach down through all the cosmic noise and interference, into a mother's womb and have a clear, measurable, and lasting effect on the kind of person the child will become?

 

[Steve001]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

A funny thing about astrology is this. All the planets have the same ability to influence irrespective of their mass or distance. This suggests that other celestial bodies to have the same ability, such as Vesta... . It also suggests extra solar bodies (other stars, planets, moons) have the same ability. It also suggests solar system moons, asteroids, dust particles all the way down to subatomic particles have the same influence. Sounds rather absurd doesn't it.

 

[8enotto]

If you take a mind slip back in human history to Neolithic times constellations and stars were dieties. The one that appeared in the spring was a fertility being, the fall a harvest being.

Are we getting a glimpse of what kind of religious beliefs some might still hold? At least the current, convoluted versions of it.
After all, now most don't even think about the stuff our long past forefathers had to be acutely aware of just to survive.

 

[Nay_Sayer]

No.

 

[JesseCuster]

You either want to believe in it or some of it or you don't. Simple and looking for science etc is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I see a lot of astrology traits in many many people in my life.

That explains a lot about your posts here.

 

[RRBacon]

I think the purpose of astrology has been overlooked, it is basically a farming calendar guide, when to plant crops, harvest etc, and being part of cyclical year, was just an embellishment, but also a time marker, when you are born or die, the year for these folk started at the Spring Equinox, because that was when they could till the soil no doubt many esoteric practitioners would have pushed the influence of planets, and stars, they were superstitious, and always looking for signs, etc portents everywhere the word influenza derives from a comet sighting believing the comet brought maladies.

 

[theprestige]

I think you're talking about something else entirely, that happens to have the same name. No farmer, ancient or otherwise, needed to know if Mercury was in retrograde, or whether the moon was in Jupiter.

 

[Little 10 Toes]

That’s astronomy; what time, what location, when to plant. Being born when Venus is in retrograde does not mean that you’ll marry Olga.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

That’s astronomy; what time, what location, when to plant. Being born when Venus is in retrograde does not mean that you’ll marry Olga.

Damn. Olga is really pretty!