Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Young people are flocking to astrology

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 972 posts

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#141

Post by uoaei »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #106
drooby wrote: post #30

I always love getting my tarot cards read. Do I believe it has special knowledge of the universe? Absolutely not. Does it get my thinking creatively and critically about the personal story that I have with my self? Yes. And that has some value.

In a similar vein I like to observe myself and my thoughts when it comes to tarot cards. I know they are not real, but by focusing on my own cognitive biases and wishes I can extract more information about my subconscious mind and potentially solve my problems.

This is the entire point of divination tools -- to bring something of yourself into it so that the interaction between the reading and your reactions to it help to inform your perspective. I read I Ching but it's the same kind of thing. Astrology makes no sense to me because there is no interaction as I describe, just directives. There's no reason to believe they don't equally apply to everyone[1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#142

Post by rapsacnz »

ZainRiz wrote: post #118
Err_Eek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true) It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is ve…

The challenge with books like The God Delusion is that it's barely one step above strawman arguments. It attacks claims made by some simple lay people, based on their half-baked understanding of their own faiths (which they never really dug into). However, people well versed in the religion don't actually make any such claims. The arguments being debunked are ones that religious scholars themselves would have disagre…

It doesn't matter how sophisticated your argument is if it's resting on something as flimsy as "I believe in god because god says he's real".

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#143

Post by za3faran »

andsoitis wrote: post #127
ZainRiz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge with books like The God Delusion is that it's barely one step above strawman arguments. It attacks claims made by some simple lay people, based on their half-baked understanding of their own faiths (which they never really dug into). However, people well versed in the religion don't actually make any such claims. The arguments being debunked are ones that religious scholars themselves would have disagre…

> people well versed in the religion don't actually make any such claims What is a good example?

As a Muslim, I've seen Dawkins make very basic and laughably incorrect claims about Islam. It clearly shows he has extremely shallow knowledge about what he claims to criticize. Niel DeGrasse Tyson is also guilty of the same.

Here's a short clip of Dr. Sami Ameri, a published author and expert, discussing but one of Dawkin's fallacies in his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNpvZN76zU

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#144

Post by onecommentman »

somedude895 wrote: post #54
LargeTomato wrote: post #37

My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program and is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. She makes comments about it in public and I cringe. But the worst part is that half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology. It's very weird.

> half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology That's about exactly my experience. Half my female friends (and about as many on dating platforms), and about three in four of my gay friends. Not a single straight guy ever talks to me about star signs.

In the 1970s many straight guys were “into” (natal) astrology, as evidenced by the classic pickup line “Hey babe, what’s your sign?” Any less scientific than “Hey babe, what’s your Meyers-Briggs type?”?

Astrology got me out of an intro to stats final. You could write a paper using stats in lieu of the final, if your grades were high enough. I got a list of DOB and declared majors for each UGs from the University, hypothesized the most likely sun sign for each major, and tested whether the number of students with the characteristic Sun sign was significantly higher. Pre-VisiCalc, IBM360 era. Huge ream of 17”x12” pin-fed green and white computer paper, sharpened pencil.

Twelve hypotheses, three significant at the .05 level. There may have been a wee bit of what the kids today call p-hacking but it would have passed the social science standards at the time.

The most significant result was 7 out of 12 International Studies majors were in the Sun sign of Libra (roughly p=1/12), and the expected correlation between diplomacy and Libra was commonly cited by their literature. That was unexpectedly strong. People have gotten funded on less.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#145

Post by uoaei »

figital wrote: post #63

There are epigenetic markers which can identify the season or perhaps even month you were born. If you might think there is a link between personality and birth order and that perhaps metaphor is useful in storytelling or group dynamics … then one could loosely link these concepts together and consider it more than something like a party trick.

I've always had the suspicion this was partly the case.

If you're born in August or September when the sun is out for a long time and everyone's jovially enjoying social events during the first few months of your life, of course you'll be more outgoing and positive and active!

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#146

Post by rapsacnz »

keiferski wrote: post #116
Err_Eek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true) It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is ve…

It’s not so much about accessibility, just quality of argument. As I said, basically no one that has read and thought significantly about religion thinks that Dawkins’ works are anything other than simple-minded polemics. It’s the equivalent of watching a 5-hour YouTube video about programming and thinking you understand computer science, except that books by Dawkins et al are not even very good, impartial introducti…

The more the nuanced the take, the less people will be drawn to it. Hence the popularity of the Bible and the Koran etc.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#147

Post by yorwba »

luc4sdreyer wrote: post #77
keiferski wrote: post #56

One of my favorite philosophy books is A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. It has a lot of interesting ideas, but a key one is that the “subtraction thesis” of secularity is wrong. By this, he means the narrative that secular society today simply “subtracted” religious beliefs and behaviors of yesteryear. Instead, these things have just morphed into different forms, with astrology being a prime example. It can be unders…

I don't want to support this idea because it goes against my worldview as an atheist from a very conservative society. I grew up on Hitchens and Dawkins. But the YouGov poll [1] that the WaPo article is based seems to support this idea: 30% of Agnostics answered yes to the following question: "Do you believe in astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets influence people’s lives?" [1]: https://today.youg…

I don't think the poll supports the idea of spiritual morphing. The 30% of agnostics is not much different from the population average of 27% and less than catholics at 31%, while atheists believe in astrology less (10%) than any of the other groups.

If abandoning religious beliefs of yesteryear really just morphed them into others like astrology, those new beliefs should be much more common among people who've abandoned the old.

I think a better explanation of the data is that some people have strong opinions on spirituality, ranging from dismissing it all to holding up some particular scripture as the single source of truth, which then informs their stance on astrology, while others just go with whatever, so they're distributed across denominations at roughly the base rate and believe in astrology at roughly the base rate.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#148

Post by [deleted] »

leashless wrote: post #16

My guru (I'm Indian) was an astrologer. Every time Mars goes retrograde I tell people "astrology is nonsense, but this Mars retrograde thing gets me every time..." and surely enough, every time... I was raised on Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. There can't be anything to it. It has to be nonsense. December 06 2024 is the next Mars retrograde. See if things don't go completely to hell right around then.

[deleted]

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#149

Post by keiferski »

rapsacnz wrote: post #146
keiferski wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not so much about accessibility, just quality of argument. As I said, basically no one that has read and thought significantly about religion thinks that Dawkins’ works are anything other than simple-minded polemics. It’s the equivalent of watching a 5-hour YouTube video about programming and thinking you understand computer science, except that books by Dawkins et al are not even very good, impartial introducti…

The more the nuanced the take, the less people will be drawn to it. Hence the popularity of the Bible and the Koran etc.

The Bible has over fifty books and is perhaps one of the most nuanced works of all time, hence the wide variety of Christian denominations.

I'm not familiar enough with the Qur'an to comment on it.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#150

Post by aquariusDue »

high_5 wrote: post #134

That's what was lurking on the other end of demolished Chesterton's fence. And now it's coming back slowly like a tide that no dam of enlightenment can hold it. That's why I'm more worried of people antropomorphizing the existing GPTs than the potential coming of AGI.

Totally agree, as time goes on I've started wondering if the accelerated tearing down of traditions and cultural walls from the last 100 and something years wasn't a totally good thing. Of course it lead to some great outcomes, but at the same time some holes were left open and what seems to fill them isn't up to par.

To phrase the above in a straightforward example: If astrology and other woo-woo replace religion over the next 100 years then they'll have the same growing pains that the early christian church did. Sure, now the way you live your life isn't dictated by your local priest which is great I suppose. But now you shouldn't marry the person you love because ultimately your star signs aren't compatible.

I for one welcome the arrival of our machine overlords once they develop opinions. /s

Disclaimer: My username is related to astrology.

Post reply on HN