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Young people are flocking to astrology

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#161

Post by dmurray »

Pamar wrote: post #95
maxbond wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a "very intelligent woman in a PhD program" who has a hobby that she shares with her friends, that's no reason to suspect she and her friends can't discuss "important things." My understanding as an outsider is that astrology, tarot, etc function as a shared vocabulary and mythology to communicate about mental health and life's troubles. I think for most people the occult elements are largely aesthetic.…

This is also an interesting/insightful comment. But again, Tarot (and especially Astrology: you cannot really change when you were born) do not encourage self analysis and especially any attempt to change your own mental models/way to do things. Hugo Pratt, author of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corto_Maltese - hinted at this in one of stories about the character. Allegedly Corto met some sort of Gypsy palm reader w…

Learning to accept that some things are beyond human control is a mental health victory in itself.

To the kind of person who wants to find a proximate cause for everything, "I didn't get the job because Jupiter is in Scorpio" is much less toxic than "I didn't get the job because the hiring committee is racist".

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#162

Post by lm28469 »

Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #158

It is so sad to see that despite being the most educated generation in history, there still seems to be a need for supernatural meaning in young people's lives.

Are we really surprised that after destroying religions and traditions young people look for things other than money and careers ?

Almost as if consumerism was showing its limits...

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#163

Post by gsky »

uwagar wrote: post #90

the reason this is happening is science and rational thinking has really let them down in their lifetime, especially during the pandemic. they (and people in general) dont know what is real anymore, what to believe any more when everyone seems to be making up things as they go along, especially the so-called experts. why not review everything they have access to but told by the experts not to pay attention? ie they w…

Maybe you are right. I still belive in science but stopped trusting anything experts say unless majority have the same opinion.

Politics ruining scientific community I belive

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#164

Post by seer »

nprateem wrote: post #66

I had an argument with a girl the other day who was adamant she wanted to know my star sign. I said "you tell me" and after 10 guesses I finally told her. She then went on to tell me what I must like etc - most of which was complete bollocks obviously. I told her her beliefs were akin to racism. Just because of when I was born she thought it was acceptable not to bother to treat me as an individual but as automatical…

As the saying goes, “all models are wrong, some models are useful” While the astrology “model” is obviously wrong, it must have been useful to someone at sometime for it to have gained such a popularity.

Like the “flat earth model” is actually extremely useful if you don’t intend (can’t) travel significant distances - gives you a coordinate system, maps and ways to predict where you’re going to be tomorrow if you travel on foot/horse.

I think astrology used to be a good foundation for people to think about personality types (psychology) in isolation and more importantly how they interact with one another.

By slotting people into 12 “categories” you could start to theorise which personality type “jells well” or “vibes” with which.

The time of birth can also correlate loosely with personality. Like the famous finding that successful atheletes usually have birthdays at the beginning of the year, because of practicalities of how our athletics programs are structured.

Anyway, I don’t disparage people for talking about astrology, liking to ask people what do somebody “is like” if they were born at a different time, leads to some fun discussions.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#165

Post by adhesive_wombat »

CharlesW wrote: post #5

> “We need to take people who use astrology seriously, in order to understand how people live in the world, either in the past or in the present,” Kassell said. We definitely need to take them at least as seriously as people who believe in ghosts, crystals, and/or their ability to change the world through scents sold exclusively via MLMs.

A lot more people than I once thought seem have a very broken mental model of how things work. To take a recent hot-button topics, if you think that a virus can be caused by radio signals, or that an injectable vaccine can contain remote-controlled microchips, then you probably can be convinced of anything.

With such a fuzzy idea of what even makes physical sense, daily life must be a trip, because, a bit like Harry Potter, there are no rules for how things work so literally anything could happen. And if AirPods and wireless chargers do work and a website can write your paper instantly, under such a system why would Mars' ascendency not be able to make you more likely to get a promotion this week? Not that everyone into astrology is a 5G conspiracist, but that such a large percentage of people are that there must be a huge wider population of people completely at sea when it comes to how the universe works.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#166

Post by pfannkuchen »

whakim wrote: post #87
nprateem wrote: post #66

I had an argument with a girl the other day who was adamant she wanted to know my star sign. I said "you tell me" and after 10 guesses I finally told her. She then went on to tell me what I must like etc - most of which was complete bollocks obviously. I told her her beliefs were akin to racism. Just because of when I was born she thought it was acceptable not to bother to treat me as an individual but as automatical…

While I agree that astrology is complete nonsense, you're not likely to win many people over when you treat stereotyping (which you've described here) and racism as equivalent.

I don’t think astrology is stereotyping, it’s completely made up, not just an oversimplification or over generalization.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#167

Post by peyton »

anon-3988 wrote: post #155
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…

This is why I think that it is perhaps beneficial to not completely remove religion, but replace it with something that is more aligned to the 21st century. Let's be honest, humans are very flawed and prone to succumb to religious thinking; regardless of how smart/dumb you are. Superstitious thinking can arise from simple day to day observation. So it is much better to fill in the void with something dull like "do go…

Like it or not, the replacement is politics. Atheists have edged out Jews as the most politically active group in the US, even when controlling for education. Because they donate money to politicians at incredible rates, expect more messaging aimed at this group.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#168

Post by PartiallyTyped »

zen_1 wrote: post #132
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The star signs for straight guys are the stock market prediction lines.

Or guessing at geopolitics "My friend on telegram said Wagner are about to invade Belarus" and so on

Or prediction markets like Manifold.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#169

Post by wruza »

makeitdouble wrote: post #96
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.

> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. I was working on an astrology widget for a portal site, and read every advice in it every sign for months at lengths. None of the advice were ever highly impacting, nor seemed to have a chance to bring problematic results. At best it felt like a nice way to get some variety into someone's life ("wear something green today to improve your luck") In that light, I…

The problem is they often make statements that A should be careful around B and avoid serious decisions this week. They can literally model the behavior of a significant amount of population for a week. It may sound funny until you realize that B is you and A is HR who loves that shit.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#170

Post by vhcr »

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…

Maybe I'm reading it too literally, but I think the question is just badly formulated. Of course the position of the stars and planets influence people's lives, that's called the seasons.

I think the same when they ask people if they think dinosaurs co-existed with humans, of course the answer is yes, as birds are dinosaurs.

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