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Young people are flocking to astrology

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#261

Post by chargingmarmot »

aquariusDue wrote: post #150
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 ov…

I just wanted to complicate the story by pointing out that secular materialism is not new!

All the ingredients are there in the philosophy put forward by Epicurus in 307 BC, which was widely known by the Romans and rediscovered by renaissance humanists in the 1500s (in De rerum natura).

(Epicurean tenets I have in mind are: The universe behaves according to physical laws; whether or not the Gods exist, they are not concerned with human affairs and do not intervene; there is no afterlife and yet no need to fear death.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#262

Post by midoridensha »

vhcr wrote: post #170
luc4sdreyer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can easily argue the opposite of your assertions, simply by picking different definitions.

The "stars and planets" do not influence peoples' lives through the seasons, only the Earth and its relative position to the Sun do, and when someone talks about the "stars and planets" in the context of astrology, they mean other stars and planets besides the Earth and Sun.

Dinosaurs do not co-exist with humans, and never have: "birds" are the distant descendants of some of the "dinosaurs", but are not part of the same group. (I'm pretty sure any dictionary definition of "dinosaur" does not include modern-day "birds".)

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#263

Post by mrweasel »

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 funny thing is that most of these "advice" or "insights" can be swapped around, it don't matter which sign you put next to them. Mostly the texts are so vague and generic that people can fit at least parts of it to their current situation.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#264

Post by joshstrange »

At this point I assume all articles saying “young people are doing X” to be total bollocks. Like the articles we’ve seen here about paper maps making a comeback for young people (a small handful of people were using them as art) or the “young people trading their smartphones for dumb phones” which had a tiny sample size and sounded like bullshit.

Nowadays you find 1-2 tweets (or similar), call it a trend, and move on to then next shovel-blog article.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#265

Post by benterix »

switch007 wrote: post #247
nprateem wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Hold up, you’re ok with treating her differently because you found her ugly?

It's more and more difficult to detect sarcasm these days but in case you are serious yes, we all treat people differently based on their looks, and it happens especially in sexual relationships and is not limited to humans.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#267

Post by benterix »

copperx wrote: post #204
pfannkuchen wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe we're getting into the unproductive game of definitions, but perhaps stereotyping is still stereotyping when the categories are completely made up. After all, stereotyping implies incorrect categories. Otherwise it would be called classification.

> After all, stereotyping implies incorrect categories.

Well, not neccessarily:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2018...

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#269

Post by anon-3988 »

idoubtit wrote: post #187
anon-3988 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's the point if this mysticism doesn't make "better" people than any random superstition or religion? I fear it's more dangerous than most basic superstitions. I mean, these "self-introspection, consciousness-obsessed cultures like Hindu and Buddhism" are a source of hatred and violence. The Hindu majority is India is on this brutal trend. And in Burma-Birmania-Myanmar, the Buddhist population was almost unanimou…

> I mean, these "self-introspection, consciousness-obsessed cultures like Hindu and Buddhism" are a source of hatred and violence. The Hindu majority is India is on this brutal trend. And in Burma-Birmania-Myanmar, the Buddhist population was almost unanimous in supporting the discrimination against muslims and the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya. People feel they belong to a religion and that those who do not are unenlightened strangers. The phenomena is well known and studied: religion leads to intolerance.

That is why it is important to fill these void with fluff. But that fluff requires some mythos otherwise it wouldn't hold the fluff together. There's a subset of these 2 religions that doesn't require you to believe in anything aside from the fact that "consciousness exist". However, this concept is quite hard for common folk to grasp. This is why I think that it is important to create a layer on top of this that the masses can feed unto.

The problem with using astrology as the basis for religion is that it doesn't correspond to reality at all. Simple statistical analysis would yield weird results that doesn't match with reality. How do you reconcile being bad at something X despite being born at month Y that supposedly makes you better at X. Or why does X today when my horoscope is Y?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#270

Post by lrvick »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #244
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…

I’m a 61-year-old software developer. It’s been interesting (and infuriating), experiencing some of the conclusions that younger techs have reached about me, due to my gray hair. I’m also a developer of Apple device software. That has resulted in even more abuse. There’s serious hate for Apple amongst techs. Human nature likes pigeonholing other people into simple “sort buckets,” and we have many ways to do that. It…

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