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Young people are flocking to astrology

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#341

Post by hashtag-til »

jacquesm wrote: post #308
sillysaurusx wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! 35yo dev here. If you could go back and give your 35yo self some advice, what would it be? (Feel free to make it specific to yourself; I’m just curious.) You’re a bit of my hero since I aim to be a dev till at least 60. I barely survive Leetcode interviews now — in fact I can’t think of a single one I’ve passed. Having to interview at 60 plus sounds awful, mostly for the reasons you describe.

My advice would be (if you're in it to make a living) to get out and move into finance.

I've been thinking if I should mode from my soulless job in ML to a soulless job in finance.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#342

Post by roenxi »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #303
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…

Speaking of stereotypes, if anyone takes astrology seriously, I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously. I consider them beyond reason so I don't even try. If a person's logic and epistemology lead to him believing in astrology, it shows a deeper problem and I don't hope to have an intelligent discussion with them any more than I expect to have an int…

Although broadly agreeing, it seems relevant that most people are irrational on most topics. I would expect belief in astrology to correlate negatively with beliefs that require systemic thinking but it is impolite to dismiss intelligent discussion with someone before testing them directly and making an effort to figure out what their strongest topics are.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#343

Post by Shrezzing »

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 take it you're an Aries then?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#344

Post by midoridensha »

dmurray wrote: post #161
Pamar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Maybe you didn't get the job because you weren't a good fit for the job, or maybe you didn't get the job because the hiring committee simply found someone else just as good and flipped a coin. Sometimes there's a good reason for something, sometimes it's just happenstance. Trying to make up nonsensical reasons for things is pointless.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#345

Post by varjag »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #303
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…

Speaking of stereotypes, if anyone takes astrology seriously, I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously. I consider them beyond reason so I don't even try. If a person's logic and epistemology lead to him believing in astrology, it shows a deeper problem and I don't hope to have an intelligent discussion with them any more than I expect to have an int…

There is no qualitative difference between belief in astrology and any of the world's religions. Not saying you're not entitled in disregarding astrology believers but the cut-off point is completely arbitrary and dare I say irrational.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#346

Post by RicoElectrico »

joshstrange wrote: post #264

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…

In principle I would agree, but trust me, they're onto something. I know such women around 30 who are passionate with this shit. Hell, a new word in Polish was coined for them, "zodiakara".

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#347

Post by amanaplanacanal »

squirtlebonflow wrote: post #126
Given_47 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea the 538 stuff (at least that audience) is a prime example of the McNamara fallacy[0]. It’s easy for people to find comfort in what can/is being measured and appoint it as objective truth, and consequently disregard anything that can’t be easily quantified. Like u alluded to, people like to at least feel in control. And in the case of astrology it manifests in being able to have a simple explanation for things. An…

Because nothing really ever happens because of random chance. Everything has a reason, and to pretend it happened because of random chance is to say you don't care enough what the reason was to try to figure it out.

Sure, cause and effect rules everything, but I suspect that most large systems are chaotic enough that any description we lay on them is just telling stories.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#348

Post by rsynnott »

copperx wrote: post #241
vkou wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with religion in the public sphere is that ~all of the religious arguments that are actually advanced in that sphere have nothing to do with ones made by religious scholars. Attacking a strawman is perfectly appropriate in this case, because the strawman is what actually drives policy.

I've always been curious about serious scholarship of religion. I've wondered whether it is possible to be both, say, a Christian and an atheist simultaneously (e.g., not believing that Christ existed physically, but at the same time believing that following the tenets in the religion is the right thing to do for the greater good, or perhaps interpreting the Bible completely metaphorically). I imagine that scholars c…

> not believing that Christ existed physically

The vast majority of historians, including atheist ones, think that someone answering to that general description _did_ exist, though they obviously don't think he was the son of God.

> not believing that Christ existed physically, but at the same time believing that following the tenets in the religion is the right thing to do for the greater good

Substitute 'God' for 'Christ', and yeah, that's common. Many people are also purely _culturally_ religious; they don't believe in a god (or at least not the one their religion mandates), and do not accept many of the teachings or beliefs of their religion, but do _identify_ as being a member of a religion. In Ireland, say, 70% of people identified as Catholic on the most recent census (in the 90s this was closer to 90%; younger people _are_ less likely to engage in this practice and the child abuse scandals also caused many older people to break away), but in polling the majority of Irish Catholics do not believe in, well, Catholic stuff (a personal god, hell, transubstantiation, the virgin birth, etc), or accept the Church's moral worldview (see outcomes of referendums on abortion, equal marriage etc).

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#349

Post by jacquesm »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #200
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in various "alternative" industries in my youth. One day I was having an informal diner with people that, in another context, could have been business partners. One guy was making a killing with an astrology service by phone. He started with those text message based games, that were popular in the 2000'. Remember? "Send 'love' to this number to know if he loves you". And eventually created a full phone call…

I always wonder what the morals and ethics of these kind of business owners is. You're selling a service you know is bullshit and liken to porn. Personally I would not be proud to say I run that business. I would rather that these businesses didn't exist, and so I don't want to contribute to perpetuating them. Of course there's the "fulfilling the market need" type of answer, but that's basically saying you will do a…

Not 100% sure if the GP and I share the same friend, but I know someone that fits the description exactly. Morals and ethics are all relative. There are people who have absolutely no qualms about running a porn business and there are people who couldn't care less about you or someone else spending your hard earned money on nonsensical information.

They would see it as just as valid a business as an author that sells fiction books. Depending on their background this may be understandable, or not. I know a gay guy in Toronto that runs a porn empire, he doesn't care one bit about other people's opinion on it. Given infinite time he would spend it all on watching porn so for him it's a natural to want to be on the supply side, he understands his audience perfectly and the way his business is set up (co-op) gives everybody in it their own share of the take.

What I think you'll find is that morality and what is ethical can differ greatly from one person to the next and that it is possible that someone disagrees strongly with you on what is ethical or moral and that all you will end up doing is to argue the case based on your own experience and your own (cultural) background without ever arriving at some idea about what 'absolute' morality or ethics would look like.

You can see this very clearly in debates around abortion, war and other controversial subjects. People on both sides of those arguments fervently believe that they (and only they) are in the right and that everybody else is delusional, amoral and un-ethical.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#350

Post by sillysaurusx »

simbolit wrote: post #328
sillysaurusx wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All female software devs reading this just got extremely uncomfortable, and this comment chain no doubt brings up childhood body image issues — issues that men can’t know what it’s like. I point this out from the sidelines in case any thoughtful devs reading this might want to reflect on their behavior. It wasn’t till I married one that I started to reevaluate mine.

> childhood body image issues — issues that men can’t know what it’s like Thanks for negating my childhood experiences, much appreciated.

I think it’s worth explicitly comparing our childhood issues. It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that it’s just nothing close to what women go through.

It’s horrible in its own way. But women are judged for the rest of their lives, in exactly the ways this thread illustrates. When have you ever wondered if your body was the reason you did or didn’t get a job?

It’s one thing for image issues to impact your self esteem. It’s quite another for them to be the central focus of your life. The makeup industry is massive precisely because of this double standard.

If that negates a few of our childhood experiences, perhaps we should try to get comfortable with that. The fact that we think we’re special and that we have it just as bad is part of the problem.

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