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Young people are flocking to astrology

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#471

Post by BSEdlMMldESB »

My own 'rationalizaton' of why astrology:

we all go too school on the same calendar cycle. But to young children one year difference can be quite significant.

this magnitude of difference diminishes with age: 50 vs 51 years old? same thing... 3 vs 4 years old? may be the difference between pooping your pants and holding it in

but consider the social consequences of shitting your pants in a semi-public setting? and add these up over your whole k12 education across millions of people.

the idea is that some psychological traits will be formed by this. and the zodiac reveals when you where born.

in summary I'm saying that taking all these things together and averaging them out may reveal psychological traits formed by an homogenized (standardized) education experience.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#472

Post by rcme »

flkenosad wrote: post #460
rcme wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is believing in religion rational?

Is it not rational to partake in activities which make one feel good?

Yes, “X is true because it feels good to believe so” is not a rational basis for belief.

Most people act rationally and irrationally. So you can hold an irrational belief, i.e. that your religion is the One True Religion, and then take rational actions like going to church based on that irrational belief.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#473

Post by JackMorgan »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #465
JackMorgan wrote: post #452

Belief in astrology looks a lot like the personifying animals or anthropomorphizing of inert items. Maybe the toaster hates you, or maybe it's just faulty and confirmation bias is strong. Belief in astrology puts words to the chaos and randomness of life. There's something very human about how we try to add life and agency to everything: mother earth, ghosts, forests, grumpy co-workers, broken toasters, and the actio…

You think that by studying engineering you see the world as it is?

More like I'm faced with realities when other people see magic. When the WiFi signal is spotty, the reality of the situation forces me to understand at least the basics of how it works and how the signal is getting blocked. When my database is acting slow, I can't just say "well the moon is half so..." I have to instrument and figure out what's happening and fix it. That at least pulls away a lot of the mystery.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#474

Post by mayd »

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, for one, appreciate you candour, even though your story portrays you in a less than positive light, and this girl now probably tells everyone she meets that you are weird. Well done. A less punctilious man might have just smiled and made polite conversation.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#475

Post by pndy »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #346
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".

> Hell, a new word in Polish was coined for them, "zodiakara".

Sounds like a sub-genre of madka

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#476

Post by xvedejas »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #463
varjag wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we get into this territory all major religions struggle as well. Petty gods from the canon somehow fail to deliver unambiguous punishment for clearly worded insults. The outrage over Bible or Quran burnings is largely driven by the demonstrated impotence of the deity rather than the sacrilege itself. The stories themselves are completely bonkers and self-contradicting in many aspects. But I guess ignoring all reli…

I can't think of any religions that make any clear predictions, so they're not even wrong (as opposed to astrology which is clearly wrong). So-called punishments are typically enacted in some other realm (e.g. after-life, rebirth into a lower form etc) which leads to some experimental problems in verifying the claims. I disagree about your interpretation of burning of religious books - surely that's more to do with p…

In college a Christian friend readily gave "evidence" of predictions in the bible as reason why he believes that religion. I think a lot of religious people do think there are clear predictions. I wish I remembered his examples (which I found uninteresting at the time) — I think one was a prediction of an invasion of Tyre?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#477

Post by glimshe »

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…

You can "tolerate" aliens? Alien life has a very high chance of existing - according to many scientists, more likely than it not existing. Alien intelligence less so, but still quite likely to exist.

I find your take on people who believe in Astrology condescending. I know intelligent and accomplished people who believe in Astrology. The explanation is very simple: they simply didn't think it through and keep checking Astrology predictions because they find them entertaining.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#478

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

throw0101a wrote: post #415
varjag wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There is no qualitative difference between belief in astrology and any of the world's religions. Some of the world's religions can start off from a basis of logic: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...

That logic appears to be flawed though and involves a fair amount of hand-waving.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13752

> Feser’s formalization of this argument appears around page 35. It has 49 premises. I shit you not. Most of them are uncontroversial on some interpretation of the words he employs (that doesn’t mean they are credible on his chosen interpretation of those words, but I’ll charitably ignore that here), except one, Premise 41, where his whole argument breaks down and bites the dust: “the forms or patterns manifest in all the things [the substrate] causes…can exist either in the concrete way in which they exist in individual particular things, or in the abstract way in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect.” This is a false dichotomy, otherwise known as a bifurcation fallacy. It’s simply not true that those are the only two options. And BTW, this Premise, is the same key premise (hereafter always hidden) in all five of his arguments. We can thus refute all of them, by simply refuting this single premise (more on that later).

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#479

Post by uwagar »

jacquesm wrote: post #447
uwagar wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Without vaccines the number of dead would be far, far higher than it ended up being based on what? 'projections' from sources that commissioned the cures and the mandates? what to believe? who to believe? let's cue in data ambiguity and conflict of interest as among the reasons why this is happening. most of the young people were not affected by the virus but had to lose key years of their life to save old people. t…

I suggest you look at the world wide statistics from before the vaccine roll-out and afterwards. There is nothing to 'believe', that data is about as non-ambiguous as it comes and you should be very, very grateful that those people spent their lives learning the skills required to save our collective asses, especially in light of the way their contributions are being minimized. And if you don't understand that then t…

actually british govt stopped publishing COVID infection/fatality data based on vaccination status because of risk of misintepretation :) ie a lot of folks that were vaccinated were getting [re-]infected and so on. i could dig the sources for you but i suppose we dont care anymore.

the fact is people feel physically, spiritually and scientifically abused by the handlers of the pandemic. and they cant talk about it cos they still get downvoted or truncated out of discourse. so they are taking a different route to calm themselves down.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#480

Post by varjag »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #463
varjag wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we get into this territory all major religions struggle as well. Petty gods from the canon somehow fail to deliver unambiguous punishment for clearly worded insults. The outrage over Bible or Quran burnings is largely driven by the demonstrated impotence of the deity rather than the sacrilege itself. The stories themselves are completely bonkers and self-contradicting in many aspects. But I guess ignoring all reli…

I can't think of any religions that make any clear predictions, so they're not even wrong (as opposed to astrology which is clearly wrong). So-called punishments are typically enacted in some other realm (e.g. after-life, rebirth into a lower form etc) which leads to some experimental problems in verifying the claims. I disagree about your interpretation of burning of religious books - surely that's more to do with p…

Flag burning is a great example in fact: the outrage simply never reaches the levels it is with holy text burnings. Not to stone-the-tourists, burn-the-embassy levels of outrage: possibly (speculating here) because flag burning does not assault one's identity in a way similar to demonstrating the futility of one's beliefs.

If we get to the punishments, things were clearly handed swiftly in the Old Testament. The Biblical concept of Hell as we know it (the place of eternal punishment) didn't emerge until the New Testament as it was in a way redundant.

And come on, we know holy texts are full of things which are clearly wrong, in exactly the same way astrology is. The temptation to gloss over them as ornamental bits is huge, but to believers they are doctrinal.

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