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Young people are flocking to astrology

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541–550 of 972 posts

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#541

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 don't think I hate anyone enough to advise them to get into finance as a profession.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you're responsible for something you have to understand it better (or at least get good at making justifications). All people do this, they just typically aren't responsible for keeping an object or program working. I don't see why you would have a superior mental model about subjects you are not intimately familiar with the details of.

I don't recall making the claim of having a superior mental model. I make the claim that STEM workers cannot rely solely on mystical thinking, we have to apply the scientific method to perform our jobs. This gives us a tool at our disposal to pull back the mysteries in other areas of our lives. Flaky toasters, keyboard keys that stop working, the way light effects our bedtime routines. We don't need to rely on confirmation bias, we can apply the scientific method. Of course anyone can, but we're often forced to do it for hours a day, so we get a lot of practice disregarding our natural instincts in favor of observation and record keeping.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#543

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 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 automatically likely to have certain traits. If astrology was true, then ignoring astrology when interacting with some would tantamount to dehumanising them, because if it were true, that would determine who you are as an individual.

If astrology were true, that would be dehumanizing.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#544
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is simply false. The first problem is the word "religion", which, in common usage, is as if we were talking about different flavors of ice cream, and the atheist or "unbeliever" is some version of someone who simply doesn't like ice cream. Man is a religious animal in the sense that, as a rational animal, he must worship something he takes to be the highest good. The question is never "do I worship something" but "what do I worship" and "is what I worship the proper object of worship to which I owe worship". How do you know? Well, as in all cases, if no rational defense can be made of the claims of a religion, then there is no rational basis for giving our assent to those claims. So the question is: can a rational defense be made? Too often, people lazily assume such a defense cannot be made of any religion in principle. They simply take it for granted that that is the case.

So, if we interpret astrology as something explanatory, and there is no strong rational basis for it, then that means it is unlike those religious traditions that are rationally defensible. If astrology is a practical art, specifically, if it makes predictions based on some correlation between the positions of the stars and planets and whatever else, and this correlation happens to hold, then astrology is a more or less predictive model. (The "whatever else" also matter, as you could call the science of tides a kind of natural astrology because the moon does in fact have an effect on the tides.)

(FWIW, the Catholic Church rejects astrology, not as some "competing" doctrine, but as a pseudo-science and a superstition [0].)

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02018e.htm

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#545
post #248

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 These can't both be true. Being in a PhD program is not a sign of intelligence. Belief in astrology is a clear sign of lack of intelligence.

Issac Newton was into alchemy and is one of the most intelligent humans in history.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Young People Sceptical of Articles Claiming New Trends in Young People"

They said 70 million Americans check their horoscope I’d like to see that broken down by age group, but if 20% of your population is doing something, that’s not the same as saying "I saw two people tweet about it" or whatever.

Is checking your horoscope considered believing in astrology? I ask because I check mine, but mostly for morning reminders and put my head on straight.

Today mine starts with "The universe may deliver an ego bruise or two today, dear Virgo, as brooding Pluto squares off with the Nodes of Fate" and while I don't believe they're predicting a specific event it's nice to have that in the back of my mind today.

Coincidentally, I have an email I'm expecting to be in my work inbox this morning that could be a bit of an ego bruiser. I've been dreading it all weekend and I was thinking about how to approach it last night and decided I was not going react and reply to the email today. After reading my horoscope this morning I had the idea that skipping the email today and not even reading it might be a good thing to do. It's not going to be urgent or require a reply so why not ignore it today if I think it's going to ruin my day? It damn near ruined my weekend and I don't even know if it's in my inbox.

For me, my horoscope is no different from reading a random motivational quote every morning.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 checkin…

> find them entertaining

I also find them entertaining. That doesn’t mean I believe them.

> The explanation is very simple: they simply didn't think it through

Something I rely on to predict the future is the kind of thing I would want to think through. That’s particularly hard to believe of “intelligent people” when checking that it’s nonsense takes very little effort.

There may be an education-intelligence gap that explains why astrology is not evidently false to those people though.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an HN comment is how a female software dev learned that hot people are treated better, then this is the easiest way to learn that lesson and they should say thank you. But this “think of the women!” hall monitoring has to be worse than whatever violation against women you thought you read in this thread. Are you sure this imaginary audience of female software devs isn’t made uncomfortable by your sort of comment a…

Quite certain. The fact that you’d call them imaginary is simply … mistaken, to put it lightly. I recommend asking some actual women how they feel about it. Feel free to link them to this subthread. But since you’re certain they’re imaginary, I imagine you’ve already done so and found it to be true, right? This kind of attitude has no place in our industry, and it’ll be lovely when the social tides shift just a littl…

> ask some actual women

Just asked my girlfriend and two sisters about your comment and they said it was cringe.

Maybe it’s time you start a poll to double check your (and my) assumptions about the frailty of women when reading online chit chat? Especially with something as basic as being more agreeable with people you want to fuck, something women do too.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could imagine a much younger version of myself getting into an argument like this. Now days I just don't care, people like their own things and do stuff I disagree with or don't understand all the time. Live and let live, nod politely and try and steer the conversation to a topic of interest or even better find someone else to talk to. I like to think age has steadied me, but maybe I've just lost the will or become…

I could imagine a much younger version of myself saying something so stupefyingly patronizing like this.

How will an older you look back on this response though?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#550
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff These can't both be true. Being in a PhD program is not a sign of intelligence. Belief in astrology is a clear sign of lack of intelligence.

Issac Newton was into alchemy and is one of the most intelligent humans in history.

alchemy != astrology

Alchemy had not yet been debunked; astrology has.

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