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Young people are flocking to astrology

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#761

Post by CuriouslyC »

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…

Not a believer in astrology, but it's not insane to think that there are cyclical processes in the universe that influence people and events which are correlated (without causation) to other cyclical processes in the universe. Flat earthers on the other hand are just insane.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#762

Post by kergonath »

jb1991 wrote: post #404
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #303

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…

> I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously There are a lot of people who are highly regarded in history but who also believed in astrology, so you shouldn't be too hard on it. Do you feel similarly about people who believe in various religions? These people believed in astrology to varying degrees: Winston Churchill J.P. Morgan Nancy Reagan Theodore…

Smart people believe a lot of stupid things. It’s not realistic to expect them to be perfect in all aspects of their lives, particularly if they have no background in epistemology or science in general. I mean, Jobs was obviously smart, and yet believed in all sorts of new age and alternative medicine bollocks. This should be enough of a proof that you can be smart and believe stupid things.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#763

Post by executesorder66 »

alexb_ wrote: post #704
executesorder66 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shouldn't, try to change people's minds. Yeah the abolition of slavery was a mistake. We shouldn't have tried to change people's minds about that. We also should never have changed people's minds about smoking not being bad. Just let people believe what they want to believe. Live and let live. Fully agree with you.

What the hell are you talking about? Lecturing someone on racism because they asked about astrology is not the same as abolishing slavery.

I'm talking about whether you should or shouldn't try to change people's minds about things.

A lot of people thought that slavery was okay. Do you think that others should have changed their mind about it?

A lot of people think racism is okay. Do you think that others should change their mind about it?

Astrology is just as stupid and discriminatory as racism. Being prejudice against people over things that they can't control (skin color, date of birth) and things that are just completely wrong, and made up, (all black people are bad, all Virgo's act this way, I could never date a Gemini's because blah blah)

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#764

Post by ghourt »

simbolit wrote: post #758
ghourt wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have any trans friends, I'd encourage you to ask them about it, since the issues are doubly magnified. This is like saying that blackface actors experience doubly-magnified racism, when they're actually just adding to the problem. For women who want to be men, it is typically rooted in wanting to escape the harsh societal impositions of femininity, rather than confronting it head-on. This is also why many wo…

and what do you know about trans people? as you so eloquently show, nothing. Like seriously, spend at least a little while understanding a topic before you talk about it. *shakehead

That's rather an empty comment. Do you have any specific counterpoints you could share?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#765

Post by svnt »

sneak wrote: post #550
confidantlake wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They’re really pretty equivalent in that respect — the only difference here seems to be that you know more about alchemy.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#766

Post by keiferski »

brutal_true_101 wrote: post #684
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…

Any other books you can recommend? I am just getting into reading about this stuff. It has made me realize that I am not as rational as I once thought I was.

There are a lot of great suggestions here: https://fivebooks.com/category/religion/

But other than Taylor, I recommend Robert Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution, William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, and most books by Nietzsche, but specifically Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morality. You might want to pick up an anthology of papers / topics, like Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology by Pojman. Max Weber and Durkheim are also considered to be foundational thinkers in religious sociology. If you get through all that and are looking for something a bit more obscure but super interesting, I would also check out "process philosophy" or "process theology", which addresses a lot of the traditional issues with religious arguments.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#767

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #522
EspressoGPT wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> but in Europe, pseudo-elitist nerds or CS students taunt Apple for being a "too overpriced toy for non-technical people". That's how I know they don't have a clue about software engineering, lol. In my experience ("filter bubble"), the central reason for the insane hate on Apple is rather that with the iPhone, Apple made the "golden cage" fashionable. When Microsoft attempted to implement similar measures in the pa…

The issue is that the activists represent a real minority of users.

When we hang out in echo chambers, we start thinking that there are “a lot” of people that think like us.

Most folks aren’t technologically savvy. They don’t particularly want to be bothered by the “nitty gritty” of tech usership. They just want their tool to do what they want, without any fuss.

This has had a lot of terrible results. Tech moguls have made a lot of money, by taking advantage of this.

But it’s far older than smartphones. Demagogues have used this propensity for thousands of years, to keep most folks on the smelly end of the stick.

The refusal of tech activists to understand this, has, in my opinion, caused an enormous amount of damage.

People aren’t dumb, and we need to understand, and embrace that. Just because they don’t find tech as fascinating as we do, is no reason to dismiss them.

In fact, as I said, some rather rapacious tech robber barons understand this all too well.

Want to be effective? Make security and privacy easy to use. Otherwise, we’re just howling at the moon.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#768

Post by svnt »

executesorder66 wrote: post #554
uoaei wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always had the suspicion this was partly the case. If you're born in August or September when the sun is out for a long time and everyone's jovially enjoying social events during the first few months of your life, of course you'll be more outgoing and positive and active!

If that were true there would be a 50/50 split between extroverts/introverts. (Or shy/outgoing, however you want to define it) But there are statistically more extroverts than introverts, so this is empirically wrong.

It could be right, if the equatorial regions are above the extrovert threshold.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#769

Post by Enginerrrd »

I can't help but feel astonished how salient the classic Carl Sagan quote is here:

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance"

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#770

Post by tomjakubowski »

suslik wrote: post #577
atlantic wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a third of Newton's surviving manuscripts deal with physics. The rest deals with esoteric biblical exegesis and alchemy. Just another dumbo, I guess.

Not a dumbo, but such a massive waste of talent. Nobody would care to remember Newton's name if that wasn't for his work in physics. T. Acquinas is a another example - an extremely intelligent person who wasted his life on a word salad that can now be generated using chat GPT.

If you think Summa is word salad, then what makes you consider him extremely intelligent?
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