81–90 of 188 posts
If astrology people understood science they wouldn’t be astrologists Glad we have something to point to finally as a reference
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Would you ask a snake oil salesman his views on the benefits of snake oil? :)
A relevant historical fact here is that the reason the snake oil salesman is a fraud isn't because snake oil is ineffective, but that what he's selling isn't snake oil.
And we see both in the study. The charts can't predict anyone and the claim of even having a consistent system falls apart.
"Astrology is the mother of science" is a great quote and more or less historically accurate too. We should not be ashamed of the origins of science being in astrology and alchemy, they were important steps on the way.
I'm afraid that several modern social "sciences" are not distinguished from astrology or alchemy by their epistemic rigor. Shame seems appropriate there.
So who knows what we can get out of those easily disparaged modern sciences, or where they may eventually lead us. If those early pioneers had this view of their methods, had felt this sense of shame around them, where would we be?
Obviously astrology does no better than random guessing, that's no surprise. But the fact that astrology had such low levels of agreement is a little interesting to me -- I guess I assumed there was some kind of underlying system to astrology, but I guess not! > Much to my surprise, astrologers had very low agreement with each other on the chart for each person. If astrologers picked charts at random, they would agre…
Kary Mullis (nobel laureate for discovering PCR, allowing DNA sequencing) disagrees in his book “dancing naked in the mindfield” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis
Nice study! My conjecture on why astrology persists despite not working: it is the refinement of two very human traits, ambiguous statements and confirmation bias. Astrologers can leave just enough ambiguity in their statements so it seems definite but could be interpreted either way, and when actual events happen later on, confirmation bias (often accompanied with a desire to believe and be proven right) kicks in an…
Obviously astrology does no better than random guessing, that's no surprise. But the fact that astrology had such low levels of agreement is a little interesting to me -- I guess I assumed there was some kind of underlying system to astrology, but I guess not! > Much to my surprise, astrologers had very low agreement with each other on the chart for each person. If astrologers picked charts at random, they would agre…
Kary Mullis (nobel laureate for discovering PCR, allowing DNA sequencing) disagrees in his book “dancing naked in the mindfield” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis
Astrology works on people who really believe in astrology, because they internally reinforce behavior patterns to conform to their astrological predications. To be fair though, most doctors don't perform much better than these astrologers in my experience, and that's with billions of dollars in research, a quarter of a million dollar education and years of rigorous training. It turns out most people are incompetent a…
There's a famous study that found that hockey players are statistically more likely to be born in certain months, due to them being the biggest in their year-groups, which created a self-fulfilling cycles of attention from coaches. Reinterpreted, if you're an Aquarius, you're 50% more likely than an Aries to get into the NHL[1]. So, I guess I do sometimes believe in astrology, it's just very rarely better than random…