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…
The USAH ADM coach training now addresses this directly. They require all youth hockey coaches to take self-paced and live workshop training, and require annual continuing education.
One example here that explains the thought process:
"Birthday bias: Understanding relative age effect in youth hockey"
Nothing new or surprising was learned, the skeptics say 'see!' the 'believers' will disregard. And it's fine. Most people don't believe tarot cards are really some magical thing, it's just an interactive and creative way to get some random inspirational qoutes or text. It's either fitting and viewed a true, or not fitting and simply disregarded. I know it's all bs, but that doesn't mean it cannot be entertaining.
I don’t believe in astrology , tarot or anything of the sort one bit, but I still appreciate that it’s useful in the same way that an inspiring movie is useful. It presents a facet of human experience, which you can reflect upon. It invites you to think about things like “what is currently changing in my life, do I want challenge or stability, etc etc”. Maybe it doesn’t surface anything, maybe it tickles something you hadn’t realised until then.
In a way, I think it can lead to more profound realisations than if you just believe it “just” predicts the future
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…
I had a thought that astrology may have had some merits in older societies in climates where weather and daylight patters have distinct variations throughout the year (i.e tropical excluded zones), with effect on agriculture and daily activities, and so how and what small child were exposed in specific several months of their life (diet, activity, temperatures, daylight, ...) have had noticable effect on their behaviour and growth. I.e. if mothers' breastmilk composition varies based on the availability of fresh and nutritious food, or if nutritious food was available at the time of weining, or at their growth spurts, how much outside activity they had after learning to walk or run, what they seen mostly while learning to see, and so on, so the variations in the weeks and months when specific bodily and neurological development occur, that may have been noticable. Winter childs are so, spring childs are different so, and so on. Modern societies equal these yearly variations a lot, even if astrology hocuspocus had some foundation due to such underlying real resons, it likely disappeared in past several decades.
Nothing new or surprising was learned, the skeptics say 'see!' the 'believers' will disregard. And it's fine. Most people don't believe tarot cards are really some magical thing, it's just an interactive and creative way to get some random inspirational qoutes or text. It's either fitting and viewed a true, or not fitting and simply disregarded. I know it's all bs, but that doesn't mean it cannot be entertaining.
I don’t believe in astrology , tarot or anything of the sort one bit, but I still appreciate that it’s useful in the same way that an inspiring movie is useful. It presents a facet of human experience, which you can reflect upon. It invites you to think about things like “what is currently changing in my life, do I want challenge or stability, etc etc”. Maybe it doesn’t surface anything, maybe it tickles something yo…
It doesn't predict the future, but it has totally a use for select-reflection. The same as if you ask ChatGPT "ask me a random question", and then you iterate your thoughts on top of this question.
Here, the randomness is provided by cards, and that's pretty much it.
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…
> Astrology works Citation needed. Even agreement between the astrologers was low, which is a strong argument that it doesn't work even if you believe in it. That is, the patterns "predicted" by astrology simply do not exist; individuals cannot reliably reinforce their behavior based on expected behavior because there is no agreement on what the expected behavior is. > most doctors don't perform much better than thes…
People who are really into astrology absolutely make an effort to conform to their sign, choose who to have significant relationships because of it and decide to do things based on how well it conforms to their belief about their astrological nature. That will become patently obvious to you if you spend a decent amount of time around people who are really into astrology. That's different from astrologers failing to make more nuanced predictions based on a complex chart.
Doctors throw shit at the walls pretty hard, the difference is that when they get lucky it's obvious, and when they don't, they have malpractice insurance.
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…
> Obviously astrology does no better than random guessing
Not necessarily. It is entirely plausible that babies born during the Summer months share something in common, and babies born during Winter months share something else. Since astrological signs are 100% correlated with the seasons, one could "guess" with a higher probability than random chance these traits. The causality would obviously not be from stars to babies, but from seasons to babies, but an observational study could end up "proving" that astrology works by identifying these "predictions".
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…
Perform better _at what_? I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap between what doctors and astrologers are trying to do
Doctors are guessing with as much accuracy as astrologers. The difference is that when the doctor guesses right, the patient recovers and we praise the doctor as some sort of low grade messiah, and when an astrologer guesses right, we go "oh, lucky guess, cool."
I’d be interested in the views of professional as well as hobby astrologers who are on HN.
I keep up with astrology personally since I do find that my beliefs, practices, and actions line up fairly closely with my sign (Cancer). But, I know it's basically just a bunch of hand waving and guesses. I use it more as a tool to ask myself questions, or thinking of things from a new point of view. For example, my horoscope today says "Practice expressing yourself without seeking affirmation." And, yeah, that shou…
If you're using it as a random advice generator, then the "astro" portion isn't relevant, which is the part under contention.
Nothing new or surprising was learned, the skeptics say 'see!' the 'believers' will disregard. And it's fine. Most people don't believe tarot cards are really some magical thing, it's just an interactive and creative way to get some random inspirational qoutes or text. It's either fitting and viewed a true, or not fitting and simply disregarded. I know it's all bs, but that doesn't mean it cannot be entertaining.
There are some ill efects in coining busslshit stories to matters, especially when it becomes a dogma and is expected to be believed. Basically a lie, at least to the self, distorting understanding and collaborations with others on real (non-imaginery) matters.
If it remains on the entertainment level that is absolutely all right, I like that, enjoy that actually! Good play or relaxation for the brain.
I'm afraid that several modern social "sciences" are not distinguished from astrology or alchemy by their epistemic rigor. Shame seems appropriate there.
Yes but sort of what I was getting at is that individual astrologers and alchemists accomplished impressive, and usefully true, feats despite the faultiness of their tools. And their tools were eventually refined into our tools, which are much more reliable though of course still not perfect. So who knows what we can get out of those easily disparaged modern sciences, or where they may eventually lead us. If those ea…
I would guess that shame has been a significant motivator in the evolution of astrology and alchemy into astronomy, chemistry and physics.