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Does Astrology Work?

clearerthinking.org

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Re: Does Astrology Work?

#111

Post by voidUpdate »

WaffleIronMaker wrote: post #94
voidUpdate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we use spiritual randomness to power our AI products, to maximise marketing crap?

Kinda? It makes me think of Randonautica: > Randonautica (a portmanteau of "random" + "nautica") is an app launched on February 22, 2020 founded by Auburn Salcedo and Joshua Lengfelder. It randomly generates coordinates that enable the user to explore their local area and report on their findings. According to its creators, the app is "an attractor of strange things," letting one choose specific coordinates based on…

That sounds fun. Reminds me of GeoHashing (https://www.xkcd.com/426/)

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#112

Post by hermannj314 »

I flip a coin during periods of indecisiveness and have built a silly lore around a God named Gamblor (yes, from the Simpsons) that punishes people that ask him to choose their fate through a coin toss and then don't follow through on his decree.

As long as I am reasonable in what decisions I give to the altar of Gamblor, I find belief in him a net good for my life even though I realize no study would prove he has actual predictive abilities, it doesn't mean belief in him isn't a net positive.

What's wrong with superstitions, belief in Santa Claus, or finding wisdom in the beauty of the stars? We are all just trying to get through life in a way that works for us.

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#113

Post by 542354234235 »

gwervc wrote: post #57
AnonC wrote: post #37

I’d be interested in the views of professional as well as hobby astrologers who are on HN.

Yes. My current girlfriend told me that her father forbade her to marry before a given age, because this was a recommandation of the astrologer who chose her current name. I met her at that current age. Another prediction was done 6 years before, that said she will meet an exceptional man by 2024 but also that she will have to go back in her country on that year. Since we met this year and she considers me an excepti…

>Another prediction was done 6 years before, that said she will meet an exceptional man by 2024 but also that she will have to go back in her country on that year.

They said “by 2024”, not “in 2024”. A young adult woman in her prime meeting a good guy sometime in 6 years is not exactly a pinpoint prediction. Also, I assume a lot of her family still lives in Taiwan. I would think that having someone you are serious with meet your family would be a common and expected thing. So again, this doesn’t seem like as much a pinpoint prediction than just a reasonable assumption.

“In the next 6 years, you’ll probably meet a guy you like and probably take him back to Taiwan to meet your family”

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#114

Post by itronitron »

i80and wrote: post #53

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…

The low agreement may be accounted for by the degree to which each astrologer adjusts for changes in planetary alignments (or whatever) since astrology was first established as a discipline. In other words, birth month for a particular astrological sign is different now than it would have been 2000 years ago.

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#115

Post by mihaic »

mihaaly wrote: post #103
mihaic wrote: post #49

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 behavi…

Yeah, I wrote my post as a joke, but I think that before modern medicine it would have been measurably better to be born in the autumn, so that your mother would have fresh produce in the most important months of fetal development.

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#116

Post by meroes »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #105
andrewla wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

Yes apparently male and female Virgos don’t work together as I’ve been told over the phone

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#117

Post by andrewla »

credit_guy wrote: post #106
i80and wrote: post #53

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 b…

This study was a followup to one that just used signs [1], which yielded performance no better than chance. If the summer/winter correlation held, then that study would have shown positive results, which it did not.

There's nothing to say that these star charts or seasons of birth cannot correlate with personality traits or life outcomes. But Astrology, as a practice, is not useful for unwinding those correlations. If you have some alternate system, feel free to propose it -- pump the star charts and personality charts from this study into some AI and see if it can come up with some kind of super-astrology, and then try to replicate it.

I doubt you'd find anything stronger than predicting the answer to the question "were you born in the summer or the winter".

[1] https://www.clearerthinking.org/post/we-tested-the-predictiv...

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#118

Post by ape4 »

credit_guy wrote: post #106
i80and wrote: post #53

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 b…

I predict: people will be warning warm jackets on your birthday

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#119

Post by GJim »

credit_guy wrote: post #106
i80and wrote: post #53

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 b…

> It is entirely plausible that babies born during the Summer months share something in common, and babies born during Winter months share something else.

This would not account for reversal of the seasons in opposite hemispheres...

... or do the northern and southern hemispheres practice a different "western" astrology (!).

Re: Does Astrology Work?

#120

Post by grraaaaahhh »

woleium wrote: post #74
i80and wrote: post #53

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

This is the kind of statement that the Appeal to Authority fallacy was made for. Just because someone is an expert in one field doesn't mean their opinions matter in every field.
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