Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Young people are flocking to astrology

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

941–950 of 972 posts

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#941

Post by mistermann »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #736
mistermann wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone who claims to hold an purely objective viewpoint is a liar or delusional. Is this purely objective? Can you think of no exceptions, under any scenarios?

Confusing the subjective for the objective is a widely studied phenomenon. It's called reification and people generally deny doing it. There's a strong ego defense mechanism that raises when it's pointed out that shuts down conversation.

The utterly bizarre things is how so many (I would say, the VAST majority) smart people are unable to overcome it when discussing certain subjects.

Like sure, I can certainly understand the initial incident, heuristics are a bitch...but what is so bizarre is that when people are in this state, there seems to be literally nothing that can draw them out of it. I have done many, many thousands of experiments in this area, it is uncanny.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#943

Post by rcme »

vacuity wrote: post #879
rcme wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that science can’t prove anything because it can’t prove everything? Also you said science can’t prove or disprove , but it seems trivially easy to construct many things science could disprove. E.g. you could disprove that 5 N of force is not enough to accelerate a 1 kg sphere to exit velocity on Earth.

If we're to be exact, we can't prove that if I throw an object upwards with 5 N of force right now, the gravitational field won't suddenly shift (for some reason) and send it out of the atmosphere. If you reduce it to a mathematical construct (Newton's laws, the gravitational field stays within a margin of 0.00001, blah blah) then sure , you can prove that it's not possible. Of course, I would bet a million dollars t…

> If we're to be exact, we can't prove that if I throw an object upwards with 5 N of force right now, the gravitational field won't suddenly shift (for some reason) and send it out of the atmosphere.

Ok then let’s rephrase the statement to “Absent any sudden shifts in the gravitational field, 5 N of force is not enough to bring a 1 kg sphere to escape velocity.” Science can prove that.

And if we can’t prove something, then we return to the question of rationality. When given an unknown, is it rational to assume anything about that unknown without verifiable evidence? I think not.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#944

Post by Mordisquitos »

Brendinooo wrote: post #938
evandale wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I think of it as more of reading a motivational quote that will inspire me to do something that day. I try not to take it too seriously, but my conflict with astrology is that I don't want to believe it, but I can't shake the fact that the moon affects the tides on Earth from my brain. That makes me question if the moon can affect humans. The whole personality prediction and things like that I'm not a beli…

There's a lot more evidence for God than astrology.

As a non-believer I wouldn't go as far as to say there's evidence for God, but I definitely agree with the spirit of your comment. Evidence against astrology is abundant, trivially easy to replicate, and the alleged narrative behind how astrology works is obviously incompatible with our knowledge of the Universe to the point that an educated middle schooler could explain why. None of that could be said about God.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#945

Post by fatuna »

XajniN wrote: post #519
XorNot wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agnostic isn't a consistent belief position though: if you claim you don't know if a higher power exists, the question is which one and how is the impact of this different to being an atheist. So that bucket collecting random other beliefs isn't too surprising.

Agnostic is just a pussy version of atheist.

Nope, any scientist should be agnostic ;). Since the existence of a god can not be proven nor disproven. Do I have an elephant in my living room? Chances are incredibly low, but can you prove it?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#946

Post by XajniN »

fatuna wrote: post #945
XajniN wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agnostic is just a pussy version of atheist.

Nope, any scientist should be agnostic ;). Since the existence of a god can not be proven nor disproven. Do I have an elephant in my living room? Chances are incredibly low, but can you prove it?

While you are technically correct about the logic, there is no scientific reason to even consider the existence of any higher power.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#947

Post by kazinator »

> According to [THE CRYSTAL BALL USED BY] Allied Market Research [the only source of data for our article], the global astrology industry was valued at $12.8 billion in 2021, up considerably from $2.2 billion in 2018. By 2031, it’s expected to rise to $22.8 billion.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#948

Post by Given_47 »

squirtlebonflow wrote: post #126
Given_47 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea the 538 stuff (at least that audience) is a prime example of the McNamara fallacy[0]. It’s easy for people to find comfort in what can/is being measured and appoint it as objective truth, and consequently disregard anything that can’t be easily quantified. Like u alluded to, people like to at least feel in control. And in the case of astrology it manifests in being able to have a simple explanation for things. An…

Because nothing really ever happens because of random chance. Everything has a reason, and to pretend it happened because of random chance is to say you don't care enough what the reason was to try to figure it out.

Yes obviously everything happens for a “reason.” However I’m talking about the majority that internalizes that phrase as indicating there’s some predetermined sequence of events and stars aligning whatever.

Not the “since everything happens for a reason, let me inquire and dig deeper to figure out what was the cause” person. And my point was I’m surprised more people don’t attribute things to random chance cuz it’s an easy out. Again, not the people that actually care about finding things out, Im talking about the astrology type

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#949

Post by dang »

akomtu wrote: post #338
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in various "alternative" industries in my youth. One day I was having an informal diner with people that, in another context, could have been business partners. One guy was making a killing with an astrology service by phone. He started with those text message based games, that were popular in the 2000'. Remember? "Send 'love' to this number to know if he loves you". And eventually created a full phone call…

[flagged]

Please don't start gender flamewars on HN. This thread was ugly enough already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#950

Post by vacuity »

rcme wrote: post #943
vacuity wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're to be exact, we can't prove that if I throw an object upwards with 5 N of force right now, the gravitational field won't suddenly shift (for some reason) and send it out of the atmosphere. If you reduce it to a mathematical construct (Newton's laws, the gravitational field stays within a margin of 0.00001, blah blah) then sure , you can prove that it's not possible. Of course, I would bet a million dollars t…

> If we're to be exact, we can't prove that if I throw an object upwards with 5 N of force right now, the gravitational field won't suddenly shift (for some reason) and send it out of the atmosphere. Ok then let’s rephrase the statement to “Absent any sudden shifts in the gravitational field, 5 N of force is not enough to bring a 1 kg sphere to escape velocity.” Science can prove that. And if we can’t prove something…

Ah, but you're overreaching. I agreed with you in the comment you replied to. However, your point about rationality isn't so clear cut in the case of religion. If a religious person tells me that the theory of evolution is just flat out wrong then yeah, I'm going to dismiss that as irrational. If a religious person tells me that people reincarnate or get sent to the afterlife based on their deeds, I personally won't agree but not because science can determine this in any capacity. That's not a matter of rationality anymore; it's faith. There's no evidence either way.
Post reply on HN