Of course you don't have to quote anything of mine if you don't want to, but I'm afraid while you choose not to I don't know which line you mean. Which is okay with me, but might interfere with some degree of understanding you were hoping to convey.
I had never thought of optimism meaning being disappointed all the time--I had always thought of it as recovering from disappointment quickly and tending to see the bright side. Perhaps I don't know that much about it, with my generally pessimistic nature.
Some things are not astrological? Are you sure? I thought it was fairly routine for horoscopes to include things like what diseases and injuries one is supposedly vulnerable to?
For example, here at www.astrology-online.com (http://www.astrology-online.com/sagittar.htm) it says:
Possible Health Concerns...
Sagittarius governs the hips, thighs and sacral area; subjects suffer from ailments of the hips and thighs and are liable to sciatica and rheumatism. An alleged deficiency of silicon in their physiques can give them poor skin, nails and hair.
As they are often sportsmen indulging in dangerous pursuits, they are prone to accidents which arise from these. The ancient astrologers mention falls from horses and hurts from them and other four-footed beasts. The taking of risks in other sports is a danger to the modern Sagittarian, and he is also liable to accidents with fire and heat.
Nothing in there about allergies--which are, of course, a perfectly valid reason to avoid the great outdoors (as is simply not liking it; it's not for everybody.)
I think it's a reasonable conclusion that the time of year we're born doesn't govern our health risks. That's all. It doesn't govern our love of the great outdoors, our love of foreign languages, our success in academia, or any other aspects of our personalities. Nor do I think these unrelated traits (optimism and hip troubles, for instance) cluster in any recognizable way.
Humans are very good at picking out patterns, in the midst of confusing "noise." Unfortunately, we're so good at it, we do it even when there is no underlying pattern. Once we think we perceive a pattern, we tend to remember random events that confirm the pattern and forget random events that disconfirm the pattern.
There's nothing about this that makes our distant ancestors more stupid than we are. Our advances in understanding the universe come from a system we've worked out that, shakily and imperfectly, lets us work around these exact same tendencies in us. That's all.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-01-15 02:21 pm (UTC)I had never thought of optimism meaning being disappointed all the time--I had always thought of it as recovering from disappointment quickly and tending to see the bright side. Perhaps I don't know that much about it, with my generally pessimistic nature.
Some things are not astrological? Are you sure? I thought it was fairly routine for horoscopes to include things like what diseases and injuries one is supposedly vulnerable to?
For example, here at www.astrology-online.com (http://www.astrology-online.com/sagittar.htm) it says:
Nothing in there about allergies--which are, of course, a perfectly valid reason to avoid the great outdoors (as is simply not liking it; it's not for everybody.)
I think it's a reasonable conclusion that the time of year we're born doesn't govern our health risks. That's all. It doesn't govern our love of the great outdoors, our love of foreign languages, our success in academia, or any other aspects of our personalities. Nor do I think these unrelated traits (optimism and hip troubles, for instance) cluster in any recognizable way.
Humans are very good at picking out patterns, in the midst of confusing "noise." Unfortunately, we're so good at it, we do it even when there is no underlying pattern. Once we think we perceive a pattern, we tend to remember random events that confirm the pattern and forget random events that disconfirm the pattern.
There's nothing about this that makes our distant ancestors more stupid than we are. Our advances in understanding the universe come from a system we've worked out that, shakily and imperfectly, lets us work around these exact same tendencies in us. That's all.