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avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-01-17 09:44 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-01-17 09:44 am
Closing thoughts on looking at astrology
I began this set of posts with an attempt, not (as I repeatedly said) to defend astrology as a science (which it is not), but to provide a more balanced view of how it might have originated. That was the conversation I wanted to have, limited in scope perhaps but reasonably uncontroversial. By a natural process, though, the discussion got shunted on to the more popular main line of "astrology; is it true or not?" and as usual, in dealing with the arguments as they cropped up I found myself being pushed into a position where my only alternatives were to assent by silence to a view I found flawed, or to defend something of whose virtues I am still uncertain. This, coupled with a feeling that it would have been nice to talk about what I wanted to talk about, caused some anger, and I apologise for that.
So, this.
The world is full of false information, and it is our task to distinguish the false from the true when making our judgments. This is not always easy, but some days it's easier than others.
If you were to see a man looking at, say, cheap mass-produced greeting cards, or elementary school finger painting projects, or the graffiti in a men's room, and he were to look up and say "well, if that's Western art, I don't think much of it," you would be quick to point him at the nearest gallery, or book on art, or website, so that he could make a more balanced judgment.
Likewise you would correct his negative judgment on classical music, if it were only based on the endlessly repeated few bars of Vivaldi played by a phone on hold, or on television programming, if he had only ever seen one episode of "Gilligan's Island" during a severe thunderstorm, or (though you might be getting a little tired of him by now) on science, if it were based on what journalists or creationists say about it. You would tell him that what he had seen was not the whole story, that there was more to it. And if he refused to take in what you said, if he still chose to make his judgment of the whole based on the worst or most misleading examples, you would begin to suspect that there was more going on here than simple ignorance.
I find myself in that position relative to the people who have, here and elsewhere, voiced their judgments on astrology.
There are an abundance of hucksters and hustlers using astrology to make money. There are newspaper horoscopes and premium phone lines and TV shows on the more desperate channels and loads of books and sites full of thumbnail descriptions of what your sun sign tells you about yourself. There are people who will tell you that astrology can map out your future and find you the perfect lover, can fillet your personality and lay it out for anyone to read, can tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
That is not true, and those people are either misinformed or lying...but the fact that it is not true does not mean that astrology is useless. That is not the whole story. There is more to it.
Astrologers have mapped a complex network of interlocking influences, based on legitimate astronomical observation of planetary motion, that make every minute of every hour of every day of every year a slightly different astrological picture. The sun sign is just the beginning, and the obvious fact that one Sagittarian is not exactly like another is nothing to do with anything. I did in fact cast my birth horoscope, somewhat inexpertly using a kit I got from a newspaper offer, back when I was young, and, unsurprisingly, not everything it said about me was right...but even where I disagreed with it, I learned something about myself that I hadn't known before. Not everything in anyone's astrological chart will be accurate, because, as I pointed out in an earlier post, we are more complex than any one system of categorisation can encompass. Anyone who tells you different is as much a liar as the chap who tells you science has got all the answers, or the Bible has, or Robert Anton Wilson has.
But...if you prefer not to look at actual astrology, but to make your judgment of the whole based on the thumbnail sun-sign sketches and the newspaper horoscopes and the liars, I can't stop you. If you prefer to take the precession of the equinoxes, and the fact that astrologers have known about it for centuries and not changed their system, and the fact that some astrologer has voiced the obvious logical deduction that the actual constellations don't matter and probably never did, as evidence that astrology is rubbish, I won't stand in your way. If you prefer to make a joke out of it, that's good. Laughter is therapeutic, and fills the awkward silences, and when it dies away astrology will still be there.
As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether astrology has anything useful to teach us. For me the evidence doesn't add up to a neat conclusion, true or not true. The prosecution's case is circumstantial at best, and there's too much testimony for the defence that I can't in honesty rule out, even though it's variable in quality and hard to pin down.
Astrology is not a science, and won't be till scientists discover (or even start to wonder) exactly what if anything is behind it. (But then, I've never believed that science was capable of telling us the whole story about anything.) It is, perhaps, in some ways an art. It was suggested in the discussion that Western and Chinese astrology cannot both be right, but can both be wrong; perhaps this is like saying that Botticelli and Hokusai, because they would paint the same scene very differently, cannot both be good painters but can both be bad.
Yes, the jury is still out for me, and probably always will be. As it is on God, and aliens, and many other things that for others have long been decided, one way or the other. And maybe that's a harder mindset to get into than one where the mind is made up.
And this is where I stop. Anyone who wants the last word is very welcome to it. Otherwise, we're movin' on.
So, this.
The world is full of false information, and it is our task to distinguish the false from the true when making our judgments. This is not always easy, but some days it's easier than others.
If you were to see a man looking at, say, cheap mass-produced greeting cards, or elementary school finger painting projects, or the graffiti in a men's room, and he were to look up and say "well, if that's Western art, I don't think much of it," you would be quick to point him at the nearest gallery, or book on art, or website, so that he could make a more balanced judgment.
Likewise you would correct his negative judgment on classical music, if it were only based on the endlessly repeated few bars of Vivaldi played by a phone on hold, or on television programming, if he had only ever seen one episode of "Gilligan's Island" during a severe thunderstorm, or (though you might be getting a little tired of him by now) on science, if it were based on what journalists or creationists say about it. You would tell him that what he had seen was not the whole story, that there was more to it. And if he refused to take in what you said, if he still chose to make his judgment of the whole based on the worst or most misleading examples, you would begin to suspect that there was more going on here than simple ignorance.
I find myself in that position relative to the people who have, here and elsewhere, voiced their judgments on astrology.
There are an abundance of hucksters and hustlers using astrology to make money. There are newspaper horoscopes and premium phone lines and TV shows on the more desperate channels and loads of books and sites full of thumbnail descriptions of what your sun sign tells you about yourself. There are people who will tell you that astrology can map out your future and find you the perfect lover, can fillet your personality and lay it out for anyone to read, can tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
That is not true, and those people are either misinformed or lying...but the fact that it is not true does not mean that astrology is useless. That is not the whole story. There is more to it.
Astrologers have mapped a complex network of interlocking influences, based on legitimate astronomical observation of planetary motion, that make every minute of every hour of every day of every year a slightly different astrological picture. The sun sign is just the beginning, and the obvious fact that one Sagittarian is not exactly like another is nothing to do with anything. I did in fact cast my birth horoscope, somewhat inexpertly using a kit I got from a newspaper offer, back when I was young, and, unsurprisingly, not everything it said about me was right...but even where I disagreed with it, I learned something about myself that I hadn't known before. Not everything in anyone's astrological chart will be accurate, because, as I pointed out in an earlier post, we are more complex than any one system of categorisation can encompass. Anyone who tells you different is as much a liar as the chap who tells you science has got all the answers, or the Bible has, or Robert Anton Wilson has.
But...if you prefer not to look at actual astrology, but to make your judgment of the whole based on the thumbnail sun-sign sketches and the newspaper horoscopes and the liars, I can't stop you. If you prefer to take the precession of the equinoxes, and the fact that astrologers have known about it for centuries and not changed their system, and the fact that some astrologer has voiced the obvious logical deduction that the actual constellations don't matter and probably never did, as evidence that astrology is rubbish, I won't stand in your way. If you prefer to make a joke out of it, that's good. Laughter is therapeutic, and fills the awkward silences, and when it dies away astrology will still be there.
As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether astrology has anything useful to teach us. For me the evidence doesn't add up to a neat conclusion, true or not true. The prosecution's case is circumstantial at best, and there's too much testimony for the defence that I can't in honesty rule out, even though it's variable in quality and hard to pin down.
Astrology is not a science, and won't be till scientists discover (or even start to wonder) exactly what if anything is behind it. (But then, I've never believed that science was capable of telling us the whole story about anything.) It is, perhaps, in some ways an art. It was suggested in the discussion that Western and Chinese astrology cannot both be right, but can both be wrong; perhaps this is like saying that Botticelli and Hokusai, because they would paint the same scene very differently, cannot both be good painters but can both be bad.
Yes, the jury is still out for me, and probably always will be. As it is on God, and aliens, and many other things that for others have long been decided, one way or the other. And maybe that's a harder mindset to get into than one where the mind is made up.
And this is where I stop. Anyone who wants the last word is very welcome to it. Otherwise, we're movin' on.
no subject
no subject
It is not, of course, reasonable to expect me to stick to your subject in my LJ, so presumably this isn't why my post angered you so much.
2) The second part of this is basically the courtier's reply: "How can those silly skeptics know the Emperor has no clothes on if they haven't fully studied the exquisite nature of the clothes, including speculating on how the cut, and the embroidery designs have been refined over the centuries?"
Maybe we know astrology doesn't work because, once you control for the pattern picking and confirming biases, it doesn't? Just like we know the Emperor is naked because, well, we have just discovered he is not a natural redhead?
I don't know why it is necessary to understand the intricacies of the mathematics to look at the descriptions of people and realize they don't match. And if the descriptions of people can't match because there's not enough information, then why do they put them in the paper at all? You don't see doctors predicting tissue type matching on the basis of blood type in the paper.
3) You compare Astrology to art and music, and say we haven't seen the best examples.
This is not a valid comparison at the moment--nobody suggests that Beethoven's Fifth is a guide to correct living. Whereas people feel free to suggest, on the basis of a horoscope, that someone close to you will betray you today.
Now it could become a valid comparison if people drop the idea of astrology being a basis for important decisions. I am totally okay with the idea of Astrology as a type of *art*--as an elegant mathematical game whose principles must be learned before the skill or lack thereof of a particular play can be appreciated--but it can play that role perfectly well with everyone in the world realizing it doesn't actually work--just like people play Chess or Scrabble or the viola without expecting to read their futures in the results.
But if what you are seeking is really the understanding of Astrology as an elegant mathematical game, what on earth is wrong with discussing how the game is changed by using real starting points with respect to the stars as opposed to the 3,000 year old traditional ones? And whether the game calls for positions with respect to the stars, or with respect to the planets? And what would be involved in rearranging the game to work with respect to the planets?
It's like discussing whether performing Saint Saen's work _The Swan_ on kazoo and ukelele is a travesty or an exploration of the hidden humorous potential inherent in the work. You may prefer the cello version for regular listening (though I do think you should hear the kazoo version at least once in your life) but it's nothing to get so angry about.
Especially when you said you had no particular emotional connection to astrology and we could be as skeptical as we liked.
4) About your birth horoscope. That sounds fun. I think you should have someone else use the kit and cast it for you with 12 (or 13; your choice, and you can pick whether to use the old or new mathematical rules) birthdays, one of which is yours. Then they number them randomly, black out the birthdays they chose and what sign "you" were and you look them over, together with someone who knows you well but also doesn't know which horoscope is the "real" one.
If it turns out the horoscope with the correct birth date is the one that describes you best, then it might be time to say "Hey, cool--it worked for me! You try it!" Until then you don't know whether any other date would have worked perfectly well too.
no subject
I _knew_ it!
I was right, right, right!!
*dancing round the fire like Rumpelstiltskin*
:D
no subject
But there is a simple method to test the method astrology itself. Here it is tested WHETHER the method works, not HOW. We'll leave figuring out the how for later, if the method yields predictable results.
So a two-way blind test:
1.) Select a person with a known birthdate, elaborate a "proper" astrological horoscope - where you only present the results, not the calculation (nor constellation data). Do the same with a number of (different) persons. Then let other astrologers (try to) figure out, which of the presented horoscopes is the one for the person they got the birth data for.
2.) The same backward: you construct one proper horoscope - only anonymized for birth data (name, dates, constellations). Then present a number of possible dates - one correct, all the others false.
Multiple of such studies have been performed, evaluated and published - none showed a better result than simple, completely random dice-rolling. None found any connection between a horoscope and a birth date. Remember: these studies only check WHETHER the method works. The question of HOW never was tested - a task which judging from the results has been found to be completely superfluous as the method itself has been found to be invalid.
Again: it has been proven time and again that there is no correlation between a birth date and a horoscope - despite all the celestial calculations thrown in between those two.
no subject
no subject
Shawn Carlson A Double-blind Test of Astrology Nature, 318, 419 1985 (only summary found online http://www.astrodivination.com/moa/ncgrberk.htm)
Peter Hartmann (Universität von Aarhus) et al.: The relationship between date of birth and individual differences in personality and general intelligence: A large-scale study. In: Personality and Individual Differences, Mai 2006, Bd. 40, S. 1349-1362.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-4J2TS96-3&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f2f185552c1f5a978bde1c0ef6e5e599&searchtype=a (abstract online, fulltext only paid)
G. Dean, I. W. Kelly: Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi? In: Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10/2003, S. 175–98.
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Dean.pdf (buried in the 2nd half of the text)