this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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As a side note: blows my mind there are people over the age of 9 that persist in actually believing in tarot cards or astrology.
But just in comparison
I use tarot and other divination methods (primarily the I-Ching/Book of Changes). It’s less about trying to get magical communication from some sort of magical realm or helper for me, it is more a way to organize my thoughts. Often times, the advice associated with each card is just generic good advice, and it prompts me to consider situations from other perspectives. I take some time to think about a problem facing me and use the cards as creative prompts for ways to solve that problem. No supernatural stuff involved.
Horoscopes are mostly just (hopefully!) good advice packaged in what can only be described as a crime against astronomy. They’re good to read, because they tell you what people want to be thinking about themselves.
The way that I think about these things is that it's like flipping a coin to make a decision. It doesn't really matter what the coin says, but if you feel happy or disappointed in the result, that tells you what you really need to know. Tarot's like that but with a bit more depth. The value from the reading is that it encourages introspection.
Yeah, that's how I use it too. Like sometimes, I feel like the cards are calling me out, but it's actually just me calling myself out.
It reminds me of how I give great advice to my friends that I may not always follow myself. Tarot feels like a way of getting distance between me, the advice giver, and me, the dumbass who desperately needs to follow the advice
How often are you really using a goddamn elaborate version of a coin flip to make your decisions?
Tarot helps you gain perspectives by randomization and chance? Sounds like a horribly illogical system. You’re actively hindering yourself just for the sake of shoehorning tarot into your decision making process lmao
Similarly if you need to read horoscopes to learn what people want to think about themselves, you have bigger problems. It’s simply not true and indefensible. Who is defined by “people” here, as if it’s a true blanket statement on all born in that month or just at all. Fucking bullshit, why force this mindless drivel into your life at all.
Everything you mention can be gained more efficiently, meaningfully and accurately (no RNG needed) via other means. Just admit you’d rather play around
The human mind is not a computer. It is not "logical". Also, chill.
Tarot cards are a tool to be used in reflection and insight. When reading for other people, they mostly provide a talking point and help make connections.
What they are not is a magic oracle that can predict the future. It's up to the reader to interpret their meaning and consider how it may apply.
Astrology, yeah. I have no idea. It's not my thing.
So independent of any woo-woo, tarot cards are designed to be a potent conceptual microcosm. That means that when you shuffle the cards and do a reading, with a decent understanding of what each of the cards represents, you essentially make a little randomly generated conceptual perspective through which to view the problem. Extremely helpful for shaking out of an established mindset, finding an unexpected angle which reveals connections you hadn't considered.
I can't really speak to astrology, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be approximately accurate for some reason other than the stars themselves. Perhaps the changing temperatures of the seasons have a slightly noticeable effect on natal development.
Astrology is only accurate in that everything it says is vague and easily interpretable in multiple ways.
A teacher did an experiment where he handed his class custom astrology reports based on their birthdate, and asked them to rate how well they fit each of them. Everyone gave it a high rating, and said it was very accurate. He had them pass the paper to a different student, and everyone laughed because everyone got the exact same astrology report.
Certainly sometimes, not always. I was convinced to get a "proper" chart done, and the results were more specific and accurate than I expected. Certainly not vague newspaper predictions. I'm not going to claim the whole practice is authentic, but like I said I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to have some actual correspondence to some unknown tangible cause unrelated to the stars.
That's not the basis of a good prediction. Imagine flipping a coin. You can "guess" the answer with 50% accuracy by just choosing heads each time.
But that's cheating you say? You could also get 50% accuracy by just flipping another coin and using that choice. Or just choosing the opposite that just appeared (heads, tails, heads, etc.). That's not good enough for a prediction.
I'm not trying to sell anyone on astrology here. All I said was sometimes it's so vague as to to apply to anyone, but not always.
If it isn't vague, it isn't astrology.
They are just reading your body language and things they find online about you.
The location flaming balls of gas are have no influence on your life. Except for the sun.
It was automated so it wasn't that.
Once more, not saying the stars have anything to do with, except that they're in the sky in a particular time of year. If astrology is based on anything, it's probably the effects of the seasons.
So because facebook can place ads that are vague and general, does that mean that they also have some sort of scientific correlation to predicting the future? Yes right? i mean, it could be true, that your computer is reading your mind and putting this up there, your horoscope? also created by your laptop reading your brainwaves that are bouncing off the cats sonar dish outside, its possible.
We've wandered pretty far from the topic. None of that follows from anything I said.
Nonetheless, are those hypotheses possible? Sure. Likely? Probably not. But there's a chasm of difference between "extremely unlikely" and "absolutely false". Understanding the limitations of your knowledge, both incidental and fundamental, is central to successful scientific inquiry.
yea im not surprised that someone who puts vested interest in astrology charts also says "you know what, maybe" to your laptop reading your brain and advertising to you.
Nope, astrologers are masters at making vague answers sound specific. But they are still vague and interpretable in multiple ways, even in your proper chart.
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were omniscient. My mistake. Have a good day.
No, that's all astrology is. Whenever it's been put to the test it has been found to have no supernatural or real predictive power. Just vague statements, and reader bias.
I tested it, I disagree. Or do you only respect tests that confirm your biases? Doesn't sound very scientific to me.
Yes, you tested a conman to see if you would not fall for a con, and you fell for it. Congrats. It's called the Barnum effect.
When actually put to the test astrology fails:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/genp.135.3.287-300
http://www.skepticalmedia.com/astrology/Scientific%20Inquiry%20into%20Astrology.pdf
https://genus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41118-020-00103-5
Certainty is unscientific and illogical. The scientific method cannot prove anything. It simply tests hypotheses to develop models. Every model is wrong, but some are more useful than others. Conflating the discovery of a useful model with absolute certainty isn't science, it's scientific fundamentalism, a cancer that eats your brain.
Nothing can be said scientifically about the truth or falsity of any claim. Science can only day that the evidence gathered in a particular experimental setup is consistent or inconsistent with a hypothesis.
Man, you do not understand science.
I'm a research chemist, and have been in the sciences for the last 15 years.
And science can test the hypothesis that astrology is accurate in various ways, and has shown time and time again that astrology is no better than random chance in its accuracy.
People have been trying to prove evolution is wrong since it was first posited, yet all evidence just further demonstrates it is the correct explanation for life.
Models aren't wrong by definition. Incomplete perhaps, but if a theory is able to accurately predict the world around us then it is still a good theory. Our theory of gravity can let us calculate the exact position of stellar bodies for millennia ahead, and has been consistently shown to be accurate.
This is true
This is also true
The moment you start making absolute statements based on the above, no matter how unanimous the evidence, you have left the realm of science and your brain begins to succumb to the rot. If we treated well supported models as gospel, we'd still be using the Newtonian gravitational model.
The entire point of science is to admit the fundamental uncertainty of all human knowledge, and develop the tools to develop better models. Yes, every model is wrong. Some allow us to make very accurate predictions, but they are all imperfect approximations.
No scientific model justifies absolute certainty
Yet every time astrology is tested it has failed.
Evolution is basically a scientific certainty at this point because every single test has shown it to be true, and no one has every been able to disprove it. We don;t understand every single nuance and mechanism of evolution, but the fact evolution is occurring and has occurred in the past is a certainty.
Gravity is a certainty at this point. Again we don't fully understand the exact causes of gravity, but the fact it exists is certain.
And every test to try and show any validity to astrology has failed, astrology is nothing but a scam.
Again, I tested it, I found some evidence of success. You can say that that test isn't statistically significant, you can question my methodologies, but you cannot say that every test has failed.
This conversation isn't about astrology, I don't believe in astrology. This conversation is about mental hygiene, and the creeping fundamentalism that stifles scientific progress. Certainty is unscientific.
"Gravity im not so sure about, astrology on the other hand..."
Astrology on the same hand I'm not so sure about. I'm not so sure about anything, because being so sure is brain rot at best and narcissism at worst.
"Scientific consensus is absolute truth" is the antithesis of science. Truth is fundamentally unknowable. Science is absolutely by far the best method we have for approximating truth, but it can only ever be an approximation. An extremely consistent, useful, and accurate approximation of course, good enough to make important decisions with. But it is epistemologically ridiculous to declare absolute truth.
Once you start letting that kind of absolutism in, you're lost. That's why scientific papers don't say "we proved that X causes Y", they say "we observed a strong correlation between the presence of X and the result Y".
You seem to assume that half the indian subcontinental populace doesn't exist.
People will marry off their kids to donkeys, frogs and cows if it means no drought for a season.
Astrology runs rabid there.
Source: Am Indian.
nah there is definitely reason for both.
Disclaimer: I don't believe in astrology. However, I always have this discussion with my students when we talk about pseudoscience and superstition (and this is likely an unpopular opinion here), but astrology can't be entirely dismissed out of hand . Astrology doesn't have much of a basis in reality, but there is some credibility and research to support the idea that some aspects of your personality can be shaped or impacted by the month in which a person is born, especially in rural/agrarian communities or areas with harsh climates.
It's not the stars themselves and it's not like your day-to-day life is affected by the current star sign or "mercury in retrograde," but think about how formative experiences and your earliest memories can be influenced by the time of year. A child in the Dakotas in the 1800's that has their first memory as a 2yo in February while the family is on the verge of starvation is going to have a very different experience than a child in the same time and geographical area that is born 6 months later whose first memory is of a harvest festival. Not to mention they are going to have very different nutrition and growth patterns, etc.
It's purely anecdotal, but I've seen this occur to a small extent in my personal life. My oldest was born in January, and he learned to walk in the dead of winter in a snowy environment (so, inside at home), but my middlest was born in April and learned to walk at parks and baseball fields. Does that mean their long-term personality traits are based around that? Not necessarily, but it's certainly plausible and early scientific research does support there being some correlation between season of birth and personality (Source 1, Source 2)
What you mean is.
A child born in winter will have a different personality than one born in summer. Because it also means they celebrate their birthday in summer or winter, which give a totally different vibe. It influences their life about as much as their name.
The part where Astrology fails is when you consider there are twins with opposing personalities.
Oh, astrology fails entirely; I was simply bringing up that the idea of the month of birth having some effect on personality has some merit, and that is also one of the most basic precepts of astrology (even a broken clock, eh?).
But like you said, there are many factors in personality, from genetics to name to birth order, etc. In fact, the very fact that one is a twin is going to influence a twin's personality.
And I also want to make the point that one should not dismiss pseudoscience or non-scientific cultural practices out of hand, because oftentimes there is some sort of rational basis for since pieces of those beliefs. Not always, but a huge amount of modern medicine is built on the practice of ethnobotany, which is effectively applying the scientific method to traditional medicines from around the world.
But it's not because astrology signs don't match the weather. Signs close to each other by month have radically different results. Sagittarius in December and Capricorn in January should have similar results.
Then there's all of Australia, South America, and Sub Sarahan Africa where astrology should be opposite because the seasons are opposite when you are south of the equator.
Agreed. That's why I said astrology fails completely. When I said "it's one of the most basic precepts of astrology" I meant the idea that season of birth can affect personality, no more. I didn't mean that astrology gets any of the specifics right, for all the reasons you suggest and more.