10 ms·

I was an astrologer – here's how it really works (2019)

126 points by hyperpallium2 5y ago

cratermoon 5y ago
Be sure to read the last paragraph.
- noT1 5y ago
  “This app/saas will change your life/make you smarter/richer/have more romantic success!!!”
- anfractuosity 5y ago
  And it seems they're correct - in that there is an app anyway "Most horoscopes ask what month you were born. Co–Star asks what minute. Powered by AI that merges NASA data with the insight of human astrologers."
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Any serious astrological calculation is gonna be based on what time you were born, fwiw.
  - padthai 5y ago
    I have seen them in posting Haskell jobs in HN to work with them in Soho, NY.
- okareaman 5y ago
  She's right about this. I have a related theory that it doesn't really matter if we can produce an intelligent and emotionally sensitive AI (which may be impossible.) It may not matter because if common people respond to the AI as if it were intelligent and emotional and believe this to be the case, then this fiction becomes reality.
  - galangalalgol 5y ago
    I think you might have just restated the Turing test?
    - okareaman 5y ago
      Yes but I'm what I am saying if that it passes for some large percentage of the population then for all intents and purposes it passes and the debate over sentient AI becomes less necessary.
  - anaerobicover 5y ago
    Famously this indeed happened with Eliza bot, which cannot be claimed very sophisticated as AI.
edu 5y ago
(2019)
- dang 5y ago
  Added. Thanks!
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I'm not aware of any studies comparing the predictive hit rate of astrologers and mainstream economists. A shame. That could be an interesting study.
- celticninja 5y ago
  I imagine they are both about the same in effectiveness and that is probably somewhere below a monkey randomly throwing darts at a spinning wheel of options.
- aphextron 5y ago
  I went on a Tinder date the other day. Totally random, no mutual friends, never met or spoke before. Within five minutes she told me she was a palm reader, so I humored her and asked her to read mine. I was absolutely shocked. The level of detail she went into that was dead on about my past and my personality was hard to explain away. It's of course just cold reading nonsense. But there's something about that interaction that really bothered me, and I can see how less rationally minded people would fall into it. If economics really is just cold reading at the societal level, there's probably something to the idea that preconceived notions can end up determining the course of reality.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    She didn’t investigate you extensively on Google first?
    - dkarras 5y ago
      Honestly, doesn't even need to. Cold reading, barnum effect etc. works really well on the human psyche.
  - bobsmooth 5y ago
    You're a furry, you like trippy art, you like programming, you like JRPGs and probably played Gaia Online. I got that from a single google search, imagine if I had your real name and a photo.
duxup 5y ago
>I can still make the odd forecast, though. Here’s one: the venture capital pouring into astrology apps will create a fortune telling system that works, because humans are predictable. As people follow the advice, the apps’ predictive powers will increase, creating an ever-tighter electronic leash. But they’ll be hugely popular – because if you sprinkle magic on top, you can sell people anything. I wonder about that. I know a lot of tech, 'fans' who really believe in n technology's (and to some extent some big name tech personalities) ability to solve a lot of problems ... almost to a magical extent. They love TED style talks where through tech somehow hand wave the actual problem and human nature leading to what seems like an inevitable a solution. I could see those folks getting into such a thing whole hog.
- krapp 5y ago
  Randonautica. It's not exactly astrology but it does exploit psychology for a fallacious "magical" effect in a similar way, and it's quite popular.
  - Accacin 5y ago
    Never heard of it before, that sounds pretty cool and fun. What's the problem with it?
    - krapp 5y ago
      It supposedly allows people to alter reality based on intention, like you want to see "x" and some quantum mumbo-jumbo happens and you're led to a location where "x" will manifest somehow. It's basically just confirmation bias the app. Like a Ouija board it's harmless as long as you don't take it seriously.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        That almost sounds like "The Secret", they tell you to want something "really hard" or something, and you will "bring it" to your life because "the Universe hears you". It has been a while since I have read about it, so excuse me if it is not completely correct.
mitko 5y ago
“Half the time, though, I couldn’t get a word in. It turned out what most people want is the chance to unload for an hour.” - astrologers are charlatans but I am perfectly happy with people using them as a lightweight cheaper therapy
- duxup 5y ago
  I can understand the appeal that it is a transaction that is entirely about the customer and their concerns, worries, history.
- Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  The "truth" of astrology may not really be the point, that is, even the most skeptically-minded might accept that astrology has value for some people because the simple creation of the formal system (regardless of whether it actually reflects reality or not) fulfills a deep human need. This is a view advanced by the philosopher of science Ernst Cassirer, for example.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  It would be very interesting to compare the satisfaction levels of astrologers' customers with those of more credentialed therapists.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict The only problem comes when the therapist both doesn't believe in what they are doing and is actively trying to maximize their own income. This will cause them to intentionally cause distress in the patient/client in order to be paid to relieve it.
mam3 5y ago
Mm most of mainstream astrology is bullshit but iknow 2 people who several time, said to people they didnt know before "no you arent born at that time of the day". The people made researchs and it turned out they were born 2h before or after, changing the ascendant significatively. I thinkits good to not believe in it, especially people who bullshit through it, but maybe not everything is science in the end.
- praptak 5y ago
  There is some more rigorous evidence [0] that astrology does not predict anything. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science
- technothrasher 5y ago
  If you with to throw out science as an epistomologic method, you have to show that whatever other method you wish to use will be more predictive. Anecdontal cherry picking like you're engaged in doesn't do that. Simply stating that science may not be able to show us everything that is true does not get you any closer to justified belief of any particular thing which you think science cannot show.
  - mam3 5y ago
    If someone makes predictions often you can quantify how likely the random hypothesis is compared to his prediction with p values...
faustlast 5y ago
the mind believes what you tell it.
- kortex 5y ago
  That's kind of the bent of many of the modern practitioners of chaos magick. Whether "magick" is "real" is irrelevant. If you can convince yourself strongly enough that things will go well for you, it often does.
Spinnaker_ 5y ago
I don't think we can expect the religious instinct, found in every known human society, to just disappear. Astrology seems to be an alright stand in. It lets people find meaning and exercise all the necessary symbolic pattern matching muscles. As mentioned in the article, sometimes she was more of a very cheaply priced therapist. Just letting people talk and feel heard. A naturopath friend of mine says something very similar. It's amazing how much better people do when they feel like they have someone to talk to who really cares and will take their time with them. The pills the patients leave with may not do much, but the 90 minutes she spent in intimate conversation with them really appears to. I think a lot of people who use these services sort of know that this is the case, even if it's not explicit in their mind.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > Astrology seems to be an alright stand in. It is fraud and is a predatory practice preying on people's ignorance and gullibility. This is like saying that other flim flam artists are an 'alright stand in'. Other forms of fraud are generally outlawed. Why should this one be allowed.
  - skapadia 5y ago
    Exactly. In this day and age, it's unbelievable that humans still believe in religion and astrology.
    - umvi 5y ago
      Well, until science can provide a better answer to the meaning of life than: > "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built." (Bertrand Russell) I doubt people will stop having hope that there is an an answer more fulfilling/meaningful/better than that out there somewhere.
renewiltord 5y ago
The idea of these people being cheap therapists actually appeals to me. It is similar to something I observed while working in Indian slums. Access to real healthcare being rare, people would visit unlicensed doctors who would nonetheless treat them successfully. The long tail on these doctors was ugly. But the normal case was great. And you could argue that they shouldn’t exist. And shouldn’t be able to prescribe. But the fact that they did and that they could meant many ill people recovered. The primary problem wasn’t quality of care. It was access. Going from no care to some care is of huge significance. Likewise, I suspect a focus on infallibility of healthcare professionals elsewhere drives up prices and actually makes outcomes worse for a large class of people because they simply do not have access due to the corresponding increase in cost of care. A lot of mental health treatment is likely non-pharmacological and so astrologers and the like provide a valuable healthcare service to society. The category distinction permits them to fail at healthcare. It also permits people who cannot access the formal system (with its hundreds of dollars of continued assessments) to access a lightweight form of it. I am wholly in favour of their existence.
- stocknoob 5y ago
  It also doesn’t help that doctors operate as a cartel, purposefully limiting the rate new graduates can be produced. If they actually wanted healthcare to be accessible they wouldn’t limit the supply of people who wanted to help.
mettamage 5y ago
When I was 12 I was quite adept at this and gave many adults a reading. It took me 4 years to conclusively disprove it. It felt really painful to hear my family still saying that it was a true scientific working system. I know they believe this, but IMO it feels like gaslighting from the perspective I have now. Some factoids: - Remembering birthdays is easy for me, because I still get everyone’s astrological profile “for free” when I hear someone’s birthday (it’s a subconscious thing). - Sometimes I still give people a reading for fun and tell them upfront that I believe it’s all nonsense. Yet, some people spontaneously start to believe in astrology after my reading, despite the evidence I give. All in all, fun and games but IMO a waste of time.
- JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  There's like an uncanny valley[0] of fiction (I'm lumping Astrology in with fiction) where just enough truth makes it feel all the way true. Sometimes it's creepy in the way that robotics' uncanny valley is, but other times it's not, it's almost validating. If you want to manipulate people, this is where you need to lead them. [0] For lack of a better comparison.
clydethefrog 5y ago
I sometimes wonder if there is some truth in astrology, especially in places where you have seasons, because of the environmental stimuli in your first months as a baby? More sunlight, longer days for the summer astral signs versus dark days and being inside for winter astral signs. Maybe "Gemini" are so "energetic" because their forming months are in a time when people spend more time going out and enjoying the summer while the "Capricorn" is more "analytic" because it first experience is a winter of being inside, experiencing more reflectiv activities?
- stocknoob 5y ago
  Astrologers ask your sign but never what hemisphere you were born in.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Good online tests ask for birthdate, city and/or lat/long.
  - forgetfulness 5y ago
    The horoscope doesn't, but more involved astrology will take into account time and location to know the positions and thus supposed influence of various celestial bodies on you. Needless to say, just because a system is complex and based on some concepts taken from nature, it doesn't make its claims true.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  The one problem here is, it would be really difficult - I would argue impossible - to demonstrate any effect in a convincing way. It's impossible to run a controlled experiment, and it's impossible to tease out and pin down all the confounding variables. It's what we referred to in one class I took as "fundamentally unanswerable questions." (Yes, the acronym was deliberate.) Worse, with the way standard statistical methods have been laid out, if you ignore the fuqedness of the question and go looking for correlations anyway, you are virtually guaranteed to find all sorts of them. About 1 in 20 things you think to look at will yield a statistically significant result. By definition. The classic XKCD on this effect is https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/
msrenee 5y ago
I enjoy tarot and the like. There's nothing magic about it. For me, it's a tool that helps me think more broadly about what is going on. Every card can be interpreted in multiple ways and you'll find a way to apply one of those interpretations to something in your life, as they're so broad. If I draw a card that talks about hard work leading to wealth, I'm going to remind myself that the work I'm putting in now is going to lead to success down the road. One about slowing down and focusing on relaxing and recuperating is going to remind me not to work myself to death trying to find success. There's no magic involved, but that doesn't mean it's useless. A self-help book doesn't magically fix the way you react to difficulties in life. It does, however, give you another way to think about things and encourage you to focus on different aspects than you would normally.
- _nalply 5y ago
  Yes. It's like a psychological Rorschach test. You see in the cards what you want to see. The cards help uncovering psychological stuff you mostly already know. It's really amazing how far you can go there.
ncmncm 5y ago
What even the people administering astrological advice mostly don't understand is that the whole moon'n'planets bit is purely a random number generator. Its purpose is to keep everybody from getting the same advice as everybody else, or as they got yesterday. It keeps people out of ruts. That is why scrambling the newspaper list wouldn't matter: it started out scrambled, better. It is quite a sophisticated psychological toolkit, and relatively cheap to use, vs. e.g. the US medical system. There are other functions. When you have a hard decision, the harder it is, the less it matters which alternative you choose. The consequences may be heaven vs. hell, but you can't tell up front, or the choice wouldn't be hard. Not choosing isn't on the list, but often the consequences of stalling are worse than the others: It is often better to try and see (and maybe fail and bail) than to wonder forever. So, it helps people take a next step, where they have been taught hesitancy and fear. Most of its value would collapse if people relying on it understood all this.
IndySun 5y ago
I understand and agree that these stories continually need to be told and charlatans unmasked - Extreme Gullibility is on the rise, thanks to the reach of the internet. But told here?
marcod 5y ago
In the early 2000s I worked for an astrologer. He did my star chart and said "you're hired, I can work with you" - my resume was rather secondary. I saw it as an entertainment product at the time. We sold a computer generated personal analysis for like $30. But when people called that they are completely broke and spent their last money on this analysis which will fix all their problems, it got too much for me and I got out.
calibas 5y ago
It's quite easy to be "psychic", any clever person can do it. It's kind of like a poker game, you can't see the person's cards, but you watch for the "tells" that reveal which cards they're holding.
sibeliuss 5y ago
It's better to think about Astrology as a form of divination, rather than an objective science to be refuted. Sure, one can derive objective statements from symbols that potentially extend in every direction, but the more interesting aspect is how the act of asking questions of the natal chart can yield unexpected answers that are true. It's a highly developed symbolic art, not a science.
- 1_player 5y ago
  Is anyone arguing that astrology is science? You call it divination, I call it a scam for gullible people. If there's one objective truth, is that astrology and divination in general has nothing scientific to it.
  - sibeliuss 5y ago
    > Is anyone arguing that astrology is science This is the standard that most apply to it, including most in this discussion. What I'm saying is that engaging with symbols is a creative act that can be useful and participatory. A persons natal chart, if read correctly, provides a web of symbology that the reader can engage with in order to stimulate the imagination. If one comes to the chart with a question and plays with the symbols, answers can arise that are unexpected and often startling in their usefulness. This does not make the response true in an objective sense ("such and such planetary position means x") but rather, it can provide answers in a similar way that other art forms provide answers. The difference with Astrology, however, is that the symbolic art used to engage with questions is a highly developed and extensive system, and has been refined over the millennia. A good analogy would be a psychological programming language that is thousands of years old, with libraries and coroutines that one can implement to help interpret general questions about human nature.
bitwize 5y ago
Orson Welles was a magician in addition to being a film director, and he knew all the "tricks", including techniques like cold reading. During the 60s or so, he used to fortune-tell, although he knew it was a scam and so woyld charge only a nominal fee -- like $2 -- and refuse the clients' money after the reading was ended. He reported being able to guess people's problems as soon as that walked in the door, and that practicing psychics called this "being a shut-eye" because they started believing they actually had psychic powers.
wazoox 5y ago
Want to be a psychic? Learn simple magician tricks. For instance, by looking at someone's belt, you can immediately tell if they're right-handed or left-handed.
- WorkLobster 5y ago
  This may be just me being odd, but I alternate the direction of my belt roughly once per week. Otherwise, it gets stretched at only the top, and as a result becomes warped and uncomfortable.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
Past thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472149 443 points 2 years ago 407 comments
rikroots 5y ago
After I self-published my first science fiction novel, I had to do stuff to promote it. One of the ideas I had was to create a predictions website based on a "mystical warding system" which I had mentioned in the book. One of the things I became very aware of, while working on the site, was the potential harm it could do if somebody took it even half-way seriously. I suddenly got very panicky about the consequences of claiming that "bad things might happen to you" because of some entirely fictitious "elemental flux in the aether". I went back through all the copy I'd written to add in a lot of "talk to your friends" and "go visit your doctor" advice - mostly to ease my own worries. The website failed entirely in its main purpose, which was to promote the book. But I've kept the pages up for sentimental reasons - not many people can claim that they've invented an entire prediction system from scratch! https://vreskiwards.rikweb.org.uk/index.html https://vreskiwards.rikweb.org.uk/index.html
codecrusade 5y ago
Jyotish is a fascinating science. Unravelling the science of Karma

126 points by hyperpallium2 5y ago

cratermoon 5y ago

Be sure to read the last paragraph.

noT1 5y ago
“This app/saas will change your life/make you smarter/richer/have more romantic success!!!”
anfractuosity 5y ago
And it seems they're correct - in that there is an app anyway "Most horoscopes ask what month you were born. Co–Star asks what minute. Powered by AI that merges NASA data with the insight of human astrologers."
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Any serious astrological calculation is gonna be based on what time you were born, fwiw.
- padthai 5y ago
  I have seen them in posting Haskell jobs in HN to work with them in Soho, NY.
okareaman 5y ago
She's right about this. I have a related theory that it doesn't really matter if we can produce an intelligent and emotionally sensitive AI (which may be impossible.) It may not matter because if common people respond to the AI as if it were intelligent and emotional and believe this to be the case, then this fiction becomes reality.
- galangalalgol 5y ago
  I think you might have just restated the Turing test?
  - okareaman 5y ago
    Yes but I'm what I am saying if that it passes for some large percentage of the population then for all intents and purposes it passes and the debate over sentient AI becomes less necessary.
- anaerobicover 5y ago
  Famously this indeed happened with Eliza bot, which cannot be claimed very sophisticated as AI.

edu 5y ago

(2019)

dang 5y ago
Added. Thanks!

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

I'm not aware of any studies comparing the predictive hit rate of astrologers and mainstream economists. A shame. That could be an interesting study.

celticninja 5y ago
I imagine they are both about the same in effectiveness and that is probably somewhere below a monkey randomly throwing darts at a spinning wheel of options.
aphextron 5y ago
I went on a Tinder date the other day. Totally random, no mutual friends, never met or spoke before. Within five minutes she told me she was a palm reader, so I humored her and asked her to read mine. I was absolutely shocked. The level of detail she went into that was dead on about my past and my personality was hard to explain away. It's of course just cold reading nonsense. But there's something about that interaction that really bothered me, and I can see how less rationally minded people would fall into it. If economics really is just cold reading at the societal level, there's probably something to the idea that preconceived notions can end up determining the course of reality.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  She didn’t investigate you extensively on Google first?
  - dkarras 5y ago
    Honestly, doesn't even need to. Cold reading, barnum effect etc. works really well on the human psyche.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  You're a furry, you like trippy art, you like programming, you like JRPGs and probably played Gaia Online. I got that from a single google search, imagine if I had your real name and a photo.

duxup 5y ago

>I can still make the odd forecast, though. Here’s one: the venture capital pouring into astrology apps will create a fortune telling system that works, because humans are predictable. As people follow the advice, the apps’ predictive powers will increase, creating an ever-tighter electronic leash. But they’ll be hugely popular – because if you sprinkle magic on top, you can sell people anything. I wonder about that. I know a lot of tech, 'fans' who really believe in n technology's (and to some extent some big name tech personalities) ability to solve a lot of problems ... almost to a magical extent. They love TED style talks where through tech somehow hand wave the actual problem and human nature leading to what seems like an inevitable a solution. I could see those folks getting into such a thing whole hog.

krapp 5y ago
Randonautica. It's not exactly astrology but it does exploit psychology for a fallacious "magical" effect in a similar way, and it's quite popular.
- Accacin 5y ago
  Never heard of it before, that sounds pretty cool and fun. What's the problem with it?
  - krapp 5y ago
    It supposedly allows people to alter reality based on intention, like you want to see "x" and some quantum mumbo-jumbo happens and you're led to a location where "x" will manifest somehow. It's basically just confirmation bias the app. Like a Ouija board it's harmless as long as you don't take it seriously.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      That almost sounds like "The Secret", they tell you to want something "really hard" or something, and you will "bring it" to your life because "the Universe hears you". It has been a while since I have read about it, so excuse me if it is not completely correct.

mitko 5y ago

“Half the time, though, I couldn’t get a word in. It turned out what most people want is the chance to unload for an hour.” - astrologers are charlatans but I am perfectly happy with people using them as a lightweight cheaper therapy

duxup 5y ago
I can understand the appeal that it is a transaction that is entirely about the customer and their concerns, worries, history.
Mediterraneo10 5y ago
The "truth" of astrology may not really be the point, that is, even the most skeptically-minded might accept that astrology has value for some people because the simple creation of the formal system (regardless of whether it actually reflects reality or not) fulfills a deep human need. This is a view advanced by the philosopher of science Ernst Cassirer, for example.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
It would be very interesting to compare the satisfaction levels of astrologers' customers with those of more credentialed therapists.
pessimizer 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict The only problem comes when the therapist both doesn't believe in what they are doing and is actively trying to maximize their own income. This will cause them to intentionally cause distress in the patient/client in order to be paid to relieve it.

mam3 5y ago

Mm most of mainstream astrology is bullshit but iknow 2 people who several time, said to people they didnt know before "no you arent born at that time of the day". The people made researchs and it turned out they were born 2h before or after, changing the ascendant significatively. I thinkits good to not believe in it, especially people who bullshit through it, but maybe not everything is science in the end.

praptak 5y ago
There is some more rigorous evidence [0] that astrology does not predict anything. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science
technothrasher 5y ago
If you with to throw out science as an epistomologic method, you have to show that whatever other method you wish to use will be more predictive. Anecdontal cherry picking like you're engaged in doesn't do that. Simply stating that science may not be able to show us everything that is true does not get you any closer to justified belief of any particular thing which you think science cannot show.
- mam3 5y ago
  If someone makes predictions often you can quantify how likely the random hypothesis is compared to his prediction with p values...

faustlast 5y ago

the mind believes what you tell it.

kortex 5y ago
That's kind of the bent of many of the modern practitioners of chaos magick. Whether "magick" is "real" is irrelevant. If you can convince yourself strongly enough that things will go well for you, it often does.

Spinnaker_ 5y ago

I don't think we can expect the religious instinct, found in every known human society, to just disappear. Astrology seems to be an alright stand in. It lets people find meaning and exercise all the necessary symbolic pattern matching muscles. As mentioned in the article, sometimes she was more of a very cheaply priced therapist. Just letting people talk and feel heard. A naturopath friend of mine says something very similar. It's amazing how much better people do when they feel like they have someone to talk to who really cares and will take their time with them. The pills the patients leave with may not do much, but the 90 minutes she spent in intimate conversation with them really appears to. I think a lot of people who use these services sort of know that this is the case, even if it's not explicit in their mind.

Ansil849 5y ago
> Astrology seems to be an alright stand in. It is fraud and is a predatory practice preying on people's ignorance and gullibility. This is like saying that other flim flam artists are an 'alright stand in'. Other forms of fraud are generally outlawed. Why should this one be allowed.
- skapadia 5y ago
  Exactly. In this day and age, it's unbelievable that humans still believe in religion and astrology.
  - umvi 5y ago
    Well, until science can provide a better answer to the meaning of life than: > "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built." (Bertrand Russell) I doubt people will stop having hope that there is an an answer more fulfilling/meaningful/better than that out there somewhere.

renewiltord 5y ago

The idea of these people being cheap therapists actually appeals to me. It is similar to something I observed while working in Indian slums. Access to real healthcare being rare, people would visit unlicensed doctors who would nonetheless treat them successfully. The long tail on these doctors was ugly. But the normal case was great. And you could argue that they shouldn’t exist. And shouldn’t be able to prescribe. But the fact that they did and that they could meant many ill people recovered. The primary problem wasn’t quality of care. It was access. Going from no care to some care is of huge significance. Likewise, I suspect a focus on infallibility of healthcare professionals elsewhere drives up prices and actually makes outcomes worse for a large class of people because they simply do not have access due to the corresponding increase in cost of care. A lot of mental health treatment is likely non-pharmacological and so astrologers and the like provide a valuable healthcare service to society. The category distinction permits them to fail at healthcare. It also permits people who cannot access the formal system (with its hundreds of dollars of continued assessments) to access a lightweight form of it. I am wholly in favour of their existence.

stocknoob 5y ago
It also doesn’t help that doctors operate as a cartel, purposefully limiting the rate new graduates can be produced. If they actually wanted healthcare to be accessible they wouldn’t limit the supply of people who wanted to help.

mettamage 5y ago

When I was 12 I was quite adept at this and gave many adults a reading. It took me 4 years to conclusively disprove it. It felt really painful to hear my family still saying that it was a true scientific working system. I know they believe this, but IMO it feels like gaslighting from the perspective I have now. Some factoids: - Remembering birthdays is easy for me, because I still get everyone’s astrological profile “for free” when I hear someone’s birthday (it’s a subconscious thing). - Sometimes I still give people a reading for fun and tell them upfront that I believe it’s all nonsense. Yet, some people spontaneously start to believe in astrology after my reading, despite the evidence I give. All in all, fun and games but IMO a waste of time.

JustSomeNobody 5y ago
There's like an uncanny valley[0] of fiction (I'm lumping Astrology in with fiction) where just enough truth makes it feel all the way true. Sometimes it's creepy in the way that robotics' uncanny valley is, but other times it's not, it's almost validating. If you want to manipulate people, this is where you need to lead them. [0] For lack of a better comparison.

clydethefrog 5y ago

I sometimes wonder if there is some truth in astrology, especially in places where you have seasons, because of the environmental stimuli in your first months as a baby? More sunlight, longer days for the summer astral signs versus dark days and being inside for winter astral signs. Maybe "Gemini" are so "energetic" because their forming months are in a time when people spend more time going out and enjoying the summer while the "Capricorn" is more "analytic" because it first experience is a winter of being inside, experiencing more reflectiv activities?

stocknoob 5y ago
Astrologers ask your sign but never what hemisphere you were born in.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Good online tests ask for birthdate, city and/or lat/long.
- forgetfulness 5y ago
  The horoscope doesn't, but more involved astrology will take into account time and location to know the positions and thus supposed influence of various celestial bodies on you. Needless to say, just because a system is complex and based on some concepts taken from nature, it doesn't make its claims true.
mumblemumble 5y ago
The one problem here is, it would be really difficult - I would argue impossible - to demonstrate any effect in a convincing way. It's impossible to run a controlled experiment, and it's impossible to tease out and pin down all the confounding variables. It's what we referred to in one class I took as "fundamentally unanswerable questions." (Yes, the acronym was deliberate.) Worse, with the way standard statistical methods have been laid out, if you ignore the fuqedness of the question and go looking for correlations anyway, you are virtually guaranteed to find all sorts of them. About 1 in 20 things you think to look at will yield a statistically significant result. By definition. The classic XKCD on this effect is https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/

msrenee 5y ago

I enjoy tarot and the like. There's nothing magic about it. For me, it's a tool that helps me think more broadly about what is going on. Every card can be interpreted in multiple ways and you'll find a way to apply one of those interpretations to something in your life, as they're so broad. If I draw a card that talks about hard work leading to wealth, I'm going to remind myself that the work I'm putting in now is going to lead to success down the road. One about slowing down and focusing on relaxing and recuperating is going to remind me not to work myself to death trying to find success. There's no magic involved, but that doesn't mean it's useless. A self-help book doesn't magically fix the way you react to difficulties in life. It does, however, give you another way to think about things and encourage you to focus on different aspects than you would normally.

_nalply 5y ago
Yes. It's like a psychological Rorschach test. You see in the cards what you want to see. The cards help uncovering psychological stuff you mostly already know. It's really amazing how far you can go there.

ncmncm 5y ago

What even the people administering astrological advice mostly don't understand is that the whole moon'n'planets bit is purely a random number generator. Its purpose is to keep everybody from getting the same advice as everybody else, or as they got yesterday. It keeps people out of ruts. That is why scrambling the newspaper list wouldn't matter: it started out scrambled, better. It is quite a sophisticated psychological toolkit, and relatively cheap to use, vs. e.g. the US medical system. There are other functions. When you have a hard decision, the harder it is, the less it matters which alternative you choose. The consequences may be heaven vs. hell, but you can't tell up front, or the choice wouldn't be hard. Not choosing isn't on the list, but often the consequences of stalling are worse than the others: It is often better to try and see (and maybe fail and bail) than to wonder forever. So, it helps people take a next step, where they have been taught hesitancy and fear. Most of its value would collapse if people relying on it understood all this.

IndySun 5y ago

I understand and agree that these stories continually need to be told and charlatans unmasked - Extreme Gullibility is on the rise, thanks to the reach of the internet. But told here?

marcod 5y ago

In the early 2000s I worked for an astrologer. He did my star chart and said "you're hired, I can work with you" - my resume was rather secondary. I saw it as an entertainment product at the time. We sold a computer generated personal analysis for like $30. But when people called that they are completely broke and spent their last money on this analysis which will fix all their problems, it got too much for me and I got out.

calibas 5y ago

It's quite easy to be "psychic", any clever person can do it. It's kind of like a poker game, you can't see the person's cards, but you watch for the "tells" that reveal which cards they're holding.

sibeliuss 5y ago

It's better to think about Astrology as a form of divination, rather than an objective science to be refuted. Sure, one can derive objective statements from symbols that potentially extend in every direction, but the more interesting aspect is how the act of asking questions of the natal chart can yield unexpected answers that are true. It's a highly developed symbolic art, not a science.

1_player 5y ago
Is anyone arguing that astrology is science? You call it divination, I call it a scam for gullible people. If there's one objective truth, is that astrology and divination in general has nothing scientific to it.
- sibeliuss 5y ago
  > Is anyone arguing that astrology is science This is the standard that most apply to it, including most in this discussion. What I'm saying is that engaging with symbols is a creative act that can be useful and participatory. A persons natal chart, if read correctly, provides a web of symbology that the reader can engage with in order to stimulate the imagination. If one comes to the chart with a question and plays with the symbols, answers can arise that are unexpected and often startling in their usefulness. This does not make the response true in an objective sense ("such and such planetary position means x") but rather, it can provide answers in a similar way that other art forms provide answers. The difference with Astrology, however, is that the symbolic art used to engage with questions is a highly developed and extensive system, and has been refined over the millennia. A good analogy would be a psychological programming language that is thousands of years old, with libraries and coroutines that one can implement to help interpret general questions about human nature.

bitwize 5y ago

Orson Welles was a magician in addition to being a film director, and he knew all the "tricks", including techniques like cold reading. During the 60s or so, he used to fortune-tell, although he knew it was a scam and so woyld charge only a nominal fee -- like $2 -- and refuse the clients' money after the reading was ended. He reported being able to guess people's problems as soon as that walked in the door, and that practicing psychics called this "being a shut-eye" because they started believing they actually had psychic powers.

wazoox 5y ago

Want to be a psychic? Learn simple magician tricks. For instance, by looking at someone's belt, you can immediately tell if they're right-handed or left-handed.

WorkLobster 5y ago
This may be just me being odd, but I alternate the direction of my belt roughly once per week. Otherwise, it gets stretched at only the top, and as a result becomes warped and uncomfortable.

hyperpallium2 5y ago

Past thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472149 443 points 2 years ago 407 comments

rikroots 5y ago

After I self-published my first science fiction novel, I had to do stuff to promote it. One of the ideas I had was to create a predictions website based on a "mystical warding system" which I had mentioned in the book. One of the things I became very aware of, while working on the site, was the potential harm it could do if somebody took it even half-way seriously. I suddenly got very panicky about the consequences of claiming that "bad things might happen to you" because of some entirely fictitious "elemental flux in the aether". I went back through all the copy I'd written to add in a lot of "talk to your friends" and "go visit your doctor" advice - mostly to ease my own worries. The website failed entirely in its main purpose, which was to promote the book. But I've kept the pages up for sentimental reasons - not many people can claim that they've invented an entire prediction system from scratch! https://vreskiwards.rikweb.org.uk/index.html https://vreskiwards.rikweb.org.uk/index.html

codecrusade 5y ago

Jyotish is a fascinating science. Unravelling the science of Karma