4 ms·

I don't know about the stars defining your personality and fate in absolute terms, but I also cannot dismiss altogether. To prove my point, circadian rhythm is

by rrgok 4y ago

I don't know about the stars defining your personality and fate in absolute terms, but I also cannot dismiss altogether. To prove my point, circadian rhythm is mostly in synch with day/night rhythm. Are there any proof to dismiss that other planets don't have any kind of effect on human psyche and body? Let me explain, maybe the period of effect of other planets is not measured in hours, but years or decades. Hell, look at seasons, in someway it depends on the position of the earth relative to the sun. Some people have seasonal affective disorder. Moreover, look at the Moon, which is roughly in synch with menstrual cycle of women. The solar cycle defines your age, as you age your behaviour changes. This are some small example. It baffles me, how many people in tech dismiss astrology even though there are no proof to acknowledge or deny their effect on human psyche and body.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
> Are there any proof to dismiss that other planets don't have any kind of effect on human psyche and body? That's not how this works - I don't need to prove it doesn't, you need to prove it does. The null hypothesis is that they don't. Russell's Teapot is a great thought experiment for this - just because I can't prove it's not true doesn't mean I should accept it. Alternatively, would you accept that the moon is what defines digestion and makes us poop just because you can't disprove it might have some effect? I don't think your arguments hold much weight - SAD is a problem with vitamin D. Menstrual cycle and lunar cycle, while sharing similar lengths (though not for many women), is by all evidence a coincidence to the best of my knowledge (again, unless you can prove otherwise). You need to provide a mechanism for why Neptune being in the seventh house can effect someone biologically before I'll consider it. If you have examples I'm all ears. > It baffles me, how many people in tech dismiss astrology even though there are no proof to acknowledge or deny their effect on human psyche and body. Again, if there is no proof by default most scientifically minded people tend to assume it's not true.
- rrgok 4y ago
  I guess you didn't understand my reply. I'm not pro astrology nor I'm against it. But, I kinda dislike when tech people dismiss it all together because their logical knowledge can't come up with a proof. That's why I made some example, not as a proof for the correctness of astrology. Would it be fair to say "We don't know and we should study it more", rather than "There is no proof supporting it and I feel like it is stupid to believe so, therefore I should not believe in it." This feels all over again "Earth is at the center of the universe" when 99% of the humans believed otherwise. My stance is "Since there is no proof that supports or is against astrology, it is better to say I don't know and be open about it."
- wwweston 4y ago
  A skeptic would likely assume it's not true. In my mind, a scientific-minded person comes up with a hypothesis, models with explaining power, and then thinks "how could I devise an (ideally repeatable) experiment that could help me distinguish between this hypothesis and another (likely null) hypothesis?" The fundamental mindset isn't "accept only proven claims", it's formulating hypotheses and then evaluating them via testing. I'd guess many astrological hypotheses aren't especially likely to fare well, and to the extent that would-be scientists have the same intuition we probably won't get a lot of tested astrology. But I think it's also an interesting question where that intuition comes from; generating & exploring hypotheses are pretty fuzzy parts of the process. And how you formulate them matters. If the hypothesis is that Neptune's position is causal, well, there's not a lot of mechanisms we're aware of to build around. OTOH, if the hypothesis is that Neptune's position is correlated with some other variable, still could be a waste of time but there's a lot more mechanisms one could look into. "SAD is a problem with vitamin D" is an acknowledgement that there are these kind of correlations in play. How likely are they to bear fruit? My gut says not super likely, but at some level that's back in that field of intuition. In some ways the ultimate measure of whether something is "scientific" and included/excluded from scientific inquiry is basically a declaration about how interesting or uninteresting it is to scientists.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    You're right - I would have been better served by saying skeptical. Otherwise I stand by my argument.

by rrgok 4y ago

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago

> Are there any proof to dismiss that other planets don't have any kind of effect on human psyche and body? That's not how this works - I don't need to prove it doesn't, you need to prove it does. The null hypothesis is that they don't. Russell's Teapot is a great thought experiment for this - just because I can't prove it's not true doesn't mean I should accept it. Alternatively, would you accept that the moon is what defines digestion and makes us poop just because you can't disprove it might have some effect? I don't think your arguments hold much weight - SAD is a problem with vitamin D. Menstrual cycle and lunar cycle, while sharing similar lengths (though not for many women), is by all evidence a coincidence to the best of my knowledge (again, unless you can prove otherwise). You need to provide a mechanism for why Neptune being in the seventh house can effect someone biologically before I'll consider it. If you have examples I'm all ears. > It baffles me, how many people in tech dismiss astrology even though there are no proof to acknowledge or deny their effect on human psyche and body. Again, if there is no proof by default most scientifically minded people tend to assume it's not true.

rrgok 4y ago
I guess you didn't understand my reply. I'm not pro astrology nor I'm against it. But, I kinda dislike when tech people dismiss it all together because their logical knowledge can't come up with a proof. That's why I made some example, not as a proof for the correctness of astrology. Would it be fair to say "We don't know and we should study it more", rather than "There is no proof supporting it and I feel like it is stupid to believe so, therefore I should not believe in it." This feels all over again "Earth is at the center of the universe" when 99% of the humans believed otherwise. My stance is "Since there is no proof that supports or is against astrology, it is better to say I don't know and be open about it."
wwweston 4y ago
A skeptic would likely assume it's not true. In my mind, a scientific-minded person comes up with a hypothesis, models with explaining power, and then thinks "how could I devise an (ideally repeatable) experiment that could help me distinguish between this hypothesis and another (likely null) hypothesis?" The fundamental mindset isn't "accept only proven claims", it's formulating hypotheses and then evaluating them via testing. I'd guess many astrological hypotheses aren't especially likely to fare well, and to the extent that would-be scientists have the same intuition we probably won't get a lot of tested astrology. But I think it's also an interesting question where that intuition comes from; generating & exploring hypotheses are pretty fuzzy parts of the process. And how you formulate them matters. If the hypothesis is that Neptune's position is causal, well, there's not a lot of mechanisms we're aware of to build around. OTOH, if the hypothesis is that Neptune's position is correlated with some other variable, still could be a waste of time but there's a lot more mechanisms one could look into. "SAD is a problem with vitamin D" is an acknowledgement that there are these kind of correlations in play. How likely are they to bear fruit? My gut says not super likely, but at some level that's back in that field of intuition. In some ways the ultimate measure of whether something is "scientific" and included/excluded from scientific inquiry is basically a declaration about how interesting or uninteresting it is to scientists.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  You're right - I would have been better served by saying skeptical. Otherwise I stand by my argument.