9 ms·

My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program and is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. She makes comments about it in public and I cringe.

My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program and is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. She makes comments about it in public and I cringe. But the worst part is that half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology. It's very weird.

DANmode 3y ago
This is wildly interesting to me. How did you find yourself in your group, mostly by happenstance, or choices? Do you have a separate group that you talk about important things with? ...is it us?
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  This comment is strange...
  - maxbond 3y ago
    Yeah, this is a "very intelligent woman in a PhD program" who has a hobby that she shares with her friends, that's no reason to suspect she and her friends can't discuss "important things." My understanding as an outsider is that astrology, tarot, etc function as a shared vocabulary and mythology to communicate about mental health and life's troubles. I think for most people the occult elements are largely aesthetic. Throughout history people have used occult aesthetics to create a heightened experience. Sometimes that can help you commit to the process and get more out of it. (And other times con artists use it to get you to let your guard down, c'est la vie.) Personally it's not for me, but when I got to know people who were into it, and did some readings to humor them, it made sense to me.
    - operatingthetan 3y ago
      Also people can have interests that aren't that serious or have no impact on their lives. Sometimes I've met people that it seems as if some of their interests are basically long-trolls of their friends and family. So if the SO likes astrology, who cares?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - klabb3 3y ago
      > Throughout history people have used occult aesthetics to create a heightened experience. Yes and even among hackers. Porting doom to a microwave oven for instance.
      - zen_1 3y ago
        Yes, but the hackers don't tend to think literal demons will invade earth unless the ~crystal chakras are aligned~ doom is ported to everything more complex than an opamp
      - midoridensha 3y ago
        Porting Doom to something weird is a hobby. No one actually believes the game is anything other than a silly game. It's not much different from building model ships in bottles: a very interesting and impressive technical exercise, but ultimately a task of zero practicality.
    - Pamar 3y ago
      This is also an interesting/insightful comment. But again, Tarot (and especially Astrology: you cannot really change when you were born) do not encourage self analysis and especially any attempt to change your own mental models/way to do things. Hugo Pratt, author of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corto_Maltese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corto_Maltese - hinted at this in one of stories about the character. Allegedly Corto met some sort of Gypsy palm reader when he was just a teen. The Gypsy checked his palm and told him his life line was short, so he would die very young. His reaction: he took out a knife and cut his own palm to make the line longer. The latter part is usually missing when you use Tarot, Astrology etc. There is also a desire to know "what will happen to me", but I think that divinatory magic can help even if you are 100% rational: http://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html http://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html
      - dmurray 3y ago
        Learning to accept that some things are beyond human control is a mental health victory in itself. To the kind of person who wants to find a proximate cause for everything, "I didn't get the job because Jupiter is in Scorpio" is much less toxic than "I didn't get the job because the hiring committee is racist".
        midoridensha 3y ago
        Maybe you didn't get the job because you weren't a good fit for the job, or maybe you didn't get the job because the hiring committee simply found someone else just as good and flipped a coin. Sometimes there's a good reason for something, sometimes it's just happenstance. Trying to make up nonsensical reasons for things is pointless.
      - jmkd 3y ago
        You generalized tarot and astrology based on the predictive elements often seen in the media. You are completely ignoring the primary motivation of both practices which is very much in attempting to understand yourself. It's a shame when those who decry alternative systems do so using flawed logic.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
somedude895 3y ago
> half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology That's about exactly my experience. Half my female friends (and about as many on dating platforms), and about three in four of my gay friends. Not a single straight guy ever talks to me about star signs.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  The star signs for straight guys are the stock market prediction lines.
  - zen_1 3y ago
    Or guessing at geopolitics "My friend on telegram said Wagner are about to invade Belarus" and so on
    - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      Or prediction markets like Manifold.
  - kalb_almas 3y ago
    MBTI
  - permo-w 3y ago
    or conspiracy theories
- onecommentman 3y ago
  In the 1970s many straight guys were “into” (natal) astrology, as evidenced by the classic pickup line “Hey babe, what’s your sign?” Any less scientific than “Hey babe, what’s your Meyers-Briggs type?”? Astrology got me out of an intro to stats final. You could write a paper using stats in lieu of the final, if your grades were high enough. I got a list of DOB and declared majors for each UGs from the University, hypothesized the most likely sun sign for each major, and tested whether the number of students with the characteristic Sun sign was significantly higher. Pre-VisiCalc, IBM360 era. Huge ream of 17”x12” pin-fed green and white computer paper, sharpened pencil. Twelve hypotheses, three significant at the .05 level. There may have been a wee bit of what the kids today call p-hacking but it would have passed the social science standards at the time. The most significant result was 7 out of 12 International Studies majors were in the Sun sign of Libra (roughly p=1/12), and the expected correlation between diplomacy and Libra was commonly cited by their literature. That was unexpectedly strong. People have gotten funded on less.
tebut 3y ago
Not everyone “believes in it”. This comes off a puerile take, akin to puritan paranoia over DND and comic books.
makeitdouble 3y ago
> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. I was working on an astrology widget for a portal site, and read every advice in it every sign for months at lengths. None of the advice were ever highly impacting, nor seemed to have a chance to bring problematic results. At best it felt like a nice way to get some variety into someone's life ("wear something green today to improve your luck") In that light, I feel caring about astrology could be just another hobby, it's pretty innocuous.
- fsloth 3y ago
  The whole point of public astrology is to make statements that are general and harmless. Genericity means people patternmatch the advice to their daily experience often enough to feel the advice was indeed meant to them. ”Your week starts you being stressed, but come Friday things will look out better. Weekend will energize you. Remember to care for yourself. Coming months will offer you a happy surprise.” Personal astrology then has similar aspects as tarot and geneal counseling. As any roleplaying game enthusiast knows, mapping life to fixed ruleset is great fun. What makes this pathological is if people actually believe this stuff. But in the non-pathological case I suppose it works similarly as therapy for non-clinical stuff - people helped to identify their issues and are coached to work through them. People are really blind to aspects of their own life (speaking from experience) and need things pointed out to them in a safe setting. Personally I feel it’s infuriating bs, but recognize it’s mostly harmless and may actually help some people work out some issues.
- wruza 3y ago
  The problem is they often make statements that A should be careful around B and avoid serious decisions this week. They can literally model the behavior of a significant amount of population for a week. It may sound funny until you realize that B is you and A is HR who loves that shit.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    You're right in that this could be problematic to emit such an advice, but I am optimistic in that the writers tend to avoid such a direct framing. It will be more around "pay special attention to the serious decisions comming this week". An actual example: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/horoscope/taurus/daily-20230725.html https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/horoscope/taurus/daily-20230... > You get some weird news early on that leaves you feeling kind of funky for most of the day, but it's not all bad! You know deep down that things are right where they're supposed to be. You won't get anything that leads to direct action from these tidbits of non-comited vagueness.
f6v 3y ago
> My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program Just like in any occupation, you can be good at your job, but completely bananas outside of it.
- stevezsa8 3y ago
  I was having a conversation with a friend at work about a conspiracy theory loving colleague. I asked if it's possible to be good at your job while believing in far out stuff. My friend said "seems like it". But I have a feeling the mental baggage that comes from wacky beliefs is going to affect other aspects of life and work in a negative way. But that's just my opinion.
  - namaria 3y ago
    Everyone is mostly wrong about most things most of the time. Don't assume you're a paragon of rationality and correctness just because the toleration in your daily life is bigger then the margin by which you're holding mistaken beliefs. We just need to be right enough long enough within a limited scope. That's what makes civilization successful. Specialization.
- jeltz 3y ago
  Yeah, one of the best devs I have ever worked with is a right-wing conspiracy nut.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
I worked in various "alternative" industries in my youth. One day I was having an informal diner with people that, in another context, could have been business partners. One guy was making a killing with an astrology service by phone. He started with those text message based games, that were popular in the 2000'. Remember? "Send 'love' to this number to know if he loves you". And eventually created a full phone call based business with about 200 freelancer astrologists and mediums. He just redirected, and took a cut. He made banks. What he told me that night was that 99% of his customer base were women. "You have to see astrology as porn for women", he said. "Porn public is mostly male, astrology mostly female. Both know it's not real, and most won't spend more than a few minutes on it. But many pay for it even if they would never say they do".
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  Can attest to this, all folks that I know are into this are women. Even seasoned doctors. And the response? 'Yeah I know its not rational but you know....'. Some form of quick reward system gets invoked in the brain with this apparently. Well still better than looking for tobacco kicks or chocolate instead.
  - achenet 3y ago
    ironically enough, a fairly large number of doctors/nurses smoke, at least from what I've observed.
- ZephyrBlu 3y ago
  I always wonder what the morals and ethics of these kind of business owners is. You're selling a service you know is bullshit and liken to porn. Personally I would not be proud to say I run that business. I would rather that these businesses didn't exist, and so I don't want to contribute to perpetuating them. Of course there's the "fulfilling the market need" type of answer, but that's basically saying you will do anything for money regardless of morals and ethics.
  - achenet 3y ago
steve_adams_86 3y ago
Two of my favourite and easily most intelligent friends are deeply into astrology and have been for decades. One is a PhD as well, the other an accomplished writer. It’s always hard to put these things together, though it’s actually very stimulating to talk with them about it. It’s an entire world for them, loaded with meaning and salience. It doesn’t take away from how intelligent I think they are (they both possess capabilities I can’t fathom), but I don’t think it’ll ever properly make sense to me.
hypertele-Xii 3y ago
Be careful. Women like that tend to lack accountability, and make sudden life decisions based on such nonsense, including dumping you.
sneak 3y ago
> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff These can't both be true. Being in a PhD program is not a sign of intelligence. Belief in astrology is a clear sign of lack of intelligence.
- namaria 3y ago
  I wouldn't jump to conclusions about people based on their blind spots. The guy who invented calculus believed a whole lot of nonsense. Doesn't make him dumb or invalidate his accomplishments. Being in a PhD program is most definitely sign of some sort of above average intelligence. Irrational beliefs are not proof of lacking intelligence. People who are so ready to dispense judgement should go talk to specialists about things they hold to be true on fields they don't really know a lot about. Would be humbling.
- bombolo 3y ago
  You're downvoted but it's true… anyway one can have a phd from a bullshit university in a bullshit field. Not all phds are decent.
- confidantlake 3y ago
  Issac Newton was into alchemy and is one of the most intelligent humans in history.
  - sneak 3y ago
    alchemy != astrology Alchemy had not yet been debunked; astrology has.
    - svnt 3y ago
      They’re really pretty equivalent in that respect — the only difference here seems to be that you know more about alchemy.
rsynnott 3y ago
Straight men, of course, prefer MBTI. Personality divination magic is somewhat gender-coded. (I'm gay and haven't noticed astrology being particularly popular with gay men, though it may be regional.)
- maxlamb 3y ago
  MBTI is an attempt at classification of people's personalities at a high level from a series of questions. That just seems fundamentally different than "I will predict your future based on what day you are born".
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > MBTI is an attempt at classification of people's personalities at a high level from a series of questions. Not one which works, however. They both purport to tell you what sort of person you are, with an explanation for how they do this which might be vaguely convincing to some non-experts, but are, statistically, meaningless. > At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, MBTI testing became highly popular among young South Koreans who were using it in an attempt to find compatible dating partners Astrology is also not, as it turns out, the only woo used in dating.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

DANmode 3y ago

This is wildly interesting to me. How did you find yourself in your group, mostly by happenstance, or choices? Do you have a separate group that you talk about important things with? ...is it us?

ChatGTP 3y ago
This comment is strange...
- maxbond 3y ago
  Yeah, this is a "very intelligent woman in a PhD program" who has a hobby that she shares with her friends, that's no reason to suspect she and her friends can't discuss "important things." My understanding as an outsider is that astrology, tarot, etc function as a shared vocabulary and mythology to communicate about mental health and life's troubles. I think for most people the occult elements are largely aesthetic. Throughout history people have used occult aesthetics to create a heightened experience. Sometimes that can help you commit to the process and get more out of it. (And other times con artists use it to get you to let your guard down, c'est la vie.) Personally it's not for me, but when I got to know people who were into it, and did some readings to humor them, it made sense to me.
  - operatingthetan 3y ago
    Also people can have interests that aren't that serious or have no impact on their lives. Sometimes I've met people that it seems as if some of their interests are basically long-trolls of their friends and family. So if the SO likes astrology, who cares?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - klabb3 3y ago
    > Throughout history people have used occult aesthetics to create a heightened experience. Yes and even among hackers. Porting doom to a microwave oven for instance.
    - zen_1 3y ago
      Yes, but the hackers don't tend to think literal demons will invade earth unless the ~crystal chakras are aligned~ doom is ported to everything more complex than an opamp
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      Porting Doom to something weird is a hobby. No one actually believes the game is anything other than a silly game. It's not much different from building model ships in bottles: a very interesting and impressive technical exercise, but ultimately a task of zero practicality.
  - Pamar 3y ago
    This is also an interesting/insightful comment. But again, Tarot (and especially Astrology: you cannot really change when you were born) do not encourage self analysis and especially any attempt to change your own mental models/way to do things. Hugo Pratt, author of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corto_Maltese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corto_Maltese - hinted at this in one of stories about the character. Allegedly Corto met some sort of Gypsy palm reader when he was just a teen. The Gypsy checked his palm and told him his life line was short, so he would die very young. His reaction: he took out a knife and cut his own palm to make the line longer. The latter part is usually missing when you use Tarot, Astrology etc. There is also a desire to know "what will happen to me", but I think that divinatory magic can help even if you are 100% rational: http://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html http://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html
    - dmurray 3y ago
      Learning to accept that some things are beyond human control is a mental health victory in itself. To the kind of person who wants to find a proximate cause for everything, "I didn't get the job because Jupiter is in Scorpio" is much less toxic than "I didn't get the job because the hiring committee is racist".
      - midoridensha 3y ago
        Maybe you didn't get the job because you weren't a good fit for the job, or maybe you didn't get the job because the hiring committee simply found someone else just as good and flipped a coin. Sometimes there's a good reason for something, sometimes it's just happenstance. Trying to make up nonsensical reasons for things is pointless.
    - jmkd 3y ago
      You generalized tarot and astrology based on the predictive elements often seen in the media. You are completely ignoring the primary motivation of both practices which is very much in attempting to understand yourself. It's a shame when those who decry alternative systems do so using flawed logic.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

somedude895 3y ago

> half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology That's about exactly my experience. Half my female friends (and about as many on dating platforms), and about three in four of my gay friends. Not a single straight guy ever talks to me about star signs.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
The star signs for straight guys are the stock market prediction lines.
- zen_1 3y ago
  Or guessing at geopolitics "My friend on telegram said Wagner are about to invade Belarus" and so on
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    Or prediction markets like Manifold.
- kalb_almas 3y ago
  MBTI
- permo-w 3y ago
  or conspiracy theories
onecommentman 3y ago
In the 1970s many straight guys were “into” (natal) astrology, as evidenced by the classic pickup line “Hey babe, what’s your sign?” Any less scientific than “Hey babe, what’s your Meyers-Briggs type?”? Astrology got me out of an intro to stats final. You could write a paper using stats in lieu of the final, if your grades were high enough. I got a list of DOB and declared majors for each UGs from the University, hypothesized the most likely sun sign for each major, and tested whether the number of students with the characteristic Sun sign was significantly higher. Pre-VisiCalc, IBM360 era. Huge ream of 17”x12” pin-fed green and white computer paper, sharpened pencil. Twelve hypotheses, three significant at the .05 level. There may have been a wee bit of what the kids today call p-hacking but it would have passed the social science standards at the time. The most significant result was 7 out of 12 International Studies majors were in the Sun sign of Libra (roughly p=1/12), and the expected correlation between diplomacy and Libra was commonly cited by their literature. That was unexpectedly strong. People have gotten funded on less.

tebut 3y ago

Not everyone “believes in it”. This comes off a puerile take, akin to puritan paranoia over DND and comic books.

makeitdouble 3y ago

> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. I was working on an astrology widget for a portal site, and read every advice in it every sign for months at lengths. None of the advice were ever highly impacting, nor seemed to have a chance to bring problematic results. At best it felt like a nice way to get some variety into someone's life ("wear something green today to improve your luck") In that light, I feel caring about astrology could be just another hobby, it's pretty innocuous.

fsloth 3y ago
The whole point of public astrology is to make statements that are general and harmless. Genericity means people patternmatch the advice to their daily experience often enough to feel the advice was indeed meant to them. ”Your week starts you being stressed, but come Friday things will look out better. Weekend will energize you. Remember to care for yourself. Coming months will offer you a happy surprise.” Personal astrology then has similar aspects as tarot and geneal counseling. As any roleplaying game enthusiast knows, mapping life to fixed ruleset is great fun. What makes this pathological is if people actually believe this stuff. But in the non-pathological case I suppose it works similarly as therapy for non-clinical stuff - people helped to identify their issues and are coached to work through them. People are really blind to aspects of their own life (speaking from experience) and need things pointed out to them in a safe setting. Personally I feel it’s infuriating bs, but recognize it’s mostly harmless and may actually help some people work out some issues.
wruza 3y ago
The problem is they often make statements that A should be careful around B and avoid serious decisions this week. They can literally model the behavior of a significant amount of population for a week. It may sound funny until you realize that B is you and A is HR who loves that shit.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  You're right in that this could be problematic to emit such an advice, but I am optimistic in that the writers tend to avoid such a direct framing. It will be more around "pay special attention to the serious decisions comming this week". An actual example: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/horoscope/taurus/daily-20230725.html https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/horoscope/taurus/daily-20230... > You get some weird news early on that leaves you feeling kind of funky for most of the day, but it's not all bad! You know deep down that things are right where they're supposed to be. You won't get anything that leads to direct action from these tidbits of non-comited vagueness.

f6v 3y ago

> My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program Just like in any occupation, you can be good at your job, but completely bananas outside of it.

stevezsa8 3y ago
I was having a conversation with a friend at work about a conspiracy theory loving colleague. I asked if it's possible to be good at your job while believing in far out stuff. My friend said "seems like it". But I have a feeling the mental baggage that comes from wacky beliefs is going to affect other aspects of life and work in a negative way. But that's just my opinion.
- namaria 3y ago
  Everyone is mostly wrong about most things most of the time. Don't assume you're a paragon of rationality and correctness just because the toleration in your daily life is bigger then the margin by which you're holding mistaken beliefs. We just need to be right enough long enough within a limited scope. That's what makes civilization successful. Specialization.
jeltz 3y ago
Yeah, one of the best devs I have ever worked with is a right-wing conspiracy nut.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

I worked in various "alternative" industries in my youth. One day I was having an informal diner with people that, in another context, could have been business partners. One guy was making a killing with an astrology service by phone. He started with those text message based games, that were popular in the 2000'. Remember? "Send 'love' to this number to know if he loves you". And eventually created a full phone call based business with about 200 freelancer astrologists and mediums. He just redirected, and took a cut. He made banks. What he told me that night was that 99% of his customer base were women. "You have to see astrology as porn for women", he said. "Porn public is mostly male, astrology mostly female. Both know it's not real, and most won't spend more than a few minutes on it. But many pay for it even if they would never say they do".

saiya-jin 3y ago
Can attest to this, all folks that I know are into this are women. Even seasoned doctors. And the response? 'Yeah I know its not rational but you know....'. Some form of quick reward system gets invoked in the brain with this apparently. Well still better than looking for tobacco kicks or chocolate instead.
- achenet 3y ago
  ironically enough, a fairly large number of doctors/nurses smoke, at least from what I've observed.
ZephyrBlu 3y ago
I always wonder what the morals and ethics of these kind of business owners is. You're selling a service you know is bullshit and liken to porn. Personally I would not be proud to say I run that business. I would rather that these businesses didn't exist, and so I don't want to contribute to perpetuating them. Of course there's the "fulfilling the market need" type of answer, but that's basically saying you will do anything for money regardless of morals and ethics.
- achenet 3y ago

steve_adams_86 3y ago

Two of my favourite and easily most intelligent friends are deeply into astrology and have been for decades. One is a PhD as well, the other an accomplished writer. It’s always hard to put these things together, though it’s actually very stimulating to talk with them about it. It’s an entire world for them, loaded with meaning and salience. It doesn’t take away from how intelligent I think they are (they both possess capabilities I can’t fathom), but I don’t think it’ll ever properly make sense to me.

hypertele-Xii 3y ago

Be careful. Women like that tend to lack accountability, and make sudden life decisions based on such nonsense, including dumping you.

sneak 3y ago

> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff These can't both be true. Being in a PhD program is not a sign of intelligence. Belief in astrology is a clear sign of lack of intelligence.

namaria 3y ago
I wouldn't jump to conclusions about people based on their blind spots. The guy who invented calculus believed a whole lot of nonsense. Doesn't make him dumb or invalidate his accomplishments. Being in a PhD program is most definitely sign of some sort of above average intelligence. Irrational beliefs are not proof of lacking intelligence. People who are so ready to dispense judgement should go talk to specialists about things they hold to be true on fields they don't really know a lot about. Would be humbling.
bombolo 3y ago
You're downvoted but it's true… anyway one can have a phd from a bullshit university in a bullshit field. Not all phds are decent.
confidantlake 3y ago
Issac Newton was into alchemy and is one of the most intelligent humans in history.
- sneak 3y ago
  alchemy != astrology Alchemy had not yet been debunked; astrology has.
  - svnt 3y ago
    They’re really pretty equivalent in that respect — the only difference here seems to be that you know more about alchemy.

rsynnott 3y ago

Straight men, of course, prefer MBTI. Personality divination magic is somewhat gender-coded. (I'm gay and haven't noticed astrology being particularly popular with gay men, though it may be regional.)

maxlamb 3y ago
MBTI is an attempt at classification of people's personalities at a high level from a series of questions. That just seems fundamentally different than "I will predict your future based on what day you are born".
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > MBTI is an attempt at classification of people's personalities at a high level from a series of questions. Not one which works, however. They both purport to tell you what sort of person you are, with an explanation for how they do this which might be vaguely convincing to some non-experts, but are, statistically, meaningless. > At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, MBTI testing became highly popular among young South Koreans who were using it in an attempt to find compatible dating partners Astrology is also not, as it turns out, the only woo used in dating.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]