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The comments here are extremely unhelpful. We get it, you think astrology is stupid and anyone that thinks it works is an idiot worth ostracizing. Now can we g

The comments here are extremely unhelpful. We get it, you think astrology is stupid and anyone that thinks it works is an idiot worth ostracizing. Now can we get on with comments actually diving deeper into the actual study in the OP?

beardyw 2y ago
It's not exactly a HN topic is it?
- SteveNuts 2y ago
  > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. I think this would fall under "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", even though most of us think it's bunk.
  - beardyw 2y ago
    Thanks for that. I will suggest that we modify it to: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity even though most of us think it's bunk." That will avoid a lot of problems!
    - SteveNuts 2y ago
      That seems like an ironically anti-scientific stance to take, not to mention a slippery slope to start moderating what people find interesting would introduce some serious bias.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Moderators would gave an extremely difficult task trying to sift through (a) what most of think is hunk and (b) the cases where most of us are actually wrong.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    I'd make a distinction. The concept being studied is bunk. The methodology to show it's bunk is ... intellectually gratifying, IMO. Specifically, how does one "prove a negative", at least to the sense of prediction no better than random?
crubier 2y ago
Ok let's dive in: The actual study in the OP says: Astrology is stupid and anyone that thinks it works is an idiot worth ostracizing.
- alserio 2y ago
  That's harsh. This study shows that astrologers can be useful as sources for RNGs.
andrewla 2y ago
I'm impressed, as other commenters have noted, by the specific way that astrology fails, rather than just by the fact of it's failure. The inter-astrologer agreement being low strongly indicates that there's not even a systematic basis for how conclusions are reached. I would have expected more bland agreement -- this person does X, which is something that Leos do, so they are a Leo. And they're just fooled by confirmation bias and base rate fallacies. "Yes they are a Leo!" -> I'm a genius, "No, they're a Taurus" -> Oh, it is so unusual to see a Taurus act that way! But this failure feels deeper; people have adapted to the fact that astrology doesn't work by adding ever more complex epicycles to their personal theory of astrology until it has completely diverged from their peers.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Relates to that, I've always been interested in the comparison of astrology to the various different personality tests. I always find myself coming across a new (to me) personality test with a heavy dose of skepticism. More often than not I get to the results and am surprised with how well the results seem to describe me in great detail. I never know whether to shake my skepticism or if I just got taken by a way more clever slight of hand than astrology offers. Astrology feels like a show from the early 00s that I can't remember the name of. It was setup as a live audience show with the host claiming to talk to dead people. The problem was he was so insanely generic that it was just basic statistics combined with basic skills at reading people's responses. He's often point to half the room of a few hundred people and say "I'm feeling someone...the letter S? ..."
dredmorbius 2y ago
The more effective mechanism for steering the conversation is to make the top-level comment you'd prefer to see. You might also email mods about off-topic or HN-guidelines-violating comments at hn@ycombinator.com. Dang's adopted a practice of sweeping off-topicness into a buried thread which is quite effective.

beardyw 2y ago

It's not exactly a HN topic is it?

SteveNuts 2y ago
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. I think this would fall under "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", even though most of us think it's bunk.
- beardyw 2y ago
  Thanks for that. I will suggest that we modify it to: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity even though most of us think it's bunk." That will avoid a lot of problems!
  - SteveNuts 2y ago
    That seems like an ironically anti-scientific stance to take, not to mention a slippery slope to start moderating what people find interesting would introduce some serious bias.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Moderators would gave an extremely difficult task trying to sift through (a) what most of think is hunk and (b) the cases where most of us are actually wrong.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  I'd make a distinction. The concept being studied is bunk. The methodology to show it's bunk is ... intellectually gratifying, IMO. Specifically, how does one "prove a negative", at least to the sense of prediction no better than random?

crubier 2y ago

Ok let's dive in: The actual study in the OP says: Astrology is stupid and anyone that thinks it works is an idiot worth ostracizing.

alserio 2y ago
That's harsh. This study shows that astrologers can be useful as sources for RNGs.

andrewla 2y ago

I'm impressed, as other commenters have noted, by the specific way that astrology fails, rather than just by the fact of it's failure. The inter-astrologer agreement being low strongly indicates that there's not even a systematic basis for how conclusions are reached. I would have expected more bland agreement -- this person does X, which is something that Leos do, so they are a Leo. And they're just fooled by confirmation bias and base rate fallacies. "Yes they are a Leo!" -> I'm a genius, "No, they're a Taurus" -> Oh, it is so unusual to see a Taurus act that way! But this failure feels deeper; people have adapted to the fact that astrology doesn't work by adding ever more complex epicycles to their personal theory of astrology until it has completely diverged from their peers.

_heimdall 2y ago
Relates to that, I've always been interested in the comparison of astrology to the various different personality tests. I always find myself coming across a new (to me) personality test with a heavy dose of skepticism. More often than not I get to the results and am surprised with how well the results seem to describe me in great detail. I never know whether to shake my skepticism or if I just got taken by a way more clever slight of hand than astrology offers. Astrology feels like a show from the early 00s that I can't remember the name of. It was setup as a live audience show with the host claiming to talk to dead people. The problem was he was so insanely generic that it was just basic statistics combined with basic skills at reading people's responses. He's often point to half the room of a few hundred people and say "I'm feeling someone...the letter S? ..."

dredmorbius 2y ago

The more effective mechanism for steering the conversation is to make the top-level comment you'd prefer to see. You might also email mods about off-topic or HN-guidelines-violating comments at hn@ycombinator.com. Dang's adopted a practice of sweeping off-topicness into a buried thread which is quite effective.