3 ms·

Astrology works on people who really believe in astrology, because they internally reinforce behavior patterns to conform to their astrological predications. T

Astrology works on people who really believe in astrology, because they internally reinforce behavior patterns to conform to their astrological predications. To be fair though, most doctors don't perform much better than these astrologers in my experience, and that's with billions of dollars in research, a quarter of a million dollar education and years of rigorous training. It turns out most people are incompetent and our science is worse than we think in a lot of cases.

williamdclt 2y ago
Perform better _at what_? I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap between what doctors and astrologers are trying to do
- soco 2y ago
  Works at generating income for the astrologers, of course.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  Doctors are guessing with as much accuracy as astrologers. The difference is that when the doctor guesses right, the patient recovers and we praise the doctor as some sort of low grade messiah, and when an astrologer guesses right, we go "oh, lucky guess, cool."
andrewla 2y ago
> Astrology works Citation needed. Even agreement between the astrologers was low, which is a strong argument that it doesn't work even if you believe in it. That is, the patterns "predicted" by astrology simply do not exist; individuals cannot reliably reinforce their behavior based on expected behavior because there is no agreement on what the expected behavior is. > most doctors don't perform much better than these astrologers in my experience I mean, we've all had bad experiences with doctors, but this is comparing apples to wooden spheres painted red. I have had doctors successfully treat patients many times, including such things as prescribing antibiotics and succesfully delivering children.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  People who are really into astrology absolutely make an effort to conform to their sign, choose who to have significant relationships because of it and decide to do things based on how well it conforms to their belief about their astrological nature. That will become patently obvious to you if you spend a decent amount of time around people who are really into astrology. That's different from astrologers failing to make more nuanced predictions based on a complex chart. Doctors throw shit at the walls pretty hard, the difference is that when they get lucky it's obvious, and when they don't, they have malpractice insurance.
  - meroes 2y ago
    Yes apparently male and female Virgos don’t work together as I’ve been told over the phone
  - andrewla 2y ago
    > to conform to their sign That's key here though -- even experts disagree on what conformance to a sign means. So someone who makes life decisions like "I'm not going to go on a second date with this person; as an Aquarius there's no way I can ever love someone born in the second house of Cancer" or some shit is creating a rationalization -- presented with the same facts another astrologer might reach completely different conclusions. So they're not really "conforming" to anything at all -- they're just "making decisions" like the rest of us. EDIT: to further clarify, the claim that "astrology works on people who believe in it" is really saying "people who believe in astrology and conform their actions to it are predictable in their reactions using astrology". The inter-expert agreement is low enough that even true believers in astrology are not predictable using astrology because two experts would predict different behavior.
  - swid 2y ago
    My male friend once left the room with two girls I didn’t know very well; one of whom he was dating. We were all around 20 years old. In the ten minutes he was gone, they looked up his sign and his girlfriend decided they were not compatible and literally dumped him when he got back. I guess with the lens of time, maybe there was more going on, but at the time it seemed like this was solely based on the advice of the astrology website. I was flabbergasted and have had a very negative opinion on astrology ever since.
jimhefferon 2y ago
Doctors fixed my heart in 2002 and I think that's better performance than I would have gotten from an astrologer.

williamdclt 2y ago

Perform better _at what_? I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap between what doctors and astrologers are trying to do

soco 2y ago
Works at generating income for the astrologers, of course.
CuriouslyC 2y ago
Doctors are guessing with as much accuracy as astrologers. The difference is that when the doctor guesses right, the patient recovers and we praise the doctor as some sort of low grade messiah, and when an astrologer guesses right, we go "oh, lucky guess, cool."

andrewla 2y ago

> Astrology works Citation needed. Even agreement between the astrologers was low, which is a strong argument that it doesn't work even if you believe in it. That is, the patterns "predicted" by astrology simply do not exist; individuals cannot reliably reinforce their behavior based on expected behavior because there is no agreement on what the expected behavior is. > most doctors don't perform much better than these astrologers in my experience I mean, we've all had bad experiences with doctors, but this is comparing apples to wooden spheres painted red. I have had doctors successfully treat patients many times, including such things as prescribing antibiotics and succesfully delivering children.

CuriouslyC 2y ago
People who are really into astrology absolutely make an effort to conform to their sign, choose who to have significant relationships because of it and decide to do things based on how well it conforms to their belief about their astrological nature. That will become patently obvious to you if you spend a decent amount of time around people who are really into astrology. That's different from astrologers failing to make more nuanced predictions based on a complex chart. Doctors throw shit at the walls pretty hard, the difference is that when they get lucky it's obvious, and when they don't, they have malpractice insurance.
- meroes 2y ago
  Yes apparently male and female Virgos don’t work together as I’ve been told over the phone
- andrewla 2y ago
  > to conform to their sign That's key here though -- even experts disagree on what conformance to a sign means. So someone who makes life decisions like "I'm not going to go on a second date with this person; as an Aquarius there's no way I can ever love someone born in the second house of Cancer" or some shit is creating a rationalization -- presented with the same facts another astrologer might reach completely different conclusions. So they're not really "conforming" to anything at all -- they're just "making decisions" like the rest of us. EDIT: to further clarify, the claim that "astrology works on people who believe in it" is really saying "people who believe in astrology and conform their actions to it are predictable in their reactions using astrology". The inter-expert agreement is low enough that even true believers in astrology are not predictable using astrology because two experts would predict different behavior.
- swid 2y ago
  My male friend once left the room with two girls I didn’t know very well; one of whom he was dating. We were all around 20 years old. In the ten minutes he was gone, they looked up his sign and his girlfriend decided they were not compatible and literally dumped him when he got back. I guess with the lens of time, maybe there was more going on, but at the time it seemed like this was solely based on the advice of the astrology website. I was flabbergasted and have had a very negative opinion on astrology ever since.

jimhefferon 2y ago

Doctors fixed my heart in 2002 and I think that's better performance than I would have gotten from an astrologer.