It would be more interesting to hear how someone justifies believing in astrology. Typically it’s a long string of horrifying nonsense that tells you quite a bit more about a person than just asking “Do you believe in astrology? [Y/N]”
I’m atheistically agnostic about astrology...”I doubt it, but who am I to say?”. As in intellectual exercise once I tried to come up with a plausible mechanism for how astrology might happen. Who’s to say that planetary alignment could not in fact subtly effect protein expression or the development of neuroligcal systems during very critical stages of cell division and development in the embryo?
To be clear, I don’t really buy it, but with a little imagination.....
Please keep posting, by the way—your remark on the externalities of nuclear power was a good one, and I would like to hear your thoughts on other occasions.
Being that there is a total absence of evidence that astrology can consistently predict anything better than chance, why is it even worth talking about possible mechanisms? Until there’s any positive evidence for it, the right answer to “How does astrology work?” is “It doesn’t.”
Edit: Be careful with those “intellectual exercises”, by the way. You’re not going to become a stronger rationalist by practicing rationalization: “Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.”
Point taken about evidence of predictive value v. random chance. Just to clarify, the intellectual exercise was more in the lines of, rather than taking an astrology book and seeing if what it says is predictive v. chance, let’s rephrase the question:
The question not as “is Astrology real or correct”, it becomes “could time of birth affect development, apart from seasonal effects?”. (why day or hour of birth, from year to year, might matter).
Then the exercise leads to “could planetary alignment (gravitational changes, electrical fields, etc.) have subtle and predictive effects on personality or development?”
And that is where I hit “who am I to say” seeing as that’s not my area of knowledge, and I have not come across any studies that might have analyzed that either way. Maybe it’s because some proto-analysis suggests that it’s not “worth” studying because there’s nothing to study (fields from high-tension power lines affecting development, possibly), but maybe the “worth” is more monetary: who’s going to bother funding it? a. it seems ridiculous, b. it would be really really hard = expensive, c. the effect might be there but too subtle for us to measure at this time.
Anyway, I’m in no way a proponent of astrology, just relaying a process that seemed a rational exploration at the time.
“The question not as “is Astrology real or correct”, it becomes “could time of birth affect development, apart from seasonal effects?”
I have wondered that too. Trouble is: signal-to-noise ratio. Maybe you were born in December and it was cold, so you have a slight tendency to think of the world as hostile (say).
But that will be drowned out by a zillion other far-more-important influences.
Same a fortiori with gravitational/electromagnetic fields. Start with gravity. I calculate on the back of the envelope the pull of Proxima Centauri (the nearest star that’s not the sun) as being on the order of 7 piconewton, or 7 trillionths of a newton. (A newton is enough force to lift a hamburger.) So what if you are pulled in the direction of P. Centauri by an amount as feeble as that? That’s about as much gravitational pull as an orange has on you 50 metres away. :) Not to mention all the other stars are acting in opposite directions. Result: nil.
Electrical force argument left as an exercise for the reader.
Apropos of nothing: Welcome to LessWrong! (Do I detect a Galileo reference in that handle? Classic!) Feel free to introduce yourself there! If you want some reading, What Do We Mean By Rationality? is a good kicking-off point; that said, we try to link back to related ideas in most of our posts, so you’ll find a lot of cool info just by following overcomingbias.com and lesswrong.com links in comments and posts. If you want to be systematic—or just look for random lists to pick attractive titles off of—you can try the sequences and the top-rated posts.
Yes, I like the role of Simplicio as the guy who asks the dumb questions.
Thanks for the links; I’ve already been gobbling this website down for a week or so, having been put on the scent by Massimo Pigliucci’s. Haven’t seen overcomingbias yet, mind.
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual” — find out how he feels about astrology. —Robert Heinlein
While I understand, judging people’s intelligence by comparing their beliefs to yours should be done with care.
It would be more interesting to hear how someone justifies believing in astrology. Typically it’s a long string of horrifying nonsense that tells you quite a bit more about a person than just asking “Do you believe in astrology? [Y/N]”
Actually, this is a great job interview question.
I’m atheistically agnostic about astrology...”I doubt it, but who am I to say?”. As in intellectual exercise once I tried to come up with a plausible mechanism for how astrology might happen.
Who’s to say that planetary alignment could not in fact subtly effect protein expression or the development of neuroligcal systems during very critical stages of cell division and development in the embryo? To be clear, I don’t really buy it, but with a little imagination.....
By the way: Welcome to LessWrong! Feel free to post an introduction of yourself! If you want to get a good head-start on the kind of thing we do here, “What Do We Mean By Rationality?” is a good start, and if you’re ever looking for other material, you can browse the sequences and the top-rated posts to find a lot of good essays.
On this specific issue, ata has the most relevant link, but I would add a couple other points:
Just because you could, in theory, be convinced of astrology at some point doesn’t mean you have to be agnostic now—you can be quite strongly convinced of its incorrectness and still accept correction should some ever come to your attention.
If you are actually quite skeptical of astrology—if you believe it to be strongly contradicted by the evidence—this is one of the places where we would hope you would say so. Humility is a virtue when it makes you careful, not when it is attire you wear to affirm your open-mindedness.
Please keep posting, by the way—your remark on the externalities of nuclear power was a good one, and I would like to hear your thoughts on other occasions.
Being that there is a total absence of evidence that astrology can consistently predict anything better than chance, why is it even worth talking about possible mechanisms? Until there’s any positive evidence for it, the right answer to “How does astrology work?” is “It doesn’t.”
“I doubt it, but who am I to say?” is still being too generous to it. It is an arbitrarily privileged hypothesis.
Edit: Be careful with those “intellectual exercises”, by the way. You’re not going to become a stronger rationalist by practicing rationalization: “Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.”
Point taken about evidence of predictive value v. random chance. Just to clarify, the intellectual exercise was more in the lines of, rather than taking an astrology book and seeing if what it says is predictive v. chance, let’s rephrase the question: The question not as “is Astrology real or correct”, it becomes “could time of birth affect development, apart from seasonal effects?”. (why day or hour of birth, from year to year, might matter). Then the exercise leads to “could planetary alignment (gravitational changes, electrical fields, etc.) have subtle and predictive effects on personality or development?” And that is where I hit “who am I to say” seeing as that’s not my area of knowledge, and I have not come across any studies that might have analyzed that either way. Maybe it’s because some proto-analysis suggests that it’s not “worth” studying because there’s nothing to study (fields from high-tension power lines affecting development, possibly), but maybe the “worth” is more monetary: who’s going to bother funding it? a. it seems ridiculous, b. it would be really really hard = expensive, c. the effect might be there but too subtle for us to measure at this time. Anyway, I’m in no way a proponent of astrology, just relaying a process that seemed a rational exploration at the time.
“The question not as “is Astrology real or correct”, it becomes “could time of birth affect development, apart from seasonal effects?”
I have wondered that too. Trouble is: signal-to-noise ratio. Maybe you were born in December and it was cold, so you have a slight tendency to think of the world as hostile (say).
But that will be drowned out by a zillion other far-more-important influences.
Same a fortiori with gravitational/electromagnetic fields. Start with gravity. I calculate on the back of the envelope the pull of Proxima Centauri (the nearest star that’s not the sun) as being on the order of 7 piconewton, or 7 trillionths of a newton. (A newton is enough force to lift a hamburger.) So what if you are pulled in the direction of P. Centauri by an amount as feeble as that? That’s about as much gravitational pull as an orange has on you 50 metres away. :) Not to mention all the other stars are acting in opposite directions. Result: nil.
Electrical force argument left as an exercise for the reader.
Apropos of nothing: Welcome to LessWrong! (Do I detect a Galileo reference in that handle? Classic!) Feel free to introduce yourself there! If you want some reading, What Do We Mean By Rationality? is a good kicking-off point; that said, we try to link back to related ideas in most of our posts, so you’ll find a lot of cool info just by following overcomingbias.com and lesswrong.com links in comments and posts. If you want to be systematic—or just look for random lists to pick attractive titles off of—you can try the sequences and the top-rated posts.
What ho, thanks for the welcome!
Yes, I like the role of Simplicio as the guy who asks the dumb questions.
Thanks for the links; I’ve already been gobbling this website down for a week or so, having been put on the scent by Massimo Pigliucci’s. Haven’t seen overcomingbias yet, mind.
Again, many thanks for the bread-salt. :)
Worth as an intellectual is completely different to ‘intelligence’ but your point stands even then.