astrological age?

[hobbsyoyo]

I thought this thread was about Julian Dates (stardates used in space missions - no joke, they are a thing).
Thread dissapoints

 

[CivNoobie]

I thought this thread was about Julian Dates (stardates used in space missions - no joke, they are a thing).
Thread dissapoints

you are thinking of AU

but astrology itself has been dead on for me most of the times despite people calling it' fake"

 

[Hygro]

but astrology itself has been dead on for me most of the times despite people calling it' fake"

I guess that's the point. There's very valid criticisms of astrology and valid criticisms of our ability to parse both cause-effect and interpret ambiguity1. But those criticisms haven't been compelling enough to cover that it just seems to be that there's something else going on that we haven't scientifically examined yet, and until then, we have to use our other, dodgier ways of understanding things. Then you can't help but say might as well use astrology's self-explanation for that nebulous thing astrology covers that is otherwise not well explained.

1. Including our self assessment of how often something occurs. I.e. "most of the time" could mean "70%" or it could mean 1% that feels profound.

 

[Bugfatty300]

but astrology itself has been dead on for me most of the times

But then there're people who will swear they were abducted by aliens. The scientific community will take astrology seriously when it can be demonstrated in testable conditions. Otherwise it's your own personal conjecture. If it works for you then great.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

 

[Tahuti]

Astrology is cool. I find it annoying that we haven't figured out a way to study what it's actual supposed to be, mostly because most scientific people who touch the topic have no interest in actually learning it, and most astrologically inclined people are terribly unscientific.

I can relate to that. However, there have been attempts to prove astrology by comparing WWI casualty statistics and those turned out to be very inconclusive. The premise of astrology is rather contentious, because there is very little astrophysical evidence the position of the stars can influence us the way astrologers claim to be. However, that is still no evidence to the countrary.

 

[Kyriakos]

I can relate to that. However, there have been attempts to prove astrology by comparing WWI casualty statistics and those turned out to be very inconclusive. The premise of astrology is rather contentious, because there is very little astrophysical evidence the position of the stars can influence us the way astrologers claim to be. However, that is still no evidence to the countrary.

I agree. The usual line is that since a smallish satellite planet (the moon) can have such a pronounced effect on the earth (eg tides and ebbs), then the massive stars (along with the large planets) are expected to play a very crucial role too.

I think they very well might. It surely will be extremely difficult to prove it mathematically, though. Moreso (afaik) the claim is that the stars have an effect also in direct relation to the 2-dimensinal mapping of their positions on the sky, which obviously is another matter (it does not take into consideration the actual distance from us, since constellations are shaped from stars which are usually very far away from each other).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

you are thinking of AU

but astrology itself has been dead on for me most of the times despite people calling it' fake"

An astronautical unit (AU) is a measure of distance, not time. They are completely unrelated to JD's and astrological ages.

 

[Berzerker]

I read somewhere the bull in one of those cro-magnon caves ~15-30k ago shows a star pattern akin to Taurus the Bull

 

[classical_hero]

but astrology itself has been dead on for me most of the times despite people calling it' fake"

The problem is that most of them are so vague that nearly anything can be seen as a proof of them.

 

[Hygro]

I can relate to that. However, there have been attempts to prove astrology by comparing WWI casualty statistics and those turned out to be very inconclusive. The premise of astrology is rather contentious, because there is very little astrophysical evidence the position of the stars can influence us the way astrologers claim to be. However, that is still no evidence to the countrary.

From what I understand, which is little, it's all based on the position of the other planets, I'm not sure how much it has to do with the actual stars though aside from borrowing names and such.

Now I'm curious to learn it.

The problem is that most of them are so vague that nearly anything can be seen as a proof of them.

That can be a problem with it. My experience with astrology has been actually very specific and not vague. It comes down whether or not you're dealing with personalized astrology with its myriad houses, planets, rising/moon/sun, etc.

General magazine astrology etc is like trying to know economics by reading at best The Economist, which is a prettttty terrible "at best."

Anyway this thread made me listen to a recording of when my family friend went through my chart coincidentally exactly 1 year ago. Note I earlier in the thread said the more she knew me the more off it was. Turns out she was nailing it with specific dates and I just failed to see it until review.

 

[Quintillus]

Like bhsup, my first though was about the song The Age of Aquarius by The 5th Dimension. Classic song from 1969.

I'm with classical_hero. Astrology can have very broad predictions, so that almost inevitably something will happen that you can interpret as confirming it relatively often. There can also be a placebo effect. Just as taking a placebo pill may make you feel better because you think it will make you feel better, you may believe that the astrology is predicting accurately because you think astrology is accurate.

(You could turn that around and say that other people don't believe that astrology is accurate because they don't think it's accurate, but point is a placebo effect is possible. Arguing about whether astrology is accurate, at least with today's technology, is like arguing whether ghosts are real)

I agree with Bugfatty300, too - other than the end of family structure, almost anyone would agree that religion and nationalism have been important in recent times (though nationalism is much more recent), and that those predictions for the next few hundred years are quite likely. So if it comes true, there'd still be a pretty good chance that it would've come true anyway, regardless of astrology.

I read somewhere the bull in one of those cro-magnon caves ~15-30k ago shows a star pattern akin to Taurus the Bull

Wasn't the constellation Taurus still there 15 - 30,000 years ago? It doesn't seem remarkable to me that they may have painted a highly-visible constellation - as I recall there were other cave paintings of constellations as well.

 

[Hygro]

I'm with classical_hero. Astrology can have very broad predictions, so that almost inevitably something will happen that you can interpret as confirming it relatively often. There can also be a placebo effect. Just as taking a placebo pill may make you feel better because you think it will make you feel better, you may believe that the astrology is predicting accurately because you think astrology is accurate.

(You could turn that around and say that other people don't believe that astrology is accurate because they don't think it's accurate, but point is a placebo effect is possible. Arguing about whether astrology is accurate, at least with today's technology, is like arguing whether ghosts are real)

Hm. I guess that's my problem with criticisms of astrology. Your metaphor (ghosts) and the placebo/vagueness combo sum it up. With the placebo, that's clearly a big component of people's astrology experience. Same with vagueness. But while true, those serve mostly as comfortable narratives for explaining away astrology, the vagueness is not a function of astrology itself and placebos are a measurable thing that might not account for its powers. Like a drug, (i.e. the realm of placebo) its effects can be from multiple causes with placebo being just one.

The ghosts one is more interesting, and I think more fundamentally telling of how we're failing to discuss astrology in the mainstream. A ghosts-astrology metaphor is talking about astrology as the object, i.e. discussing the existence of the actual locations of the planets in our solar system divided into Babylonian time logic and its relationship to human behavior.

But I think if we're to study what astrology actually is we shouldn't take its own self description at face value, without automatically discounting that as a metaphor it may have very well achieved success in revealing something about how humans work that is, presently, only described by astrology (i.e. outside of the usual psychological explanations). Or in other words, we just need to figure out how to measure if it works, and then measure if it works, before we can attempt to figure out what's causing what. Because we don't even know what's being caused yet Which loops back to your point anyhow.

 

[Borachio]

http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/06/08/more-evidence-that-astrology-is-bunk.htm

Hartmann and his colleagues used computer analysis and statistical methods to study possible astrological connections between over 15,000 individuals. Their test subjects came from two sources.

The first was the Vietnam Experience Study, which gathered information about intelligence, personality and date of birth for male military veterans. The second was the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which included intelligence and date of birth information for males and females aged between 15 and 24 years.

If connections existed over a rate of 5%, they were considered valid and not the result of random links. The scientists could find no relationship between the time and date of a person’s birth and their personality traits, which the Vietnam study categorised using terms such as psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism and social desirability.

Having said that, there is some evidence that people tend to conform to their astrological types. Provided they know what Star Signs they are.

 

[luiz]

Astrology and ancient "science" in general is pretty interesting to study, and indeed tell us a lot about how our ancestors viewed the world.

Obviously it has no scientific validity, and any prediction/interpretation that seems right is merely the product of vagueness, placebo and suggestion.

 

[Kyriakos]

Astrology and ancient "science" in general is pretty interesting to study, and indeed tell us a lot about how our ancestors viewed the world.

Obviously it has no scientific validity, and any prediction/interpretation that seems right is merely the product of vagueness, placebo and suggestion.

So the theory that the earth is round, along with a quite reasonable approximation of the periphery of the earth, "has no scientific validity, and any prediction/interpretation that seems right is merely the product of vagueness, placebo and suggestion".

Ok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC. He had heard that in Syene the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice whereas in Alexandria it still cast a shadow. Using the differing angles the shadows made as the basis of his trigonometric calculations he estimated a circumference of around 250,000 stades. The length of a 'stade' is not precisely known, but Eratosthenes' figure only has an error of around five to fifteen percent.[18][19][20] Eratosthenes used rough estimates and round numbers, but depending on the length of the stadion, his result is within a margin of between 2% and 20% of the actual meridional circumference, 40,008 kilometres (24,860 mi). Note that Eratosthenes could only measure the circumference of the Earth by assuming that the distance to the Sun is so great that the rays of sunlight are essentially parallel.

 

[Hygro]

Obviously it has no scientific validity

True.

and any prediction/interpretation that seems right is merely the product of vagueness, placebo and suggestion.

And yet you couldn't help yourself. This is a positive assertion and not a scientific one.

Which tells me a lot about how you view the world. Not so different in your desire to draw conclusions.

Astrology and ancient "science" in general is pretty interesting to study, and indeed tell us a lot about how our ancestors viewed the world.

 

[luiz]

So the theory that the earth is round, along with a quite reasonable approximation of the periphery of the earth, "has no scientific validity, and any prediction/interpretation that seems right is merely the product of vagueness, placebo and suggestion".

Ok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

Hum, what you quoted was an example of ancient astronomy, not ancient astrology. Astrology is the belief that celestial bodies influence our personality and destiny in a measurable way.

 

[luiz]

And yet you couldn't help yourself. This is a positive assertion and not a scientific one.

Which tells me a lot about how you view the world. Not so different in your desire to draw conclusions.

​

Fair enough. The scientific wording of that phrase should be "controlled experiments have demonstrated that any prediction/interpretation that seems right can be explained by the product of vagueness, placebo and suggestion".

 

[Borachio]

Obviously it has no scientific validity,

Is it obvious that it has no scientific validity? It seemed an obvious notion to the ancients that it was a valid view, didn't it?

How much scientific knowledge about what the planets and the stars actually are is needed before it becomes obvious that astrology is bunk?

 

[Kyriakos]

Hum, what you quoted was an example of ancient astronomy, not ancient astrology. Astrology is the belief that celestial bodies influence our personality and destiny in a measurable way.

? You said "astrology and ancient 'science' has no validity" etc. Obviously i reacted to the "ancient science" part. I do not know about astrology, although it was linked to astronomy in the old times. That does not mean the ancients had no science at all. An example of their astronomy was my link to Eratosthenes, a quite prominent mathematician and a head-librarian of the library of Alexandria