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As a side note: blows my mind there are people over the age of 9 that persist in actually believing in tarot cards or astrology.
People believe in a god who sacrificed himself to save people from himself. Tarot is downright reasonable in comparison.
I've seen it. Tarot is like amateur therapy, with props. It's a whooole lot of talking back and forth, with some cards to comment on.
Yeah some people take it way too seriously, but most people just enjoy it for what it is. Like I've got a lucky rock that I feel off without, but I know it's just a fetish.
Just because tarot cards aren't real doesn't mean there isn't something potentially very positive about the experience of it, especially if the person doing the tarot reading is a really good people person and makes the person being read felt seen and listened to. If the person giving tarot readings is a genuinely good person who is enjoys interacting and listening with others than it really doesn't matter if the tarot part is just some props and bullshit. Sure you can argue someone should go to normal therapy, but there is just no denying there is a huge amount of people who aren't going to do that and will sit down for a tarot reading.
I think whether tarot reading is real or not is the least interesting perspective to look at tarot reading from. You have to see tarot reading through the lens of theater where the point is you use a bunch of pretend bullshit to positively impact the audience. If someone treats tarot readings as a way to scam people out of money ok I dont like it, but if the person is genuinely pouring their heart and soul into giving tarot readings I just don't think you can say it is a bad thing. Hell you can probably get way more people to take a tarot reading then try out doing community theater so shrugs.....
Yupppp, very well said. I've seen it done at small gatherings, or sometimes someone will set a room aside at a house party, and it really gets people talking. Lots of heartfelt conversations go on around that area of the get together. The people talk about their lives - theirs goals, and fears, and relationships, etc. They aren't talking about the cards, unless it's like to comment on the nice art.
But just in comparison
So independent of any woo-woo, tarot cards are designed to be a potent conceptual microcosm. That means that when you shuffle the cards and do a reading, with a decent understanding of what each of the cards represents, you essentially make a little randomly generated conceptual perspective through which to view the problem. Extremely helpful for shaking out of an established mindset, finding an unexpected angle which reveals connections you hadn't considered.
I can't really speak to astrology, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be approximately accurate for some reason other than the stars themselves. Perhaps the changing temperatures of the seasons have a slightly noticeable effect on natal development.
Astrology is only accurate in that everything it says is vague and easily interpretable in multiple ways.
A teacher did an experiment where he handed his class custom astrology reports based on their birthdate, and asked them to rate how well they fit each of them. Everyone gave it a high rating, and said it was very accurate. He had them pass the paper to a different student, and everyone laughed because everyone got the exact same astrology report.
Mystery Hunters flashback out of nowhere. My man Doubting Dave did this experiment.
Certainly sometimes, not always. I was convinced to get a "proper" chart done, and the results were more specific and accurate than I expected. Certainly not vague newspaper predictions. I'm not going to claim the whole practice is authentic, but like I said I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to have some actual correspondence to some unknown tangible cause unrelated to the stars.
Certainly sometimes, not always
That's not the basis of a good prediction. Imagine flipping a coin. You can "guess" the answer with 50% accuracy by just choosing heads each time.
But that's cheating you say? You could also get 50% accuracy by just flipping another coin and using that choice. Or just choosing the opposite that just appeared (heads, tails, heads, etc.). That's not good enough for a prediction.
I'm not trying to sell anyone on astrology here. All I said was sometimes it's so vague as to to apply to anyone, but not always.
If it isn't vague, it isn't astrology.
They are just reading your body language and things they find online about you.
The location flaming balls of gas are have no influence on your life. Except for the sun.
It was automated so it wasn't that.
Once more, not saying the stars have anything to do with, except that they're in the sky in a particular time of year. If astrology is based on anything, it's probably the effects of the seasons.
So because facebook can place ads that are vague and general, does that mean that they also have some sort of scientific correlation to predicting the future? Yes right? i mean, it could be true, that your computer is reading your mind and putting this up there, your horoscope? also created by your laptop reading your brainwaves that are bouncing off the cats sonar dish outside, its possible.
We've wandered pretty far from the topic. None of that follows from anything I said.
Nonetheless, are those hypotheses possible? Sure. Likely? Probably not. But there's a chasm of difference between "extremely unlikely" and "absolutely false". Understanding the limitations of your knowledge, both incidental and fundamental, is central to successful scientific inquiry.
yea im not surprised that someone who puts vested interest in astrology charts also says "you know what, maybe" to your laptop reading your brain and advertising to you.
Nope, astrologers are masters at making vague answers sound specific. But they are still vague and interpretable in multiple ways, even in your proper chart.
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were omniscient. My mistake. Have a good day.
No, that's all astrology is. Whenever it's been put to the test it has been found to have no supernatural or real predictive power. Just vague statements, and reader bias.
Testing is the important part. Imo, the reason astrology persists is because of the lottery effect. One person out of 12 gets the perfect reading so promotes astrology as working when they were just lucky.
I tested it, I disagree. Or do you only respect tests that confirm your biases? Doesn't sound very scientific to me.
Yes, you tested a conman to see if you would not fall for a con, and you fell for it. Congrats. It's called the Barnum effect.
When actually put to the test astrology fails:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/genp.135.3.287-300
http://www.skepticalmedia.com/astrology/Scientific Inquiry into Astrology.pdf
https://genus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41118-020-00103-5
Certainty is unscientific and illogical. The scientific method cannot prove anything. It simply tests hypotheses to develop models. Every model is wrong, but some are more useful than others. Conflating the discovery of a useful model with absolute certainty isn't science, it's scientific fundamentalism, a cancer that eats your brain.
Nothing can be said scientifically about the truth or falsity of any claim. Science can only day that the evidence gathered in a particular experimental setup is consistent or inconsistent with a hypothesis.
Man, you do not understand science.
I'm a research chemist, and have been in the sciences for the last 15 years.
And science can test the hypothesis that astrology is accurate in various ways, and has shown time and time again that astrology is no better than random chance in its accuracy.
People have been trying to prove evolution is wrong since it was first posited, yet all evidence just further demonstrates it is the correct explanation for life.
Models aren't wrong by definition. Incomplete perhaps, but if a theory is able to accurately predict the world around us then it is still a good theory. Our theory of gravity can let us calculate the exact position of stellar bodies for millennia ahead, and has been consistently shown to be accurate.
I had some friends do astrology readings for themselves that depended on the exact time they were born. I asked one of them about how they accounted for time zones and DST. (They didn't.) I may have gotten my point across.
I'm seeing a lot of deeply unscientific arguments in these comments. This "Cult of Science" mentality is a concerning trend, where instead of thinking rationally and scientifically about something, people blindly follow whatever the contemporary consensus is. Your friends using poor methodology is not a rational argument against a field, any more than solving a math problem incorrectly invalidates math.
For what feels like the tenth time: I don't believe any star (other than the sun) has any direct significant effect on a person. However, correlation isn't causation. I do believe that it is possible that there might be other factors which vary over the course of the year which may have some effect, and that those variations can be coincidentally correlated to the zodiac phases as a convenient reference.
I was just picking one critique that was easy to make without additional supporting evidence.
What you're saying about astrology possibly working is just wrong. It has been studied and found to have no predictive power, a fact you easily verify for yourself by spending a few minutes with Google.
You've got a lot of nerve calling people unscientific while simultaneously defending one of the most thoroughly debunked pseudosciences in existence.
I doubt even the Earth's rotation being completely out of phase due to inputting the wrong time will have any meaningful impact. The diameter of the Earth (7,917.5 miles) is extremely small relative to the distance to other planets. For instance, the average distance to Jupiter is 394.29 million miles away.
There's also the position of the Earth relative to the sun. I assume that's what the astrologers are pretending to account for, since that's what knowing the date tells them.
Yes, the Sun is pretty darn far away too (93 million miles on average). Let's say the date and time used as an input to their astrology algorithm is off by 12 hours, since this would place them on the other side of the Earth for a given day (7917.5 miles away). This represents only a 0.0085% and 0.0020% error in the distance to the Sun and Jupiter, respectively.
What I'm saying is that calling out errors in DST and time zone is not a very scientific debunk of your friend's interest. I'm not a practitioner of astrology myself. However, I like to keep an open mind on nearly any topic, especially on something as harmless as astrology. I hope your friend didn't take the criticism too hard. It's always a bummer to find an interest or hobby that brings you joy, just to have it torn down by someone who you respect.
Also, just this week I saw an article posted on Lemmy about how studies show a full moon negatively impacts sleep quality, even if you are in a room with no windows and can't be influenced by the additional light. There's clearly still things about gravitational bodies we don't yet understand.
I don't see it as harmless at all. It promotes belief in other pseudoscience, like various kinds of alternative medicine. People literally die from using fake medicine instead of real medicine. It's also a scam, and I hate scams.
You're also missing that the astrology book itself is where the idea came from that the exact time of a person's birth is important to making accurate predictions. If anything, your commentary about the time being irrelevant is an argument not just against astrology in general, but against that author in particular.
I'm not following on how it promotes belief in "other pseudoscience." I'm also not sure who decides what is pseudoscience and what is not. I just tried to demonstrate on why the physiological influence of distance gravitational objects is still a great mystery to humanity. I fear that the assignment of these binary labels, and shutting down any discussion of alternative possibilities, is rooted in authoritarianism and is more of a threat than any possible scam.
Regarding exact dates and times, of course, the most accurate input is always preferred. The neat thing about astronomy is that we can actually calculate the approximate location of gravitational bodies at times, in both the past and the future. If you are confident that you know the time of an event to a millisecond, by all means, please use this data with all the accuracy available to you. However, even if you are wrong by a significant amount, this error does not scale linearly with the overarching calculations. I tried demonstrating this by using the absolute maximum error of our position relative to the Earth's rotation. In sum, this error was insignificant.
I believe that the time of year people are born could well have an effect on their personality. Because so much of your personality is developed in your early years, how old you were when you had your first Xmas, or whether you were the biggest (oldest) or smallest (youngest) person in your school class and sporting team.
I don't think this has anything actually related to the stars.
Same. Seems like a reasonable possibility to be open to.
You just made an excellent argument for why tarot is inefficient given its random nature. There are healthier more logical approaches to expanding your perspectives.
Anything more and it’s less about shaking out of an established mindset and more just wanting to play pretend
Logical approaches explicitly can't expand your perspective that way, unless you mean a different word than logic. Logic can only operate after you've declared your axioms. Tarot allows you to stochastically test alternative axioms. They are different tools used for different stages of the problem-solving process.
I use tarot and other divination methods (primarily the I-Ching/Book of Changes). It’s less about trying to get magical communication from some sort of magical realm or helper for me, it is more a way to organize my thoughts. Often times, the advice associated with each card is just generic good advice, and it prompts me to consider situations from other perspectives. I take some time to think about a problem facing me and use the cards as creative prompts for ways to solve that problem. No supernatural stuff involved.
Horoscopes are mostly just (hopefully!) good advice packaged in what can only be described as a crime against astronomy. They’re good to read, because they tell you what people want to be thinking about themselves.
The way that I think about these things is that it's like flipping a coin to make a decision. It doesn't really matter what the coin says, but if you feel happy or disappointed in the result, that tells you what you really need to know. Tarot's like that but with a bit more depth. The value from the reading is that it encourages introspection.
it's like flipping a coin
That's exactly what the I Ching is (or you flip yarrow stalks). And that's exactly what it does, and it's what the fellow above gets from it.
My mom was a hippy and I used to do it as a kid, as a sort of punishment when I was having a freak out. It's easier to listen to random alternate views from a book than some woo-woo-guru.
Yeah, that's how I use it too. Like sometimes, I feel like the cards are calling me out, but it's actually just me calling myself out.
It reminds me of how I give great advice to my friends that I may not always follow myself. Tarot feels like a way of getting distance between me, the advice giver, and me, the dumbass who desperately needs to follow the advice
How often are you really using a goddamn elaborate version of a coin flip to make your decisions?
Tarot helps you gain perspectives by randomization and chance? Sounds like a horribly illogical system. You’re actively hindering yourself just for the sake of shoehorning tarot into your decision making process lmao
Similarly if you need to read horoscopes to learn what people want to think about themselves, you have bigger problems. It’s simply not true and indefensible. Who is defined by “people” here, as if it’s a true blanket statement on all born in that month or just at all. Fucking bullshit, why force this mindless drivel into your life at all.
Everything you mention can be gained more efficiently, meaningfully and accurately (no RNG needed) via other means. Just admit you’d rather play around
The human mind is not a computer. It is not "logical". Also, chill.
Tarot cards are a tool to be used in reflection and insight. When reading for other people, they mostly provide a talking point and help make connections.
What they are not is a magic oracle that can predict the future. It's up to the reader to interpret their meaning and consider how it may apply.
Astrology, yeah. I have no idea. It's not my thing.
You seem to assume that half the indian subcontinental populace doesn't exist.
People will marry off their kids to donkeys, frogs and cows if it means no drought for a season.
Astrology runs rabid there.
Source: Am Indian.
nah there is definitely reason for both.
Disclaimer: I don't believe in astrology. However, I always have this discussion with my students when we talk about pseudoscience and superstition (and this is likely an unpopular opinion here), but astrology can't be entirely dismissed out of hand . Astrology doesn't have much of a basis in reality, but there is some credibility and research to support the idea that some aspects of your personality can be shaped or impacted by the month in which a person is born, especially in rural/agrarian communities or areas with harsh climates.
It's not the stars themselves and it's not like your day-to-day life is affected by the current star sign or "mercury in retrograde," but think about how formative experiences and your earliest memories can be influenced by the time of year. A child in the Dakotas in the 1800's that has their first memory as a 2yo in February while the family is on the verge of starvation is going to have a very different experience than a child in the same time and geographical area that is born 6 months later whose first memory is of a harvest festival. Not to mention they are going to have very different nutrition and growth patterns, etc.
It's purely anecdotal, but I've seen this occur to a small extent in my personal life. My oldest was born in January, and he learned to walk in the dead of winter in a snowy environment (so, inside at home), but my middlest was born in April and learned to walk at parks and baseball fields. Does that mean their long-term personality traits are based around that? Not necessarily, but it's certainly plausible and early scientific research does support there being some correlation between season of birth and personality (Source 1, Source 2)
What you mean is.
A child born in winter will have a different personality than one born in summer. Because it also means they celebrate their birthday in summer or winter, which give a totally different vibe. It influences their life about as much as their name.
The part where Astrology fails is when you consider there are twins with opposing personalities.
Oh, astrology fails entirely; I was simply bringing up that the idea of the month of birth having some effect on personality has some merit, and that is also one of the most basic precepts of astrology (even a broken clock, eh?).
But like you said, there are many factors in personality, from genetics to name to birth order, etc. In fact, the very fact that one is a twin is going to influence a twin's personality.
And I also want to make the point that one should not dismiss pseudoscience or non-scientific cultural practices out of hand, because oftentimes there is some sort of rational basis for since pieces of those beliefs. Not always, but a huge amount of modern medicine is built on the practice of ethnobotany, which is effectively applying the scientific method to traditional medicines from around the world.
and that is also one of the most basic precepts of astrology
But it's not because astrology signs don't match the weather. Signs close to each other by month have radically different results. Sagittarius in December and Capricorn in January should have similar results.
Then there's all of Australia, South America, and Sub Sarahan Africa where astrology should be opposite because the seasons are opposite when you are south of the equator.
Agreed. That's why I said astrology fails completely. When I said "it's one of the most basic precepts of astrology" I meant the idea that season of birth can affect personality, no more. I didn't mean that astrology gets any of the specifics right, for all the reasons you suggest and more.