When I need a dose of post-hoc rationalizations for recent events based on a pseudo-random number generator formula and what happened the some previous time the numbers came out exactly the same way, I look to astrology.
To add to what I mentioned about the role of Ceres conjunct Pluto, Pluto iself rules mining and deep underground. Deepwater Horizon had been working the Tiber oilfield, “the deepest oil and gas well ever drilled“. This is so very Plutonic, pushing the boundaries to the extreme, penetrating deeper than ever before. Pluto does demand payment for journeying to his underworld.
The event chart shows a Boomerang Yod aspect pattern. A Yod is formed when two planets quincunx another. Here it is the Sun and Neptune that quincunx Saturn. The Boomerang is formed when another planet is opposite the action point, in this case Uranus is at the reaction point. So the action point was Saturn, the structure of the oil rig. Quincunxes create a builup of energy which needs constant adjustments to be relased safely. If the energy bottles up too much then something has to give. Neptune oil and the ocean creating tension with the rig. The Sun made this special configuration for only a few days, and the pressure created by this extra quincunx is what makes these Yods so intense. The buildup of energy looks for realease at the reaction point and Uranus is unexpected events, and explosions.
Seriously, what is all this gobbledygook? I’m going to have to get Jodi to translate or something. Perhaps they could do a piece on historical oil rigs and how all THEIR random planetary alignments ALSO meant their rigs were doomed to failure, despite being completely different? Perhaps they could explain how corporations are subject to the same effects as people based on their incorporation date? Or maybe they might want to admit that the positions of the planets, stars and other astronomical phenomena have no bearing on your everyday life, outside of Sol which warms us and Luna which drives our tides.
A choice pullquote from the end: “Jupiter getting closer to conjunction with Uranus could amplify the unpredictable nature of this event.” Or you could just admit that you’re not predicting anything at all, of value or otherwise with your crazy formulae and charts! If it’s so unpredictable, why are you so readily able to explain why it happened with all your astrological number legerdemain? How come you people can only ever rationalize why things happened the way they did, and never give us any kind of useful, testable, repeatable prediction about the future? Hindsight is 20/20, so it’s impossible for you to get it wrong, since all you have to do is tell us how Yods are so desperately devastating and how Ceres is totally a conjunct of Pluto.
Meanwhile, back in reality, Ceres is a Kuiper belt object whose mass is only 4% that of the Moon, is about 10° inclined in its orbit, and is further away from us than Mars. The only known force that can travel over such great distances is gravity, and its mass is so small it’s unlikely that, if every other object in the solar system were to suddenly disappear, it would even start dragging Earth anywhere toward it in the next few million years. More likely the other way around, as the Earth is over six thousand times more massive. And quincunxes are odd geometrical forms emergent from our wholly man-made mathematical formulae that comprise the bulk of the pseudo-random number generator that is astrology. It tells us nothing interesting about reality, or else someone might have maybe started forecasting what dates and locations cause quincunxes and start warning people of their impending doom.
Selection bias is a nasty little feedback loop for those who think they’ve got the universe figured out with their mumbo jumbo formulae and just enough knowledge of history to pick only those events that match your wholly-invented scenarios, ain’t it?
Meanwhile, the oil’s still pluming. Someone might want to consider actually doing something about it.
Would have been more polite to debate on my blog.
Maybe, but what exactly is there to debate, Jamie? You know your pseudo-random results generator much better than I do, so I can’t exactly debate you on the relative merits of what results you got from plugging the numbers into your formulae. And the onus is on you to prove that astrology actually works, and show the mechanisms by which it works, so that’s not a point of debate, that’s a point of peer review.
And besides — do you REALLY want me showing up on your doorstep and trashing your worldview? That’s WHY I have my own blog, so I don’t crap all over other people’s beliefs in their own homes. I only left the trackback on so you’d know I did so, out of respect for you as a person. Any disrespect is levelled at your unscientific ideas about how the universe works, and not about you as a human being.
I’m a skeptic like you, though I do research things I am critical of. We don’t use Sun Signs on our blog, it is based only on the influence of planetary aspects and fixed stars. That article about the oil spill was an observation after the event, and mundane events such as these, earthquakes, volcanoes etc are really the most difficult things to predict using astrology or any other method. We do get good results making predictions about people or nations.
Ceres does need further study, but it has been classified as a minor planet by astronomers.
You said “The only known force that can travel over such great distances is gravity”. I did study science at Uni, and force is not really the issue here. Force is more of a mechanical influence related to mass and velocity.
I believe the effects we observe in astrology relate more to energy, and there are many forms we can observe and many more that we cannot. We can observe the effects of gravity, though now most astrologers agree this is not of prime importance in astrology.
We can measure light, heat and other forms of electromagnetic energy from celestial objects. Personally I believe that the various forms of electromagnetic energy radiated from celestial objects are absorbed by the central crystal of the earth. Science tells us that this single Iron crystal is only slightly smaller in size than our Moon. A rather powerful conductor.
You are welcome to debate on my blog but I understand it would be pointless in this example. We just posted something more general without the technicalities of my “pseudo-random number generator formula”.
You may be interesting in investigating the workings of another mystery. We visited Stonehenge on the weekend and are offering a free reading to whoever comes up with the best explanation for what it was used for: Stonehenge
You’re not a skeptic like me, I’m afraid. I do research about claims of special knowledge all the time, and I have never come across any evidence that sun sign, vedic, horary, natal, archetypal, nor any other type of astrology has any merit whatsoever.
It doesn’t matter that you’re not using one set of formulae to develop your “special knowledge” about the mechanics of the universe over the other, it’s that you’re using formulae that have never been proved to work. It’s not like you’re using formulae to determine the positions of each star on a given date and calling that your method — you’re extrapolating out what that must mean for a person based on some properties given to each body, which appear to be fabricated from whole cloth.
You see, it’s not enough to say that you’ve calibrated the results of your formulae against historical events to the point where it accounts for enough past events that it never fails, you need to thereafter make accurate, testable predictions, repeatedly, to the point where it can no longer be considered pure chance and selection bias. You need to count up all your failures to predict accurately as well as all your successes. And you need to do this enough times that you’ll convince me there may actually be something to it. Then, we have to move on to finding the measurable mechanisms behind the effect.
The problem is, you’re starting from the assumption that there IS some fatalistic, deterministic, tangible effect that the heavens can have on an individual’s daily life, and you’re developing your formulae, and then explaining how they work, before you’ve even determined that there IS a measurable effect. Dark matter, for instance, has a tangible effect on other astronomical bodies. We figured out it was there by measuring its effects. We did not presume dark matter before data pointed to it.
So, find a real effect, that can’t be explained by selection bias (remembering the hits but not the misses), prove it exists in a manner that others can duplicate, then once we’ve verified it exists, measure it and collect data on the effects themselves — if there actually IS an effect, then it can be measured. THEN develop theories about how to read those effects and make predictions about them. Astrology turns the whole investigative process on its head, as evidenced by your guesses about some mysterious special electromagnetic force (outside of the actual, measurable electromagnetic fields that most heavenly bodies don’t even generate), then you claim that the iron core of the Earth might be receiving those effects. That’s a hypothesis, now prove it with data before you go making claims about how to read the heavenly bodies to make predictions. Or make nothing but accurate predictions in a streak that can’t be explainable by pure chance. And once you do that, go sign up for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge and make yourself some very easy coin.
As for Stonehenge, I believe the current consensus is that it was used in part as a calendar, in part as a pseudo-random results generator much like your natal charts. That’s right, the druids probably thought they were predicting the future too. The question is, what makes your method “work” when other methods “don’t”? You were awfully dismissive of the sun sign thing — why exactly? Why are you skeptical of that but not of natal charts?
I am skeptical about the research you have done into the astrology I practice. I am researching all the time. With natal aspects we started with Sun and Moon and are working through them, looking at only acuurate charts and using very tight orbs, eg Sun conjunct Saturn. The effects of Saturn on human life have been observed for thousands of years by many cultures. Even written about for thousands of years in some cultures who developed writing. We don’t make it up, but we do constantly see evidence that those ancient interpretations were soundly based.
I am dismissive of Sun Signs because I believe they are purely symbolic with no relationship to the cosmos. Any skeptic will tell you the main failing of astrology is that the Sun may be in constellation Leo but be in Sun sign Virgo. Vedic astrology attempts to rectify this by taking into account precession of the equinoxes. I take the view of Kepler, that the zodiac is simply a convenient measuring device to make it easy for astrologers to work out planetary aspects.
So I represent an extremely small minority of astrologers who use no sign system at all. I believe Sun sign astrology to be perely symbolic, while ever sign interpretations dominate the field it will be relegated to entertainment value. Deborah Houlding has done some excellent research into the development of the current zodiac during the Hellenistic period: Heavenly Imprints.
I really don’t want to be proving my work to you. People with some basic understanding of astrology can judge it for themselves on my blog. If the pseudo-random number generator formula at Alexa is any indication, them I’m doing comparatively well. If you want to carry on this discussion, come over to my blog where there is a larger audience. You will reach more people with your message.
You’re intentionally misunderstanding me, and swinging your e-penis to boot. And you haven’t answered the real question. Congratulations on being really popular, but an argument from popularity fails on its face when evaluating the truth value of your claims. Just ‘coz you have a high page rank, doesn’t mean you’re right about anything in this world except search engine optimization or picking a popular delusion. Look at answersingenesis.org’s rank, for instance.
Tell ya what. I’ll write a post where I unpack and dissect your claims and astrology as a whole, regardless of what system you use, and I’ll make the dissection generic enough to include your minority position within your own field. Then I’ll cross-post my post as a comment at your blog, and we’ll see whether I’m seriously debated with evidence and reason, or whether I get treated as a troll trying to shit on your doorstep. I suspect the latter.
There are thousands of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Some are not far from the BP disaster, I believe. How does this super-astrology pick out the BP platform from all the others? It’s not like there’s an official moment in time that can be pointed at as its “birth” since it was a constructed object. And BP owns many oil rigs, so why this one?
Jamie, respectfully, you are “researching all the time” into something that begins with a faulty bias-laden premise. I see you are giving a lot of attention to Ceres: what about Makemake? Sedna? Extrasolar planets? Do they all count as fine-tuning the predictions?
I find it astonishing how astrologers continue to cook the books with each new discovery made by astronomy. The whole things was dashed with confirmation bias when Uranus was discovered.
[…] Deepwater Horizon foretold by astrology!!! (Well, post-told) […]
Glendon, I didn’t pick the platform, the chart was not for the birth of the platform but for the time of the explosion.
What is faulty and bias-laden about my technique?
I don’t give a lot of attention to Ceres compared to other planets, but it is an area of interest. Have done some work on Sedna and that probably deserves more attention due to the orbit and it’s approaching prehelion.
Cooking books? Broad statements like this don’t get us anywhere. The discovery of Uranus is most interesting. On Sunday I was standing on the very spot it was discovered by Herschell. Gave me inspiration to think and write about the implications.
Jason. Intentional misunderstanding? Without any astrological analysis I believe you have some anger management issues 🙂 I’m just the person to get under your skin. In the end it will be a very healing interaction for you, but may cause some pain along the way.
You reaction to Alexa rankings is exactly the same as any other unpopular webmaster. If you want to be heard, then it is up to you to improve your ranking. No point lashing out at others who have done their homework.
No, Jamie. Jason’s reaction is that of anyone who understands what proof is. Otherwise, he could just link to Pharyngula and Boing Boing and the argument would be over. Got anything that isn’t unearned condescension or vague awe of the universe going for your claims?
Stephanie, you will have to do better than that. When debating on the internet you should quote from referenced articles, preferable referenced articles who’s links to justify their statements do not go here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ like the reference in the first article you linked to.
Yes I have ample specific examples of astrology working on my blog. Peruse at your leisure. I haven’t been posting much lately because I am on holidays but the most recent prediction I made using astrology was the victory of Julia Gillard in the Australian leadership contest three weeks ago. Even without birth times for the contenders, it was very clear cut. Julia Gillard V Kevin Rudd
Jamie, you will have to do better than that. When attempting to support extraordinary claims, you need to link to something better than your own blog posts. You need blinded large-scale studies showing a general effect instead of the cherry-picked anecdotes you present. And if your best example is that you chose the favored candidate in a recent contest, you’ve got your work cut out for you.
And no, if you say popularity is a measure of validity, I don’t have to quote anything when I point out that the popular kids disagree with you.
You do rather well on Website Grader. http://websitegrader.com/site/the-orbit.net/lousycanuck/ Need some meta descriptions and alt tags for your pics. Easiest way to fix the pics is to install this plugin: SEO Friendly Images
By the way, Jamie, you do understand that the Earth’s core is liquid, not crystalline, yes? That these are very different structures with very different properties?
Stephanie, I’m here for a bit of fun. I don’t have to prove anything to you at all to you. If you challenge my methods on my blog then I may feel the urge to prove something or other. Jason picked me, not the other way around.
Of course you don’t have to do anything here, Jamie, but you did. You said the Earth had a crystal core. I said it was wrong. Feel free to let that stand if you like.
Stephanie, the most recent two journal articles I read on the inner core both stated single crystal, about 99% Iron. The temp and pressure don’t support it being liquid. A quick Google will tell you that.
Stephanie, you wrote “And if your best example is that you chose the favored candidate in a recent contest, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
I did not state best example, but most recent. The prediction I made of Cameron winning the UK election was based on the same methods. I am currently predicting, using the same methods, that Obama will win the 2012 election if he contests it. I may back peddle on that if the transits to the contenders chart are more impressive, when we find out who that is.
Saying that these predictions are worth less because the favourites in the betting shops or opinion polls won is not a fair call if you look at the methods I use.
Jason, the articles are from this year and last year. A crystal is a crystal, and in this case a dodecahedron.
Thanks for the mental stimulation guys. I have to head off now but will check in tomorrow.
Jamie, what you’re reading about the inner core is grossly simplified (always a danger with Google University). If you dig a bit deeper (http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9507.abstract), you’ll see that there are different structures found in different hemispheres and that there’s ongoing debate on the arrangement of the structures. Though the science is hardly settled, whatever is there is clearly not a single crystal, much less one that conducts any energy for which we have no evidence.
Jamie, in your first comment above, you said;
“I believe the effects we observe in astrology relate more to energy, and there are many forms we can observe and many more that we cannot.”
Are you saying that astrology studies the unobservable forms of energy you assert? If so, it is not unobservable, is it?
If “energy” used in astrology is observable, how is it measured?
Perhaps you could think about providing links to them, then? Or are they on sites not considered credible scientific sources, the same way you don’t consider the Telegraph to be a credible news organization (and while I don’t blame you, they at least provide the source for the study in question)?
I’m hoping that by then, my real reply will be posted. I’ll be cross-posting it as a comment in your Deepwater Horizon thread since you’ve invited me to do so, and we’ll see what kind of “debate” I get there.
I was thinking of pointing out that while funkastrology.co.uk’s Alexa page rank is 129,015, Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog with his dim view of astrology is on the Discover Magazine‘s blogs page, which hosts nine other major blogs and which has a combined page rank of 7,003. That implies that one-tenth of its traffic is headed to BA, assuming they’re all equally popular. I suggest they’re not, but for simplicity’s sake, even assuming that he’d have a standalone rank ten times higher of 70,000 (which, by the way, Alexa’s formula doesn’t work that way!), he’s still far and away more popular than Jamie.
But doing so would be an argument from authority, which, again, is NOT PROOF OF VERITY. And it would be pretty douchebaggy of me to bring popularity into the argument, wouldn’t it? Oh, wait, I didn’t do the bringing.
Thanks for your response, Jamie.
Having perused through your blog, I see correlation = causation. The fridge needed a fuse changed. A number of traditional celestial factors and diagrams form a yod-shaped chart pointing at domesticity and overheating and hearths which includes fridges.
Mars apparently means overheating even though it’s a cold, cold planet – why not Venus = overheating? It’s got green house gases and volcanoes. It’s because the ancients saw a reddish planet, and give it connotations of blood, the god Mars, and heat and violence.
If astrology really worked, why weren’t the ancients baffled by indications pointing to “overheating” coming off of the pretty shiny Venus, a planet that’s actually overheating from terrestial standards?
Until you or another astrologer demonstrates the cause -not the anecdotal correlation- of how astrology is supposed to work it remains a complicated system of mistaken ancient knowledge and fantasy.
Jason, I mentioned Alexa initially to encourage you to debate on my blog so more people would hear your message. It would also have driven more traffic to your site. I agree Alexa ranking is not the best method to rate blogs, but it is the best option to rate sites. Rating blogs needs to include other calculations like number of comments and links in etc. That was one reason I started Best Astrology Blogs and Best Astrology Sites.
This is of course from ’96, but it’s the first scientific result on a Google search for “earth’s core crystal”. It’s also linked in the Wikipedia article on the inner core.
Earth’s inner core might be solid, but our best guess is that it’s an iron-nickel alloy. It is probably not a single crystal, considering it’s not pure iron, based on the seismographic results outlined therein. These, by the way, are the same techniques that suggested that there even was an inner core to begin with.
And anyway, “crystal” has an entirely different meaning to a scientist than it does to a new-ager like yourself.
“To account for the overall 3-4% seismic anisotrophy in the inner core, a predominant amount of the hcp iron has to be preferentially aligned, suggesting the existence of a gigantic iron crystal in the inner core.
EOS
Jason, that report from 1996 by by Robert Sanders was not a scientific paper. The one from last year I just posted is.
Stephanie, that abstract you posted does not state that there is no gigantic iron crystal in the center of the earth. The anomalies it mentions are addressed in the article I posted:
“Because single-crystal bcc iron exhibits up to 12% antisotrophy in the compressional wave velocity in theoretical simulations under inner core conditions….the predicted anisotrophy of bcc iron would be sufficient to explain the seismic anisotrophy of the inner core. The predicted transition from hcp to bcc iron may explain the variation in seismic anisotrophy from the uppermost layer toward the inner layer of the inner core.”
Jamie, your idealization of the center of the Earth as a giant “energy” resonator requires that “the crystal” in the core be homogeneous, that everything be properly aligned to amplify a signal instead of dampening it (absorbing the energy without releasing any to affect anything else) or passing it through without effect. When I say calling it a big crystal is grossly simplified, I mean that calling it one big crystal doesn’t take into account the heterogeneity throughout the structure–exterior to interior, hemisphere to hemisphere, and more locally still–in orientation and alignment that would make it a really bad resonator. It isn’t the anisotrophy that demonstrates that; it’s the variations in anisotrophy. The article you link to doesn’t contradict the heterogeneity. It simply doesn’t mention it at all because it’s well known in the field.
Even if you were to demonstrate some kind of effect that would require an unknown extraplanetary energy to interact with the planet, the core would be a lousy candidate for a mechanism that would transmit this energy to the surface. This “crystal” is nothing like the leaded glass you’re trying to invoke using the word.
Stephanie, you commented: “By the way, Jamie, you do understand that the Earth’s core is liquid, not crystalline, yes?”
You were wrong, I was right.
Jamie, me being wrong doesn’t make you right. I’ve educated and corrected myself. You’re still wrong.
The Earth’s core is comprised of two layers, the inner core which is solid and of unknown composition (though presently, scientific consensus is, heterogeneous alloy of iron and nickel), and a liquid outer core. That Stephanie was wrong about the composition of the WHOLE core, does not mean that her further education on the topic is invalid. People often make flip remarks that turn out to be wrong. Stephanie has corrected herself on the matter. You are still an astrologer. I see the Dunning-Kruger effect in one of you, in a gross doubling-down on an incorrect assumption — guess which one?
Still waiting.
You are not. You’re waiting for me to follow rules other than the ones you evidently consented to here. You do realize that you’ve commented dozens of times on the very reply you claim you’re “still waiting” on. Now you’re trying to revise history by pretending that I’M the one avoiding the debate. Who’s the “coward” now?
Ugh, Mr. Funk’s post-hoc justifications are no different than those made by Christians or fans of Nostradamus trying to prove that their vague prophecies really DID predict some important or massive event. Never can they give specific details, except to look back at an event and say, “Aha! All signs pointed to this happening!”
Jason (and Stephanie and George W.), you have my respect for even bothering with addressing this trash. I guess I’ll have to have a peek at the Funk website to educate myself on his amazingly accurate prophecies.
I do have to say, I almost feel guilty about attacking the income flow that someone uses to feed their children. Then I think of the frauds that took advantage of my cousin when her husband was killed in a workplace accident, essentially robbing them of thousands of dollars that could have been used to care for my cousin’s children instead of making a few payments on the psychic fraud’s new BMW. Thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect (as you mentioned) I doubt it will happen, but I’d be more than satisfied to see this Funky fraud have to get a real job like the rest of us instead of fleecing the gullible for easy money. Carry on!
[…] I have ignored the slanderous blog? Deepwater Horizon foretold by astrology!!! (Well, post-told). Well I did feed the trolls which has led to If it smells like Funk, it must be astrology and […]
You are really stupid to try to comment on astrology, which is something that you don’t understand. Astrology is an art, and is usually not used for prediction.
Chris, I agree – astrology is an art, and much like other art forms (music, painting, wood carving, etc) it reflects the moods, ideas, and biases of its practitioners, and rarely has more than a passing familiarity with reality.
sinned34, Astrology is the best real job I have ever had because I love what I am doing. Other real jobs I have had before this have included army, abattoir, pathology lab, mental health care, dementia nursing, landscape gardening, taxation consultant, chauffeur, farming and a few others.
As for you ignorant statements about my latest profession, I’d like to quote from a man who was responding to a fellow scientist at a dinner party, who questioned his love of astrology: “I have studied the matter, sir, and you have not” Sir Isaac Newton.
I love this continued assumption that those who say that astrology has no basis in fact haven’t studied it. Astrology has been studied for centuries. It continues to be studied by scientists today, though not as much as it was in the past, because the results of those past studies have been so poor.
How you study things matters too. To use the Easter Bunny analogy I’ve used before, I’m quite familiar with a particular animated special on the topic that was popular in my childhood. I can quote bits of it. I am therefore more familiar with the Easter Bunny in exactly the same way you’re more familiar with astrology, Jamie. It doesn’t make either one more likely to be real.
Newton’s a great example of how very smart people can be incredibly wrong about things, though. That’s why we don’t rely on the word of any one person or even a group of people. We rely on the scientific method and the body of evidence it’s provided us.
You cannot be dissing on the easter bunny like that Stephanie, goddammit! Of course the easter bunny is more likely than using celestial bodies to tell the future. Unless of course one is using said celestial bodies to tell the future after the fact.
Jamie –
I have studied astrology and found it wanting. I found it wanting based on science and based on mentalist exhibitions. Like Stephanie observed, there are hundreds – if not thousands of comprehensive scientific studies, stretching back to the seventeenth century. The stronger the tools of science became, the less astrology made sense.
I don’t need to investigate your brand of astrology to decide that it is almost certainly bullshit. The best evidence we have would suggest that it is. The burden of proof then, is on you to prove that it isn’t. That is how science works.
To take this a little further I will add that I have had very long and interesting conversations with spiritual entities. I have been transported to completely different locations and done very interesting things, every time it has happened. I consider it completely normal to have a conversation with someone who suddenly manifests right next to me and disappears, just as abruptly when the conversation is over. I can even cite some “evidence” that each of those things has happened to me – and happened with some frequency.
That I was using extremely powerful hallucinogens during that period of my life is irrelevant…Or is it? I mean I once experienced about a week of hanging out with friends, under a variety of circumstances – the last of which was playing music with my old bandmates, while strapped firmly to a futon frame for nearly eight hours. In real time, about a week after, my old bandmates were playing together for the first time in almost a year – they would have sworn I was there, sworn they could hear me singing. Spooky right?
Not really. First, there was only my old drummer and rhythm player – I had played with the whole band. Second, my rhythm player and I spent three years playing together, writing together nearly every day – as in excepting maybe thirty odd days, he and I played for at least an hour every day for three years. Even now, ten years later, he often hears me singing when he is playing by himself – for that matter, when I am working on a composition, I can often hear him playing along. Third, the timing, accounting for my time dialation, was close to lining up – but not exact. Finally, I actually know something about what Tropane does to the brain (aside from massacring brain cells) and understand why these experiences happen when one has used some type of deadly nightshade, or another.
Or there is sex magic, I used to be very enthusiastic about sex magic. While I have to admit that focusing so very hard on the act of sex = fucking incredible sex, the effectiveness of sex magic on real world problems was no different than the effectiveness of prayer. Ie. just enough “success” to make one think it might be working. But, like prayer, it was all about various cognitive biases – most especially confirmation bias. Confirmation bias also explains my belief in actual straightforward prayer and my assumptions about my experiences with hallucinogens.
Cognitive biases are also a far more likely explanation for your experience with astrology, than the notion that celestial bodies actually can predict real world events. Understand that I am not trying to insult you. There isn’t a single human being who is immune to cognitive biases. The vast majority of humans are not only not immune, but actively accept their biases without question. For those who don’t accept them quite so freely, it is still impossible to avoid falling prey to them sometimes.
The wikipedia article on cognitive biases is actually rather accurate (if not a little convoluted). I would recommend that you look at confirmation bias, hindsight bias, fundamental attribution error, expectation bias and self-serving bias. The specific wiki articles for each of these biases are generally more concise and clear than the overarching article on cognitive biases. And just for more emphasis, absolutely no one – not one single person is immune to cognitive biases – no matter how sciency or skeptical they are.
I approach Astrology as an art in that I use it to “paint” a picture of a person, place or time. Some say that Astrology mirrors rather than predicts. Astrological forecasting is somewhat like meteorological forecasting- they look at jet streams and air currents and put it all together to give you their interpretation of the most likely outcome. Sometimes they’re wrong. They are as much of an artist as we are. As astrologers, we look at planets, stars, moons, (and a lot of astrologers use the transneptunian objects as well) etc. and notice unfolding patterns, and then give our interpretation. I think that eventually, with the study of fractals and chaos theory, scientists will be able to conclude that Astrology can be explained through the paradigms of those scientific standards. We don’t move around in space, we’re part of it. Everything has its own energy, and makes more of a difference than you think it does.
The big difference, Chris, is that meteorologists look at the big, complicated system they’re predicting, instead of away from it. They also adjust their methods based on scientific study of what works. The people who are actually doing with people the equivalent of what meteorologists do with weather are psychologists.
Were people having “mid-life crises” around the age of 40 prior to the discovery of the planet Uranus? If so, what astrological object was used to explain it away at the time, since the “Uranus opposition” wouldn’t have been known?
Obviously we need to study crystals that have a quantum chaos fractal structure. They are most in tune with our natural energy signature.
I bet they’re in the rings that orbit Uranus.
[…] on from Part 1, and from recent discussions where skeptics have been kindly encouraging astrologers to raise their standards, I offer this speculation on what would happen if astrology […]