30th May 2009, 11:20 AM
What proper controls did the chinese do back then to weed out confirmation bias? Further, how am I supposed to know any of that record keeping was even accurate to begin with?
Those are the things you need to resolve before astrology would have any bearing on me.
But there's more than that, astrology as a concept is inherantly inconsistant with itself, and it never CAN be expressed in a consistant manner without becoming utterly meaningless.
Is it size, mass, or distance which has the greatest effect? Let's say there's a previously undetected energy field that planetary bodies emit. If it's anything like light, it vanishes at a rate that's an inverse square of the distance. That would mean distance would be most important, in which case the moon, by far the closest, should be having so much effect it washes out the effect of everything else in our system. Let's say it's mass, then the sun washes out everything else to the point where it has no effect. What I'm saying is, in what manner does astrolo-energy act such that all the planets moon and sun have an equal effect?
The fact is, if you think the gravity of those bodies has an effect, you're wrong. They are too far away to be detectable at all, even with the largest interferometers we have we can't detect the faintest gravity effects of our own solar system, save for the moon and the sun. The rest are so distant their effects are insignificant. What reason do you have to think they would affect our development? The moon would be about the only body that COULD, even in principle, have such an effect. Now we are caught in the gravitational orbit of the galaxy at large, but remember that an object in free fall, and orbit is basically that, is indistinguishable from an object in zero gravity, so long as tidal forces are minimal. At our distance, the difference between gravitational pull on one side of the earth and the other created by the mutual pull of our galaxy is vanishingly small. It's not like we're falling into a black hole, where the fall itself literally does kill you as the pull on one half of your body is several thousand times stronger than the part further from the singularity. We're way out in a galactic arm, so far from that galactic black hole that we don't even feel it.
Here's another thing. If such an effect worked evenly as such, then shouldn't EVERY body in the sky have this same effect? If that's the case, then we should be awash in so much of this strange energy that prediction would be utterly impossible, such that the vast majority of heavenly bodies remain unnamed, much less accounted for in modern astrological charts. What makes the configuration of stars we arbitrarily designate as Orion more important than the configuration only detectable by hubble which has no name? Further, the entire concept was formed way back when we thought that the heavens were a series of glass domes. The entire foundation of what the cosmos is has been completely changed. Orion is now known to be an illusion, and still astrology hasn't changed one iota. We know now that the various "houses" in the sky have slipped by about a month since people first invented the system, but they haven't bothered updating it to account for that.
Here's the kicker. The most they do is add new planets to the system as astronomy discovers them. But, does that really make any sense at all? Has an astronomer ever once said, let's say before Uranus was discovered "our readings are slightly off, as if there's a planet we haven't discovered having extra influence, I predict the discovery of a new planet soon". I thought not, yet that's exactly what happened, with gravitational influence before it was discovered by astronomers. Astrologers, ironically enough, have never predicted the discovery of a new planet. Further, not once, after they incorporate a new one, have they ever said that previous predictions were all wrong. They add an entire new planet, claim it will make them more accurate, but at the same time throughout the years they always claim 100% accuracy. Nothing changes no matter how much it does for them. They are frozen in irrelevancy.
Study after study, actual CONTROLLED studies, not random books written by chinese astrologers with no signs of proper scientific controls, show no connection between the stars and one's behavior. Heck, you can get someone to write an astrology projection for one person, print out copies for an entire room, and that whole room will say it's an accurate description of them at a personal level.
lazy you should know better than to get caught up in such nonsense. It's not just unproven, it's inherantly nonsensical that it ever COULD be a way that the universe works.
Those are the things you need to resolve before astrology would have any bearing on me.
But there's more than that, astrology as a concept is inherantly inconsistant with itself, and it never CAN be expressed in a consistant manner without becoming utterly meaningless.
Is it size, mass, or distance which has the greatest effect? Let's say there's a previously undetected energy field that planetary bodies emit. If it's anything like light, it vanishes at a rate that's an inverse square of the distance. That would mean distance would be most important, in which case the moon, by far the closest, should be having so much effect it washes out the effect of everything else in our system. Let's say it's mass, then the sun washes out everything else to the point where it has no effect. What I'm saying is, in what manner does astrolo-energy act such that all the planets moon and sun have an equal effect?
The fact is, if you think the gravity of those bodies has an effect, you're wrong. They are too far away to be detectable at all, even with the largest interferometers we have we can't detect the faintest gravity effects of our own solar system, save for the moon and the sun. The rest are so distant their effects are insignificant. What reason do you have to think they would affect our development? The moon would be about the only body that COULD, even in principle, have such an effect. Now we are caught in the gravitational orbit of the galaxy at large, but remember that an object in free fall, and orbit is basically that, is indistinguishable from an object in zero gravity, so long as tidal forces are minimal. At our distance, the difference between gravitational pull on one side of the earth and the other created by the mutual pull of our galaxy is vanishingly small. It's not like we're falling into a black hole, where the fall itself literally does kill you as the pull on one half of your body is several thousand times stronger than the part further from the singularity. We're way out in a galactic arm, so far from that galactic black hole that we don't even feel it.
Here's another thing. If such an effect worked evenly as such, then shouldn't EVERY body in the sky have this same effect? If that's the case, then we should be awash in so much of this strange energy that prediction would be utterly impossible, such that the vast majority of heavenly bodies remain unnamed, much less accounted for in modern astrological charts. What makes the configuration of stars we arbitrarily designate as Orion more important than the configuration only detectable by hubble which has no name? Further, the entire concept was formed way back when we thought that the heavens were a series of glass domes. The entire foundation of what the cosmos is has been completely changed. Orion is now known to be an illusion, and still astrology hasn't changed one iota. We know now that the various "houses" in the sky have slipped by about a month since people first invented the system, but they haven't bothered updating it to account for that.
Here's the kicker. The most they do is add new planets to the system as astronomy discovers them. But, does that really make any sense at all? Has an astronomer ever once said, let's say before Uranus was discovered "our readings are slightly off, as if there's a planet we haven't discovered having extra influence, I predict the discovery of a new planet soon". I thought not, yet that's exactly what happened, with gravitational influence before it was discovered by astronomers. Astrologers, ironically enough, have never predicted the discovery of a new planet. Further, not once, after they incorporate a new one, have they ever said that previous predictions were all wrong. They add an entire new planet, claim it will make them more accurate, but at the same time throughout the years they always claim 100% accuracy. Nothing changes no matter how much it does for them. They are frozen in irrelevancy.
Study after study, actual CONTROLLED studies, not random books written by chinese astrologers with no signs of proper scientific controls, show no connection between the stars and one's behavior. Heck, you can get someone to write an astrology projection for one person, print out copies for an entire room, and that whole room will say it's an accurate description of them at a personal level.
lazy you should know better than to get caught up in such nonsense. It's not just unproven, it's inherantly nonsensical that it ever COULD be a way that the universe works.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)