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Comment by permo-w | Hacker News Reader

I think the easy way to look at this is that a certain segment of society will always want to believe in something beyond the observable world

with the decline of organised religion amongst Western Europeans, astrology is one way they fill that void

if astrology doesn't float your boat, there's always witchcraft and tarot, or crystals and alternative medicine. or if you're less inclined towards new-age horse you can believe in QAnon and cryptids and Graham Hancock and ivermectin. basically there are always going to be people like this, and astrology - as of now anyway - is a harmless, if extremely stupid, outlet for it

perhaps in 60 years it'll be death camps for Scorpios and I'll have to eat my words, but that seems unlikely

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>as of now anyway - is a harmless, if extremely stupid, outlet

As the article mentions people go as far as turning down relationships because of "mismatched star signs". That to me is not harmless at all, people make significant decisions based on superstition apparently exercising quite a lot of prejudice. Good friend of my family on my mother's side always was into herbal alternative medicine and people laughed it off. Few years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was convinced she could treat it with some sort of rose tea. Well, she's dead now. These eccentric hobbies can be more detrimental than people give them credit for.

Financially that industry is apparently twice as large as the homeopathy market, so it's quite a big scam. I think we ought to be worried about this stuff even if there's no death camps.

> As the article mentions people go as far as turning down relationships because of "mismatched star signs". That to me is not harmless at all, people make significant decisions based on superstition apparently exercising quite a lot of prejudice.

If we take for granted that most guys are decent and yet many woman keep falling for the wrong guys, then perhaps a method that essentially produces a random result might be an improvement..

Also consider that while star sign might be the stated reason for incompatibility, the truth could have been an impression or gut feeling and so the astrological mismatch is simply a way to give a reason for their feelings, whether done consciously to save face, or subconsciously to have something decisive to latch onto.

> I think the easy way to look at this is that a certain segment of society will always want to believe in something beyond the observable world

Even if you believe that, this can also in principle be studied at least somewhat more rigorously by considering philosophy.

There's no "right" or "wrong" answer to "is there anything beyond the observable world?", but there's arguments that are principled and reasoned and others that aren't even internally consistent.

I'll agree though that majoring in metaphysics is unlikely to be something many people will be able to (or willing to) achieve.

I don't even think it's just metaphysics. People in general like to find patterns in the world even where none exist. The LessWrong community is somewhat infamous for abusing statistics. Political predictions sites like 538 have put out stuff that's not much better than astrology (specifically the granular primary predictions they did), but they make a lot of money feeding people who don't know better. A sense of order is comforting, even when it's nonsense.

Yea the 538 stuff (at least that audience) is a prime example of the McNamara fallacy[0]. It’s easy for people to find comfort in what can/is being measured and appoint it as objective truth, and consequently disregard anything that can’t be easily quantified.

Like u alluded to, people like to at least feel in control. And in the case of astrology it manifests in being able to have a simple explanation for things.

And now that I think about it, I’m sort of puzzled y more things don’t seem to get chalked up to random chance. It’s a simple enough explanation and seems ripe for abuse but strangely doesn’t seem to be. Maybe cuz by definition, its randomness isn’t that satisfying of a conclusion for people to draw

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

Because nothing really ever happens because of random chance. Everything has a reason, and to pretend it happened because of random chance is to say you don't care enough what the reason was to try to figure it out.

Sure, cause and effect rules everything, but I suspect that most large systems are chaotic enough that any description we lay on them is just telling stories.

Yes obviously everything happens for a “reason.” However I’m talking about the majority that internalizes that phrase as indicating there’s some predetermined sequence of events and stars aligning whatever.

Not the “since everything happens for a reason, let me inquire and dig deeper to figure out what was the cause” person. And my point was I’m surprised more people don’t attribute things to random chance cuz it’s an easy out. Again, not the people that actually care about finding things out, Im talking about the astrology type

Quantum mechanics, at least, seems to indicate that certain things happen if not for "no reason" then at least not for any reason that we can discern in any sort of way.

But beyond that I think your comment misses the larger point: it's exceedingly rare for something to happen for "a reason", most things, even in a deterministic universe, happen due to the combination of multiple factors. Sometimes we can model the cause and effect in simple terms with some success, but in other situations (e.g. wheather forecasts) we deal with nonlinear and chaotic systems that we can't really predict very well.

That's a shame, because basic Aristotelian philosophy used to be schoolboy stuff.

Interestingly, the only things we can actually know with certainty are purely abstract, like a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Is that within "the observable world?" Meanwhile it's entirely basic that our senses cannot be trusted. There's a fairly compelling argument to be made that sensory observation isn't a particularly good means of gaining knowledge. My own philosophical inclinations are pragmaticist though, so I believe abductive reasoning can, practically speaking, suffice for a useful if not entirely correct understanding of many phenomena.

"I think the easy way to look at this is that a certain segment of society will always want to believe in something beyond the observable world"

So nearly every scientist that is known for introducing a paradigm shift in history?

Most often these scientists or inventors do not have something in the observable world, they rely on their imagination and spark of intuition to craft their way towards a representation in the observable world.

I agree and I'd edit my comment to include this if I still could. who knows what more there is in the world beyond our senses. actual reality is not observable

Appreciate the candor, kudos.

It's not harmless if people begin with "Oh yes, my astrologer said this partner would be my perfect match" and a few years later they end up with "The jews are actually lizard people that control the world economy, we must stop them."

This seems... unlikely, though. There does seem to be some "crank magnetism" effect (people who believe in one form of nonsense tend to adopt others), but it's heavily tilted towards _conspiracy-based_ nonsense. So people who sincerely believe the earth is flat and there is a grand conspiracy to conceal that are probably good fodder for qanon and the anti-semitic stuff and what have you, but it's not clear that astrology people are.

God is dead, and his faithful have replaced him with shiny trinkets and wafty nonsense. Fitting.

it also fits the smug atheist stereotype that you seem to believe you’re above it all

Hey! My nonsense is depressing, not wafty!

60 years too late...

well combine it with the rise of easy access to these ideas through the internet then "..."

and you believe in pfizer and moderna? :)

do I?

“Deathcamps for Scorpios”

Gemini-tler was dumped by a Scorpio

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