Conversation

Been getting a lot of "how can you criticize astrology if you haven't studied it?" Well, I similarly think flat earth theory is ridiculous without knowing all their complicated arguments. If a theory violates extremely basic scientific knowledge, the details don't matter.
70
995
Ofc not saying it *can't* be true; there's a tiny possibility the earth is actually flat; but I'm not going to spend time deeply studying the details of every ridiculous theory out there before I criticize it.
5
144
Replying to
in fact there's several concrete things that would make me go "hm, this is actually surprising, i think i might have been wrong here" and NONE of those concrete things are in the category of "studying astrology more in depth" A list of concrete things that would change my mind:
2
73
1. i ask 200 people who havent seen their birth chart description to pick the one out of two that matches them. a success rate meaningfully higher than 50% (id preregister the number, just gotta calculate it first) would make me go hmmmmm
4
84
2. have an astrologer look at someone's birth chart and pick the periods in life most likely to have big events. I then have the person identify the periods in their own life seebig events. Then we check how much they overlaps. Doesnt have to be perfect, just better than chance.
6
76
3. i know astrology is very 'complicated' with tons of planets and whatever, but there's still some things that have more impact than others. we ask ppl's dominant sun/moon sign and ask about their personality; even a slight correlation would be convincing here
8
73
Replying to
I think I very slightly could predict astrology charts, given sports and academic ability and place of birth. How old you are compared to classmates can affect far more things than the constellations, but correlates well with them.