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.
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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.
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There's things that could happen that would bump up a ridiculous theory from "extremely unlikely" to "mostly unlikely" and maybe make it qualify for time spent studying it in depth; like if someone was even slightly able to predict an astrology chart, that'd make me doubletake.
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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:
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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
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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.
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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
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I once asked a woman into astrology I was seeing if it can be used on dogs. She said “why would it affect dogs?” I said that presumably planetary motion affects all animals, not just humans. She didn’t get it.
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