After all the help she gave all those people, she quit because someone called her a fraud and refused her help?
I think this woman needs to stop and revisit what she was doing. She wasn't a fraud. She was exactly what those people were paying for. For many, it was someone to talk to. For some, it was someone who could look past their biases and clear their minds. For some, it was a magic trick.
Her mistake wasn't the advice, but in not giving it in the accepted way: As mysticism. Tell him to go to the doctor, but have an in-character way of doing it instead of using logic. If they were willing to listen to logic, they wouldn't be there.
I'm sure it's stressful to "lie" to people all the time in this way, but all jobs are stressful in their own ways. And I see nothing in this article to indicate the author has any other options open to them at the moment.
Edited: Replaced "he" with "she". I was mislead by the image at the top and actually had to search for the author's name.
Interestingly, Penn and Teller (although I've never heard Teller talk about it [har har] they seem to be in agreement) look at and talk about this sort of moral quandary a lot in the context of the tradition of magicians. For them, it's not enough to think think that "of course the audience knows" but to be honest from the get go.
Darren Brown did a stage show called "Miracle" (which was fantastic, but a different discussion) where he talks about his experience with faith healers and the like and says at the beginning that, which he doesn't like people getting suckered or lying, the experience is one that people should have, and goes on to spend the rest of the show "in character" as a faith healer.
The movie Leap of Faith also explores this moral dilemma.
I've never been upset at people doing whatever it takes to survive, but I don't think that it excuses you from the ethics of what you do. I definitely wouldn't consider what he did 100% ethical and it's OK to question what you do.
Do address something else:
> I think this guy needs to stop and revisit what he was doing. He wasn't a fraud. He was exactly what those people were paying for.
The cursed man didn't come in to see a magic trick or to be lied to, he came to have his curse lifted. There are many many people, whether ignorant or ill, who do not see this as some sort of entertainment or escapism, but actually how the world works. This is where the morally questionable part comes in. It's like casinos or the lottery: plenty of people go in expecting to "throw their money away" on entertainment, but nothing is done to tell people that it's not wise to expect anything to actually happen, and over-correlation can lead to addiction (and yes, addiction to psychics can and does happen)
> After all the help he gave all those people, he quit because someone called him a fraud and refused his help?
No, she quit because she she realized that the esotheric service industry, of which she was a part, was supporting and reinforcing that man's refusal to get medical help, which is what he urgently needed to prevent him from harming himself and possibly also others.
Someone who can read people that well won't have much trouble finding interesting work, I think.
I find this issue ethically interesting: she lies to people to help them. Or just to entertain them, but when people need something specific, she uses their irrational superstitions to convince them to do something that would be the rational thing to do.
It also touches a bit on the placebo effect: should a doctor be allowed to present a placebo as real medicine because that might enhance the placebo effect, which may still be better than nothing?
> Tell him to go to the doctor, but have an in-character way of doing it instead of using logic. If they were willing to listen to logic, they wouldn't be there.
Actually, I'd say the problem was that she did stay in character. I don't understand why she couldn't just say the truth: "I was just reading about a neurological condition with these exact symptoms. You may have $name, and if you don't get it treated immediately $bad_thing may happen."
I think that was just what tipped the scale, looks like she could not handle selling psychic powers she did not have. You may not see it like it, but this fits many definition of a fraud.
The fact that her clients were delusional does not make it much more ethical.
If I made a business selling cheap plastic Shenzhen baubles as potent magic pendants, would it be a legitimate business just because I find people willing to pay?
Reading between the lines a little, maybe that example summarized multiple similar incidents that built up to a point where this person simply couldn't accept the premeditated context projected onto each session. Never really thought about it that way before, but I can imagine that would get old/draining pretty quick.
This is (100-eps)% of classical psychoanalysis (including the extensive word association, etc.) except for the crucial bit that's transference -- the long term relationship between patient and analyst.
Psychoanalytic theory (at least Lacanian theory, which is what I'm studying at lunch hour) explores a lot of this stuff -- the healing of people by prodding them to heal themselves and maybe grasping a clue here and there.
I wouldn't recommend analysis (or astrology) to anyone in pain, but if you can read French (translations of Lacan are atrocious, and I'm told Freud is even worse) reading seminars I and XV are a great investment of time.
This is an discussion I've had plenty of times with my wife (who is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist). It's hard to articulate in words, but I will try.
What gets me about astrologists and psychics, is they are preying on peoples innocent stupidity. At best they are reading their clients semi-accurately, at worst they are swindling them.
But in both cases they are not actually helping the client understand what is making them feel this way, and helping down on a path that leads to a healthier self-awareness.
We have a friend who doesn't not believe in psychology, but believes in psychics. She refuses to go back to a psychologist because the psychologist wanted her to actually think on and feel her past traumas, to discover why she has some self destructive tendencies. The psychic she eventually went with and still uses today (costing just as much as the psychologist -- more if you have mental health coverage on your insurance) just told her she sees why she is doing certain things, and to call her if she felt these tendencies coming back (charging her of course).
My wife thinks that so long as it is helping, it isn't necessarily bad. She feels that people shouldn't see psychics or read too much into the movement of planets and stars, but that whats the harm if it makes you feel better.
I feel that the amount of good they could do is way less than the harm they could do. And that the dangers of allowing another person to give you untrained/regulated advise is a terrible path to go down instead of understanding yourself.
One shouldn't forget that some practices that appear pseudo-scientific from today's point of view made sense historically:
"It made perfect sense for ancient man to believe in astrology. The influence of sun and moon on earthly affairs is obvious. Likewise the stars can be seen as influential by their association with the seasons. Heavenly bodies are the prototype of self-motion, which is a property also possessed by beings with a soul as opposed to inanimate objects. This leads to the idea of the soul being a "piece of the heavens" and thereby to personal horoscope astrology. The heavenly bodies are associated with personality traits in a manner that have a straightforward justification in terms of objective astronomical properties of these bodies."
I disagree. You're not an ocean, so looking at the tides and assuming that the moon has a similar influence on you is an unjustified jump of logic. Then, when you start inventing specific effects for the moon to have, you're clearly in the realm of fiction because you know full well you didn't get the ideas you're writing down from observation.
I have heard before the argument that "being rational wasn't invented until the 1930s, so you can't call anyone before then irrational," but everybody knows intuitively that the truth is something they see or something they infer from what they see, and a lie is something they make up in their own heads.
_"...appear pseudo-scientific from today's point of view..."_ implies, at the very least, that it is in any way scientific. And that is a HUGE problem, for it is distorting the definitions.
It _is_ a big deal, because once you start skewing eroding definitions, the very foundation of human communication & coordination is compromised.
Definition of word "scientific", according to meriam-webster[1] is : "of, relating to, or exhibiting the methods or principles of science"
So, call it fun or interesting. Say it makes people feel better. Point out it makes life easier to live for some.
But it is not, from any point of view, scientific. Because it fails to comply with the scientific principles.
Mental mechanisms that produce and amplify superstition is well understood.
There's but one reason why superstition/religion want to hide under, integrate or identify with the scientific framework, while science is sharply separating itself: science works, therefore is powerful, while other has no effect beyond placebo.
> It dawned on me that my readings were a co-creation
I think this is a key point that rational people and skeptics don't get. Pseudosciences and pseudotherapies don't work because they produce accurate results, they work because of the tremendous effort that believers put in them to make them work.
IMHO, skeptics could help believers much more if they instilled in them some common sense and safeguards to avoid the worst crooks and dangerous therapies ("buy as many Bach flowers as you wish, it's your money - just don't abandon your chemotherapy") rather than try to appeal to their rational sense ("don't you realize how ridiculous it is? It could never work!"). At least in personal interactions, it is more likely that the former will gradually succeed in educating them than the latter.
Not to mention that since the placebo effect is so real, it can be unethical to explain that to someone. When my mother was going through chemo and radiation and started buying healing crystals as well, I supported her beliefs in that (she was also doing all the doc recommended stuff).
Those from the skeptical community who I read and listen to (mostly from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, https://www.theskepticsguide.org/) are quite aware of this idea.
Its not a revelation to say insulting people's intelligence with skeptical incredulity is a bad strategy to win them over. Same with climate for instance, shaming people isn't likely to convince them of climate science.
Former fortune teller here. I used to sit on the sidewalk and read the I Ching to anyone who asked me to, pay-what-you-want. No one ever called me a fraud, but I still quit. A couple folks were just trying to have fun tossing pennies at a smelly book, but the vast supermajority of them were feeling highly anxious because they needed reassurance that their future plans would work out. What if my kids come to America to live with me? What if I divorce my husband? What if I quit my job? I feel sad and guilty about answering those questions by tossing coins around because I think I could have helped them more if we had cut the magic and just talked honestly about what was going on with them.
> I heard these stories so often I could often guess what the problem was the moment someone walked in.
> "You sounded happier when you said ‘photography’,” I said. My psychic teacher was right – the signals we pick up before conscious awareness kicks in can be accurate and valuable.
Reading people's emotions, face, body language, and getting them to give you money for it...its a sales job like any other. I'm sure car salesmen would make decent astrologers if they threw on some shawls and golden bracelets.
Agreed. Listening and observing strangers carefully is a tremendous skill. Here's an experiment worth doing at Y Combinator: give some, but not all, your teams of entrepreneurs some active-listening practice sessions. Then observe the outcomes. Hypothesis: the companies with the active-listening training will do better sooner.
Being an Indian citizen and especially from the southern state of Kerala, it's tough to not believe in astrology. It's considered a science in ancient times and a significant energy was spent on perfecting the art/science. For e.g. refer to Kerala school of mathematics, which had done some pretty significant work before Calculus was discovered in Europe and that period most of the mathematicians were also astronomers as well as astrologers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_School_of_Astronomy_and....
My own uncle is an Astrologer and sometimes he makes pretty accurate predictions. He is a retired professor and he does it for a hobby and not for monetary reasons. I don't have a scientific explanation for how it works, but would love to apply some statistics/ML learning with reliable public data available on well known persons whose time and date of birth is published and find a scientific correlation, if at all it exists.
Well, speaking strictly logically: If they were both astronomers and astrologers, and their astronomy was sound, it does not mean that their astrology was, too. Many great scientists of the past were religious, and yet that is no proof of god.
It's just hard for me to see how astrology could work. Either the movement of the stars affects the fate of individual humans everywhere, in a weird semantic connection ("Mars, the bringer of war" and so on), or people seek out astrologers to confirm whatever they need confirmed (Confirmation bias). This just seems massively more likely and doesn't clash with anything in the scientific framework. Astrology simply plays into all the biases everyone is affected by, so I don't mean to belittle anyone who believes or practices it, but it can't be called a science in any sense of the word.
It's not too difficult to test the accuracy under more rigorous conditions.
Make sure you record the predictions ahead of time.
Decide ahead of time what would need to happen in order to consider the predictions 'accurate.'
Wait, and then record which ones turned out to meet their 'accurate' criteria.
Deciding ahead of time what would be considered accurate or not is key, because otherwise practically anything can be justified with post-hoc reasoning.
The other thing that happens is that the predictions are not very specific.
Here is an example. Taken from a horoscope for me today: "The answer will be right there waiting for you."
There is no indication what the question is. Just that there is an answer. What's the utility of this? Well there are millions of ways this "prediction" can come true. The chances of something happening any day that fits that criteria is high, and I think most days I'm dealing with an answer to something. So this prediction is meaningless.
Here are some levels of specificity:
You are going to have a misunderstanding with a friend today.
You are going to have a misunderstanding with your closest friend today.
You are going to have a misunderstanding about food with your closest friend today.
You are going to have a misunderstanding about peanuts with your closest friend today.
You are accidentally going to give peanuts to your closest friend today, who will have an allergic reaction. Keep an epi-pen near.
I think it's pretty clear that astrology will never deliver a prediction at the level of that last statement, which also happens to be the most falsifiable and most useful.
Everything about astrology is really a tool to try to shift your perspective. This can be very useful, which it why it maintains it's popularity. But it has nothing to do with actually telling the future.
I dressed up as a fortune-teller at a Halloween party in a house I shared with a few people. It was a fairly big party, 40-50 people. As a joke, I set up a little booth under a sheet and started telling fortunes.
People went wild for it. Many of them knew it was me (slightly drunk) and they still sort of believed me. People waited in line for 15-20 minutes. I told people mostly jokey things that were positive. I started getting adventurous and told people random things - if they didn't like what I said they were genuinely sad. What surprised me the most was that people would take anything seriously from a tipsy fortune-teller beneath a sheet.
I saw the same sort of effect a few years ago when I was running some IRC bots. In addition to the usual dice, 8ball, etc. one of them would respond to queries with a random aphorism from a list I put together from Googling "wise quotes" and such.
It was a big hit, and kind of spooky to watch when people got responses that sounded relevant to their question. People joked that my perl script was being influenced by the spirits. In the end I concluded that you can read deep meaning into almost anything if you work hard enough.
I read astrology charts for a hobby, though I am skilled enough to do it professionally. I rarely read in person, and tend to read it from just the chart, via the internet (so very little telegraphing from voice tone and body language). One of the things that turn me off to reading for people in general are some of those things that the author brought up:
- People have a limited range of issues: relationships, career advice. They need counseling, not an astrology reading.
- The kind of readings I do or would like to do have little to do with what the person wants
- There are actually multiple ways to read charts. For example, two popular house systems, Placidus, and Whole Sign House can give different apparent results. Some people get really mad when charts are read with a different house systems.
- There was at least once when I used the wrong chart for someone's reading, and they seemed to relate to that reading.
Having said that, there are enough unusual things that came out of the experience. I don't think it is completely worthless.
I don't use the method the person described -- sympathetic magic, or word association. Nor do I base my astrology on the popular notion, that astrology is a science. It most certainly is not a science. I don't see it as a celestial clockwork that mechanistically produces results that are predictable (I have pissed off astrology enthusiasts who think that way).
Instead, my view of astrology is a map for Consciousness (the idea that mind did not emerge from the mind, but rather, matter solidified from mind), and it is something I think many (but not not all) psychonauts can relate to. For those who are exploring things that way, it can be valuable map.
Astrology has stuck around for 2,500 years is because it is a robust language developed over millennia to capture the complexity of being human. Your ego, your communication style, your love language, your instinct for action – each have their own, often contradictory, flavor.
You can use this language to walk into a room and say, ’I’m going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now.” It’s humanizing, and tender. You can start a conversation, “Why did we get into that insane fight and why did you shut down? Is it because you’re a Capricorn Mars?”
People don’t use astrology to predict the future. People use it to explain and create the present.
> You can use this language to walk into a room and say, ’I’m going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now.”
I wouldn't recommend doing that as anyone who is logic and science based will immediately cease to take you seriously. We have so much more information on how the universe works now than we did 2,500 years ago and there's nothing to suggest that astrology is anything other completely false.
People used to believe that leeches could bleed out toxins, thankfully we've evolved our knowledge models since then. Let's not go back.
I grew up with a whole bunch of books on astrology (among other nuage
subjects) that belonged to my mother and I used to be quite fluent in this
"language" you talk about, as a kid.
My impression, already since grade school, was that astrology did its level
best to flatter you and stroke your ego, even when it supposedly discussed
your "negative" traits which were always presented as if they were actually
positive. For instance, I remember Scorpio's vicious vindictiveness (my mother
is a Scorpio) and bloody-mindedness first noted as being the Scorpio's
downfall (from a soaring eagle to a crawling lizard) but then discussed as a
strength, a powerful weapon at the Scorpio's disposal that everyone should
take care not to provoke. Far from making it sound like vindictiveness is a
bad thing, it made Scorpio sound like a total badass (well, my mother is
badass so I was kind of convinced).
The other thing I noticed was that it didn't matter if you were a Scorpio, or
a Leo, or a Virgo, or a Libra. I could open any random page on one of my
mother's astrology books, discussing any one of the 12 signs and find a
passage that I felt described me absolutely. That is, I noticed that the
descriptions of the signs' personalities had absolutely no predictive value
whatsoever. Anyone could have any of the traits that were described as being
characteristic of their sign, or their ascendant, but also any of the traits
ascribed to every other sign.
So at least in the books that I've read (and I apologise that I don't remember
their titles but that was a while ago) astrology was basically a well-thought
out system for flattering people and filling them with empty platitudes.
Astrology is one of the three Hermetic sciences. Hermeticism won - today, we live in the Hermetic world of Newton where natural laws hold universally, certum et verissimum. In winning, it shed its skin and rebranded, leaving its earlier trappings behind to be worn by ideological losers.
If your astrology company isn't hiring Hermetic sorcerers, but rather new-age writers and "engineers", it's more or less SEO blog spam.
How is "I'm going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now." humanizing and tender? It doesn't read that way to me. It's off-putting and impersonal to start talking about random unrelated planets instead of the actual human issues that someone is dealing with.
Astrology is a means of emotional regulation and the reestablishment of a sense of control over an otherwise chaotic world. All worldviews, whether they celebrate themselves for their rigor or not, serves this function in addition to whatever other outputs they do or do not produce. In my personal experience women are more often the ones utilizing astrology, which means not that they are being duped as many of the comments here patronizingly say, but rather that astrology is solving a particular problem that women have adapted it to solve.
That there are scams that make use of the symbols of astrology hardly separates it from the company of any other worldview.
The town where I went to primary school in somewhat rural South Africa had, for quite a few years, a stand/shack smack in the middle of the town and on the side of the main road (if it can be called that). The shack had a big sign: "ANASTROLOGER HEALER". [1]
I am not sure whether the anastrologer healer misjudged the space on the sign or what, but kudos to them for remembering the a/an rule for English.
[1] It could also have been "ANASTROGIST HEALER" but I forget now.
I have heard of a bias where people will try to justify paying a lot of money for something by thinking that it's better. The $50 price tag probably made the spooky predictions appear to work better.
For a more contemporary – and informed – view of Astrology, please read “The Passion of the Western Mind” and “Cosmos and Psyche” (important: you must read in that order), by Richard Tarnas.
>The range of problems faced by people who can afford $50 for fortune telling turned out to be limited: troubles with romance, troubles at work, trouble mustering the courage for a much-needed change.
I'm not ready to say fortune telling is good, but I'm not ready to say it's bad if it's helping people make changes they need to make.
Source: me, who's working on making some big changes in my life. (No fortune tellers involved.)
This is just a story for entertainment purposes. It's all true though.
I seriously practiced astrology between the ages of 12 to 16. Specifically from this book [1].
How did I start believing in it?
My dad believed in it and went to an Indian astrologer and the guy gave me a reading and got my character spot on. Because of that, I became really enthusiastic. However, since I knew that my family let me down before when it came to matters of knowledge, I decided to do my best to quickly debunk it as fast as possible.
I got into palmistry and numerology. It took me 4 years to debunk.
The reason it took 4 years: well with palmistry, it's tough to know where to start. Furthermore, life events play out on a life scale, so the instant feedback is zero. At the time, I eventually ruled it out by association, a very weak argument indeed. Nowadays, I rule it out by logic, but I still can't empirically rule it out (not that I care).
Numerology was actually doable and that took me 4 years. It took so long because there's an insidiuous effect going on. With most numbers (check the source [1]), the descriptions are relatively positive and when you're capable of always giving quite a positive reading, then people tend to agree with you! In fact, a psychologist tested this on a 100 college students. He wrote the same positive personality description for all of them and got 4 out of 5 stars! While I couldn't find the source of that, I could find the source on something very similar [2].
Eventually I noticed that numerology had an accuracy of 50%, I reasoned that's basically a coin flip's worth of chance (remember, I was 16, I didn't understand what base rate meant) and if numerology would be true, I'd expect a 95% accuracy. Also, in hindsight there were some very strong indicators of it being bullshit. I used the system to pick my friends this way for a while and that didn't go too well (not too bad either).
I've wasted a lot of time on it and I'm sad that this is the stuff I spent my time on, and that this is the stuff my dad found important. When I'll be a dad, I'll teach my kids about math, music and the world. I'll teach them about numerology and palmistry as a cautionary tail and how to distinguish true knowledge (math) from nonsense such as astrology (in a scientific sense, I agree that it's useful for simply talking, etc.).
The irony is, whenever I give readings to people (once per year on average), they tend to become almost immediate converts despite me saying it's bullshit. That's something to think about. Even more ironic is that ever since that period in my life, I behave as my birth date would stipulate. Since whatever you believe in -- between the ages of 12 and 16 -- stays forever with you.
(Obviously, there's a good explanation for that and it doesn't involve planets. It definitely involves the effects of a self-fulfilling prophecy)
I'll teach them about the true, true nature of truth, about logic and evidence, and about facts and information. I'll also teach them that they should be skeptical, and that they need to learn to differentiate truth from falsehood. I don't know exactly what I'll teach my kids. I'll probably teach them to trust, and to not believe everything they are told or do. I'm just not sure which lessons I will teach.
I feel 100% sure that the movement/patterns of the planets, the sun, moon and other celestial objects have a significant effect on who we are and how we feel. BUT, I am also pretty sure that most people claiming to understand what is going on are lying.
"Astrology" is real, "astrologists" are charlatans.
[+] [-] wccrawford|6 years ago|reply
I think this woman needs to stop and revisit what she was doing. She wasn't a fraud. She was exactly what those people were paying for. For many, it was someone to talk to. For some, it was someone who could look past their biases and clear their minds. For some, it was a magic trick.
Her mistake wasn't the advice, but in not giving it in the accepted way: As mysticism. Tell him to go to the doctor, but have an in-character way of doing it instead of using logic. If they were willing to listen to logic, they wouldn't be there.
I'm sure it's stressful to "lie" to people all the time in this way, but all jobs are stressful in their own ways. And I see nothing in this article to indicate the author has any other options open to them at the moment.
Edited: Replaced "he" with "she". I was mislead by the image at the top and actually had to search for the author's name.
[+] [-] jedimastert|6 years ago|reply
Darren Brown did a stage show called "Miracle" (which was fantastic, but a different discussion) where he talks about his experience with faith healers and the like and says at the beginning that, which he doesn't like people getting suckered or lying, the experience is one that people should have, and goes on to spend the rest of the show "in character" as a faith healer.
The movie Leap of Faith also explores this moral dilemma.
I've never been upset at people doing whatever it takes to survive, but I don't think that it excuses you from the ethics of what you do. I definitely wouldn't consider what he did 100% ethical and it's OK to question what you do.
Do address something else:
> I think this guy needs to stop and revisit what he was doing. He wasn't a fraud. He was exactly what those people were paying for.
The cursed man didn't come in to see a magic trick or to be lied to, he came to have his curse lifted. There are many many people, whether ignorant or ill, who do not see this as some sort of entertainment or escapism, but actually how the world works. This is where the morally questionable part comes in. It's like casinos or the lottery: plenty of people go in expecting to "throw their money away" on entertainment, but nothing is done to tell people that it's not wise to expect anything to actually happen, and over-correlation can lead to addiction (and yes, addiction to psychics can and does happen)
It's far more grey than you think.
[+] [-] conistonwater|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brazzy|6 years ago|reply
No, she quit because she she realized that the esotheric service industry, of which she was a part, was supporting and reinforcing that man's refusal to get medical help, which is what he urgently needed to prevent him from harming himself and possibly also others.
[+] [-] mcv|6 years ago|reply
I find this issue ethically interesting: she lies to people to help them. Or just to entertain them, but when people need something specific, she uses their irrational superstitions to convince them to do something that would be the rational thing to do.
It also touches a bit on the placebo effect: should a doctor be allowed to present a placebo as real medicine because that might enhance the placebo effect, which may still be better than nothing?
[+] [-] gwd|6 years ago|reply
Actually, I'd say the problem was that she did stay in character. I don't understand why she couldn't just say the truth: "I was just reading about a neurological condition with these exact symptoms. You may have $name, and if you don't get it treated immediately $bad_thing may happen."
[+] [-] Iv|6 years ago|reply
The fact that her clients were delusional does not make it much more ethical.
If I made a business selling cheap plastic Shenzhen baubles as potent magic pendants, would it be a legitimate business just because I find people willing to pay?
[+] [-] exikyut|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thanatropism|6 years ago|reply
This is (100-eps)% of classical psychoanalysis (including the extensive word association, etc.) except for the crucial bit that's transference -- the long term relationship between patient and analyst.
Psychoanalytic theory (at least Lacanian theory, which is what I'm studying at lunch hour) explores a lot of this stuff -- the healing of people by prodding them to heal themselves and maybe grasping a clue here and there.
I wouldn't recommend analysis (or astrology) to anyone in pain, but if you can read French (translations of Lacan are atrocious, and I'm told Freud is even worse) reading seminars I and XV are a great investment of time.
[+] [-] jermaustin1|6 years ago|reply
What gets me about astrologists and psychics, is they are preying on peoples innocent stupidity. At best they are reading their clients semi-accurately, at worst they are swindling them.
But in both cases they are not actually helping the client understand what is making them feel this way, and helping down on a path that leads to a healthier self-awareness.
We have a friend who doesn't not believe in psychology, but believes in psychics. She refuses to go back to a psychologist because the psychologist wanted her to actually think on and feel her past traumas, to discover why she has some self destructive tendencies. The psychic she eventually went with and still uses today (costing just as much as the psychologist -- more if you have mental health coverage on your insurance) just told her she sees why she is doing certain things, and to call her if she felt these tendencies coming back (charging her of course).
My wife thinks that so long as it is helping, it isn't necessarily bad. She feels that people shouldn't see psychics or read too much into the movement of planets and stars, but that whats the harm if it makes you feel better.
I feel that the amount of good they could do is way less than the harm they could do. And that the dangers of allowing another person to give you untrained/regulated advise is a terrible path to go down instead of understanding yourself.
[+] [-] Inu|6 years ago|reply
"It made perfect sense for ancient man to believe in astrology. The influence of sun and moon on earthly affairs is obvious. Likewise the stars can be seen as influential by their association with the seasons. Heavenly bodies are the prototype of self-motion, which is a property also possessed by beings with a soul as opposed to inanimate objects. This leads to the idea of the soul being a "piece of the heavens" and thereby to personal horoscope astrology. The heavenly bodies are associated with personality traits in a manner that have a straightforward justification in terms of objective astronomical properties of these bodies."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCFvtiAig7I
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
I have heard before the argument that "being rational wasn't invented until the 1930s, so you can't call anyone before then irrational," but everybody knows intuitively that the truth is something they see or something they infer from what they see, and a lie is something they make up in their own heads.
[+] [-] lazysheepherd|6 years ago|reply
Definition of word "scientific", according to meriam-webster[1] is : "of, relating to, or exhibiting the methods or principles of science"
So, call it fun or interesting. Say it makes people feel better. Point out it makes life easier to live for some. But it is not, from any point of view, scientific. Because it fails to comply with the scientific principles. Mental mechanisms that produce and amplify superstition is well understood.
There's but one reason why superstition/religion want to hide under, integrate or identify with the scientific framework, while science is sharply separating itself: science works, therefore is powerful, while other has no effect beyond placebo.
1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientific
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TuringTest|6 years ago|reply
I think this is a key point that rational people and skeptics don't get. Pseudosciences and pseudotherapies don't work because they produce accurate results, they work because of the tremendous effort that believers put in them to make them work.
IMHO, skeptics could help believers much more if they instilled in them some common sense and safeguards to avoid the worst crooks and dangerous therapies ("buy as many Bach flowers as you wish, it's your money - just don't abandon your chemotherapy") rather than try to appeal to their rational sense ("don't you realize how ridiculous it is? It could never work!"). At least in personal interactions, it is more likely that the former will gradually succeed in educating them than the latter.
[+] [-] davinic|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobwilliamroy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperpallium|6 years ago|reply
> "You sounded happier when you said ‘photography’,” I said. My psychic teacher was right – the signals we pick up before conscious awareness kicks in can be accurate and valuable.
These are valuable skills.
[+] [-] m-i-l|6 years ago|reply
See also "Clever Hans"[0], the horse answering questions correctly because it picked up the subconscious reactions of the observer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
[+] [-] jwist|6 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8
[+] [-] gvb|6 years ago|reply
It was also the first element in the list. Humans tend to sort by preference, often subconsciously.
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OliverJones|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hashberry|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
[+] [-] murukesh_s|6 years ago|reply
My own uncle is an Astrologer and sometimes he makes pretty accurate predictions. He is a retired professor and he does it for a hobby and not for monetary reasons. I don't have a scientific explanation for how it works, but would love to apply some statistics/ML learning with reliable public data available on well known persons whose time and date of birth is published and find a scientific correlation, if at all it exists.
[+] [-] freddex|6 years ago|reply
It's just hard for me to see how astrology could work. Either the movement of the stars affects the fate of individual humans everywhere, in a weird semantic connection ("Mars, the bringer of war" and so on), or people seek out astrologers to confirm whatever they need confirmed (Confirmation bias). This just seems massively more likely and doesn't clash with anything in the scientific framework. Astrology simply plays into all the biases everyone is affected by, so I don't mean to belittle anyone who believes or practices it, but it can't be called a science in any sense of the word.
[+] [-] jmcqk6|6 years ago|reply
Make sure you record the predictions ahead of time.
Decide ahead of time what would need to happen in order to consider the predictions 'accurate.'
Wait, and then record which ones turned out to meet their 'accurate' criteria.
Deciding ahead of time what would be considered accurate or not is key, because otherwise practically anything can be justified with post-hoc reasoning.
The other thing that happens is that the predictions are not very specific.
Here is an example. Taken from a horoscope for me today: "The answer will be right there waiting for you."
There is no indication what the question is. Just that there is an answer. What's the utility of this? Well there are millions of ways this "prediction" can come true. The chances of something happening any day that fits that criteria is high, and I think most days I'm dealing with an answer to something. So this prediction is meaningless.
Here are some levels of specificity:
You are going to have a misunderstanding with a friend today.
You are going to have a misunderstanding with your closest friend today.
You are going to have a misunderstanding about food with your closest friend today.
You are going to have a misunderstanding about peanuts with your closest friend today.
You are accidentally going to give peanuts to your closest friend today, who will have an allergic reaction. Keep an epi-pen near.
I think it's pretty clear that astrology will never deliver a prediction at the level of that last statement, which also happens to be the most falsifiable and most useful.
Everything about astrology is really a tool to try to shift your perspective. This can be very useful, which it why it maintains it's popularity. But it has nothing to do with actually telling the future.
[+] [-] gerbler|6 years ago|reply
People went wild for it. Many of them knew it was me (slightly drunk) and they still sort of believed me. People waited in line for 15-20 minutes. I told people mostly jokey things that were positive. I started getting adventurous and told people random things - if they didn't like what I said they were genuinely sad. What surprised me the most was that people would take anything seriously from a tipsy fortune-teller beneath a sheet.
[+] [-] Pete_D|6 years ago|reply
It was a big hit, and kind of spooky to watch when people got responses that sounded relevant to their question. People joked that my perl script was being influenced by the spirits. In the end I concluded that you can read deep meaning into almost anything if you work hard enough.
[+] [-] tedajax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hosh|6 years ago|reply
I read astrology charts for a hobby, though I am skilled enough to do it professionally. I rarely read in person, and tend to read it from just the chart, via the internet (so very little telegraphing from voice tone and body language). One of the things that turn me off to reading for people in general are some of those things that the author brought up:
- People have a limited range of issues: relationships, career advice. They need counseling, not an astrology reading.
- The kind of readings I do or would like to do have little to do with what the person wants
- There are actually multiple ways to read charts. For example, two popular house systems, Placidus, and Whole Sign House can give different apparent results. Some people get really mad when charts are read with a different house systems.
- There was at least once when I used the wrong chart for someone's reading, and they seemed to relate to that reading.
Having said that, there are enough unusual things that came out of the experience. I don't think it is completely worthless.
I don't use the method the person described -- sympathetic magic, or word association. Nor do I base my astrology on the popular notion, that astrology is a science. It most certainly is not a science. I don't see it as a celestial clockwork that mechanistically produces results that are predictable (I have pissed off astrology enthusiasts who think that way).
Instead, my view of astrology is a map for Consciousness (the idea that mind did not emerge from the mind, but rather, matter solidified from mind), and it is something I think many (but not not all) psychonauts can relate to. For those who are exploring things that way, it can be valuable map.
[+] [-] banuguler|6 years ago|reply
Astrology has stuck around for 2,500 years is because it is a robust language developed over millennia to capture the complexity of being human. Your ego, your communication style, your love language, your instinct for action – each have their own, often contradictory, flavor.
You can use this language to walk into a room and say, ’I’m going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now.” It’s humanizing, and tender. You can start a conversation, “Why did we get into that insane fight and why did you shut down? Is it because you’re a Capricorn Mars?”
People don’t use astrology to predict the future. People use it to explain and create the present.
BTW ---> We’re probably who she’s subtweeting. And we’re hiring. https://www.costarastrology.com/jobs
[+] [-] malvosenior|6 years ago|reply
I wouldn't recommend doing that as anyone who is logic and science based will immediately cease to take you seriously. We have so much more information on how the universe works now than we did 2,500 years ago and there's nothing to suggest that astrology is anything other completely false.
People used to believe that leeches could bleed out toxins, thankfully we've evolved our knowledge models since then. Let's not go back.
[+] [-] YeGoblynQueenne|6 years ago|reply
My impression, already since grade school, was that astrology did its level best to flatter you and stroke your ego, even when it supposedly discussed your "negative" traits which were always presented as if they were actually positive. For instance, I remember Scorpio's vicious vindictiveness (my mother is a Scorpio) and bloody-mindedness first noted as being the Scorpio's downfall (from a soaring eagle to a crawling lizard) but then discussed as a strength, a powerful weapon at the Scorpio's disposal that everyone should take care not to provoke. Far from making it sound like vindictiveness is a bad thing, it made Scorpio sound like a total badass (well, my mother is badass so I was kind of convinced).
The other thing I noticed was that it didn't matter if you were a Scorpio, or a Leo, or a Virgo, or a Libra. I could open any random page on one of my mother's astrology books, discussing any one of the 12 signs and find a passage that I felt described me absolutely. That is, I noticed that the descriptions of the signs' personalities had absolutely no predictive value whatsoever. Anyone could have any of the traits that were described as being characteristic of their sign, or their ascendant, but also any of the traits ascribed to every other sign.
So at least in the books that I've read (and I apologise that I don't remember their titles but that was a while ago) astrology was basically a well-thought out system for flattering people and filling them with empty platitudes.
[+] [-] juped|6 years ago|reply
If your astrology company isn't hiring Hermetic sorcerers, but rather new-age writers and "engineers", it's more or less SEO blog spam.
[+] [-] warp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkawn|6 years ago|reply
That there are scams that make use of the symbols of astrology hardly separates it from the company of any other worldview.
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
Sounds a lot like how professional economics or entrepreneurship works
[+] [-] mikorym|6 years ago|reply
I am not sure whether the anastrologer healer misjudged the space on the sign or what, but kudos to them for remembering the a/an rule for English.
[1] It could also have been "ANASTROGIST HEALER" but I forget now.
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marc_io|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cushychicken|6 years ago|reply
I'm not ready to say fortune telling is good, but I'm not ready to say it's bad if it's helping people make changes they need to make.
Source: me, who's working on making some big changes in my life. (No fortune tellers involved.)
[+] [-] mettamage|6 years ago|reply
I seriously practiced astrology between the ages of 12 to 16. Specifically from this book [1].
How did I start believing in it?
My dad believed in it and went to an Indian astrologer and the guy gave me a reading and got my character spot on. Because of that, I became really enthusiastic. However, since I knew that my family let me down before when it came to matters of knowledge, I decided to do my best to quickly debunk it as fast as possible.
I got into palmistry and numerology. It took me 4 years to debunk.
The reason it took 4 years: well with palmistry, it's tough to know where to start. Furthermore, life events play out on a life scale, so the instant feedback is zero. At the time, I eventually ruled it out by association, a very weak argument indeed. Nowadays, I rule it out by logic, but I still can't empirically rule it out (not that I care).
Numerology was actually doable and that took me 4 years. It took so long because there's an insidiuous effect going on. With most numbers (check the source [1]), the descriptions are relatively positive and when you're capable of always giving quite a positive reading, then people tend to agree with you! In fact, a psychologist tested this on a 100 college students. He wrote the same positive personality description for all of them and got 4 out of 5 stars! While I couldn't find the source of that, I could find the source on something very similar [2].
Eventually I noticed that numerology had an accuracy of 50%, I reasoned that's basically a coin flip's worth of chance (remember, I was 16, I didn't understand what base rate meant) and if numerology would be true, I'd expect a 95% accuracy. Also, in hindsight there were some very strong indicators of it being bullshit. I used the system to pick my friends this way for a while and that didn't go too well (not too bad either).
I've wasted a lot of time on it and I'm sad that this is the stuff I spent my time on, and that this is the stuff my dad found important. When I'll be a dad, I'll teach my kids about math, music and the world. I'll teach them about numerology and palmistry as a cautionary tail and how to distinguish true knowledge (math) from nonsense such as astrology (in a scientific sense, I agree that it's useful for simply talking, etc.).
The irony is, whenever I give readings to people (once per year on average), they tend to become almost immediate converts despite me saying it's bullshit. That's something to think about. Even more ironic is that ever since that period in my life, I behave as my birth date would stipulate. Since whatever you believe in -- between the ages of 12 and 16 -- stays forever with you.
(Obviously, there's a good explanation for that and it doesn't involve planets. It definitely involves the effects of a self-fulfilling prophecy)
[1] https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.70770
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
[+] [-] downvoted|6 years ago|reply
What I do know
[+] [-] russfink|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a11yguy|6 years ago|reply
"Astrology" is real, "astrologists" are charlatans.