IT Career Horoscopes

HRHsoleil writes "If you're addicted to horoscopes, you going to love these Horoscopes for geeks." Mine was surprisingly accurate, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the power that a gaseous orb a zillion miles away exhibits upon my laptop.

Comments

Which one is mine?

[henrygb]

I read all 12 to try to discover if they could tell me when I was born - but they all seemed as descriptive as each other.

Re:Which one is mine?

[Short Circuit]

I think the "trick" behind horoscopes lay in writing something that the average reader wants to believe.

The same is true with fortune cookies. Although I sometimes wonder if some were written specifically to have "in bed" appended to them.

(Warning: That's my personal opinion. I don't mean to offend anyone.)

I see...

[AngryCodeMonkey]

all the US IT workers being replaced by be Indians in the near future.

Mine was surprisingly accurate....

[Anonymous Coward]

Suprisingly,
They were all accurate...

yea right

[manifest37]

The recent drain on your financial resources is about to end.

If thats true for anybody let me know

And the earth is flat too

[infinite9]

I'm amazed by how many people believe in a science? religion? that relies on the idea that the earth is the center of the solar system and everything else, including the sun, revolves around it.

Re:Why is it?

[stratjakt]

It's just entertainment. Like fortune cookies.

Noone, not even "real astrologers" take them seriously. It's just something to kill another 5 minutes after you already read the comic page.

Skeptics and horoscopes

[MyNameIsFred]

I remember a Nova program on horoscopes that I saw years ago. The Amazing Randy had asked a class of college students for the birthdates, and wrote a horoscope for each them. He asked them, by a show of hands, whether the horoscopes were accurate. They overwhelmingly said yes. He then asked them to pass their horoscopes to the person behind them. That's when they found out that he had written only one horoscope for the entire class.

Horoscopes are based on simple concepts that are almost univeral. That if I ask you if you are having conflict with your mate, you will probably say yes. It may be because of a divorce, or it might be a disagreement over what movie to see this weekend.

Why I read horoscopes

[jazmataz23]

As most people have noted, horoscopes are written as generally as possible, since the horoscopes printed in a paper should "fit" 1/12 of the population. Why do I read them and apply their advice to my life? Because I've been around long enough to understand that a life lacking in mythology is drab and uninspiring. So I take a generic horoscope and look for its (usually positive) outcome in my life. And of course, I find it.

So how is this different from your collection of Star Wars "collectibles" *snort* or your borg mask? Well, the guidance I get actually makes a difference in my life. Well, one example is that I'm engaged to be married to a woman I met on a day about seven years ago that said "you will meet your soul mate today". Did I take extra care that day to keep my eyes out for intelligent and attarctive women? Sure. Am I glad I did? Yep.

In short, I have a life plan, and I'm working toward goals, but I don't think that I am the sole arbiter of events. The world doesn't revolve around me. A time to sow, a time to reap and all that. It's human nature to look to some source of greater guidance and pattern in the ebb and flow of life. Astrology's been around for thousands of years; if it were complete bunk, wouldn't we would have thrown it out by now? Does it matter that it can easily be explained as a self-fulfilling prophesy? Nah.

I love the Sagan quote, by the way. The bull-headed application of science in the realm of faith is absurd; similar to pointing out that a man can't really be suspended on a cross by nails through his hands.

Engage Shields
jaz

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[kisrael]

For the record, I think people who are trying to put forward astrology in the modern age don't argue that the stars are affecting you, but the stars and planets are responding to the same kind of underlying (presumambly cosmic) forces that control your environment.

I don't believe that either, but it seems more plausible. Most likely it's a big rosarch blot.

The other point I'm kind of willing to accept about astrology, at least with its origins, is that maybe once upon a time, when a kid was born relative to the harvest cycle would influence what kind of nutrition he or she got, and thus what kind of person they ended up. Still, it seems like other factors, especially nowadays, would greatly outweigh that influence.

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[__aafutm5472]

I think my preacher put it best...

"If horoscopes were true, they'd be on the front page of the papers, not buried back by the funnies."

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[aiabx]

Wrong. Try again. We have convincing evidence that life evolved on at least one planet. And if it happened here, and you accept the premise that it happened without divine intervention, then it could happen elsewhere as well.
Thanks for trolling!
-aiabx

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

You are overestimating the present state of science. There can very well be forces and things we don't understand in the universe.

For instance, we just discovered (i.e. in the last 30 or so years) that the vast majority of the mass (something like 75%(?)) in the universe is contained in dark matter. We thought we understood the universe fairly well but now we just realize that we couldn't even see the most dominant mass in the universe. How do you know dark matter doesn't affect the birth of a child?

Similarly, consider superstring theory. I don't know much about it but my feeling is that it will be accepted by science. From what I understand (which isn't much) superstring theory is supposed to postulate that there are more dimensions in the universe. From what I could recall, there are soemthing like 10 dimensions (although these dimensions are nothing like the 4D spacetime). All this time, we live with 4D and all of a sudden we realize there may be more (assuming that is what superstring actually proves)). How do you know these extra dimensions don't impact astrology?

My view is that there are some truths in astrology--we just don't know what they are. It's kind of like tradional medicine (i.e. non-scientific medicine). Traditional medicine is supposed to be totally bogus according to science, yet I have a feeling that some of it is true. People, in the past, couldn't have just made up these medicines. They would have refined it over time. Some may be pure junk; but some won't be. We just don't know what... same thing with astrology...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[hesiod]

> I think my preacher put it best...

Yeah, a practitioner of one flimsy idea explaining how flimsy another is. Funny. Yet it is still a good point.

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[meringuoid]

My point is that you cannot dismiss astrology simply because there may be some truth to it. Since most astrological descriptions are so vague, it's hard to prove that they are wrong.

Au contraire: that's precisely why I _do_ dismiss astrology. If astrologers made specific, precise predictions and statements, if they made claims that were clearly and definitely either right or wrong, then maybe there might be something to it. But they don't - they make predictions and statements that are so damn vague that they apply to anyone, whatever the circumstances of their birth, and you get absurdities like the Randi demonstration upthread where nearly everyone claims that an identical horoscope describes them remarkably well...