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.

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Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm paraphrasing here, but when talking about horoscopes, Carl Sagan summarised them like this:

The idea behind horoscopes is that the way the planets were aligned when you were born affects you. The only way this could actually be true is if it was their respective pulls of gravity against your body while being born.

Then he pointed out that the gravitational pull of the obstetrician that delivered you far outweighed that of any celestial body.

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[91degrees]

Which is a little arrogant perhaps. It is possible that there are other forces in the universe that we don't know about. Who says they're not giving off waves of Crappon particles that science is unable to detect, but do manage to affect things?

And while we're at it, the gravitational effect of the obstetrician is currently much lower than that of most planets since he's not standing right next to me any more. Perhaps if he decdied to visit me, astrology would have something to say about that.

n.b. I stil think its all bunk, but Sagan's argument is rubbish.

Re:Carl Sagan on horoscopes

[rknop]

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.

It does? Not if you know anything about stars and planets. We can completely describe the behavior of the planets in our solar system using Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation. (Except for a few small details like the precession of Mercury's orbit, which require corrections from General Relativity.)

This leaves very little room for "mysterious cosmic forces" to affect where the planets show up in front of constellations....

The so-called "theoretical" basis of Astrology is almost as much absolute bunk as the claimed practical "successes" of it (given that astrology has been experimentally shown to have zero predictive power).

-Rob

Re:Umm...no..

[Frothy Walrus]

Agreed. There room for creative problem solving though.

Horoscope test...

[Dr. Zowie]

Not long ago I was teaching introductory astronomy to 180 college freshmen, and we did the "James Randi" demonstration. It was almost surprising how well it worked. I browsed to a horoscope site and downloaded horoscopes for everyone. Printed them up in little folding booklets, 12 types, about 4/3 as many as there were students. Asked the students to come get their horoscope and read it secretly.

Then they voted on how well-tailored their horoscopes were. About 80% of the class said that the horoscopes were "perfect" or "very good", with about 10% "good" and only 10% saying "fair" or "poor".

Of course, the kicker is that they all received exactly the same horoscope, I believe an Aquarius reading for early spring 2002.

Even more of course, the site I got them from advertised that "we don't produce generic horoscopes -- we tailor them specifically to your date of birth!"

Actually, and this is serious...

[heironymouscoward]

Research has shown that the time of birth does have an impact on your life, especially in countries with sharp seasonal differences.

Things like the amount of food available to your pregnant mother, the amount of sun light you got when you were a few weeks old, the temperature you had to adapt to when you were a toddler... these seem to have an impact in later life.

The specific study was on fertility in Canadian women, and showed a difference of (IIRC) 40%+ between those born in the summer and those born in the winter.

So, before you laugh, there might actually be some basis for assuming that "Capricorns are always horny" and "Leos are dishonest".

Astrological signs not all BS

[thaddjuice]

One of things that a lot of people don't consider about astrology is that there is a good reason why people of the same signs may have similar personality traits. People who were born at the same time of the year have had various seasons and events happen at the same key points in early development. So, people born right after Christmas in January may have different perspectives on the importance of family, friends, and holidays (their birthdays being near the holidays) than someone born in June. Also, can anyone say what difference it might make in a child's development if it's snowing when they're learning to walk vs. heat of summer?

I'm not saying this means that you can tell their future based on when they're born, but there may be something to the idea that people of like signs have similar personalities and that relationship compatibility may be tied in to zodiak sign.

The Forer Effect

[Mad Man]

was Skeptics and horoscopes

Actually Bertram Forer did that experiment in 1948, except with pscyhological profile "tests" instead of horoscopes.

The phenomenon has since been known as the Forer Effect.

Psychologist B.R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone. Consider the following as if it were given to you as an evaluation of your personality.

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.

Forer gave a personality test to his students, ignored their answers, and gave each student the above evaluation. He asked them to evaluate the evaluation from 0 to 5, with "5" meaning the recipient felt the evaluation was an "excellent" assessment and "4" meaning the assessment was "good." The class average evaluation was 4.26. That was in 1948. The test has been repeated hundreds of time with psychology students and the average is still around 4.2.

Re:Look Into Their Crystal Ball

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it. I used to work for TechTarget. They don't sell much other than ads, and they have plenty of those.

Study has no real science in it

[delcielo]

I'm tempted to go on one of those personal crusades against stuff like this. I can't begin to relate the difficulties my wife and I have had over crap like this type of study.

There is no possible way for you to control a control group well enough to get ANY meaningful data from a study that follows people from birth into adulthood. The variables are nearly infinite.

If the people who wrote the study actually performed the data collection and administered the study, they should be shot for putting forward the idea that you can tell anything specific about adulthood from such specific environmental factors in children.

Most of the time, when you hear something like this, it is an interpretation of data that other people collected and deemed only marginally interesting; but some advocate got a hold of and pawned off as meaningful.

A great book to read for new or expecting parents is "The Myth of the First Three Years" by John Bruer.

Play Mozart to your baby because it's soothing and you wish to foster a familiarity with the music. Don't do it because you think it will increase your child's I.Q. by 5 points; because there is nothing that actually suggests that... nothing.