Should Scientists Date People Who Believe Astrology?

YourAstrologer writes "Wired Science asks: Should scientists date people who believe in astrology? Apparently, the argument is quite complex. Astrology is sort of a flawed mental shortcut for understanding the world, but so is disregarding someone because of their spiritual beliefs. Women are inundated with astrological nonsense from fashion magazines, so it is normative for them to believe it even if they are otherwise highly logical. Smart people can convince themselves of silly things."

Comments

Um, Yes...

[kabocox]

Sure why not? People believe in all kinda of crazy things like religion, astrology, string theory, and evolution.

A quick google search shows up this url http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html for those that were ridiculed, but later vindicated.

I think there is a ton of money to be made in astrology. With what we know now, it should be possible to work backward and find out if visible lights in the sky have had effects on a personal/societal level for the past few thousand years. There is a part of me that wonders if the gravity of other planets or the moon/sun has noticeable/predictable effects on us. With all the crazy crap that we fund, that sounds like a fun off the wall one. The only problem is if we discovered that "astrology" was actually real. I have a feeling that we could make astrology work.

What I find funny is that we'd find it impossible to fund NASA to observe all the asteroids that might hit the earth. We'd actually come up with the money to fund that for astrology though. Those asteroids might have a noticeable impact on our collective future if left unaccounted for.

I think astrology actually can match up fairly well under science. The thing is it would be that crazy blue sky science until we really started looking at it. For a means to predict the future though? Nope, I wouldn't buy that, yet. I do think daily horoscopes and the like are great fun. If some one takes one as daily instructions of a high priest/priestess that's their problem. I bet astrology would turn out some what like the weather. With enough data, we could predict it for 4 days or so. (I find funny is its not sky data that we'd need to determine your likely future, its knowledge about the person and what they are likely to do. Actual successful astrologers might be pretty good at reading people and learning to guide people into the directions that they want to go anyway. i wonder if anyone has studied the careers of successful astrologers and their impact on "important" people in business/government.

last post

[apol]

Hi,

My wife believes in Astrology in until strange phonomena like the Mars effect are not explained I don't think I can criticize her.

Last post!

apol

Re:Which method?

[Empiric]

"...imaginary superbeings that were made up by some random illiterate guy some thousands of years ago..."

I await with anticipation your testing model for this hypothesis.

Re:Which method?

[bobkoure]

For the idiotic things that some men believe, i.e. organized religion, the burden of proof is on the atheists? WTF? You seem to have missed that Athiesim is a belief in something unprovable as well (just a belief in non-excistence, but still...). Seems like it's the agnostics alone who miss the burden of proof.

Re:Multiple Choice

[Surt]

Do you have any evidence for that belief, or are you only qualifying academics as scientists, because there are other reasons that better account for the differential there.

Re:Which method?

[Empiric]

Well then, we'll just leave your Bare Assertion fallacies as they are.

Interesting thing is, formal logical fallacies are even less plausible than astrology. Good luck with that.

Re:Which method?

[Empiric]

Sorry, I've observed it. I do appreciate your claim to personal omniscience as to the content of everyone else's experience, however.

Thought experiment on such negative reasoning:

1. How many people would one have to interview to know somebody knows who really killed JFK?
2. How many people would one have to interview to know -nobody- knows who really killed JFK?

What you're really saying is that you don't have evidence following the methodology you prefer, despite the fact the particular religion at hand likely would see a certain injustice in granting equivalent results for someone dedicating actual effort to it, and someone willing to make the effort to say "gimme proof".