Astrology: Wrong but still predictive?

[Ivan Seeking]

Whoops, I never did get back to this after Gokul sent me a file. Sorry, Gokul, I'll take a look shortly and post a summary.

FlexGunship: One problem that I have here is that no one had been able to produce evidence that we have a reliable baseline with which to test the claims about personality. Unless we have an established personality test that everyone agrees is definitive, then I don't see how astrological claims can be falsified. Beyond that, I want to know if personality profiles are any more specific than astrological ones. Perhaps Gokul's paper will shed some light on this. You say that astrologers are free to disagree, but that doesn't imply that they typically do in this regard. Wrt predicting the future, I'm sure they do disagree. But personality claims seem to be relatively fixed...

If you contend that astrologers do typically disagree wrt personality claims, then please provide some examples.

 

[FlexGunship]

If you contend that astrologers do typically disagree wrt personality claims, then please provide some examples.

Here are some Gemini profiles as provided by... well, the internet. I hope you don't mind that I simply pulled excepts. I'm providing links for you to use to discredit me as quickly as possible. I chose Gemini because I am one... as long as you discount Ophiuchus (or if you only count it as occupying December... or, whatever).

• The Gemini personality stands out as the zodiac sign that knows something about just about everything, making them good conversationalists and interesting acquaintances. Intelligent and logical, but with a lot of nervous energy, Gemini likes to keep busy and expand their horizons whenever opportunities arise, often multitasking between several interests. (http://www.mysticalblaze.com/AstrologyGemini.htm)
• Geminis also love to talk. Because of this, and perhaps in part because of their impulsive behaviour, Geminis are usually the life of the party. They are lively and energetic as well as versatile and intellectual. Their minds are always working, which often results in them telling people what they are thinking. Their wit and humour attract people and because Geminis are such fun to be with, they are often surrounded by many loyal friends throughout their lives. (http://www.exploreastrology.co.uk/PersonalityTraitsGemini.html)
• These people are intellectually versatile and adept at juggling many ideas or activities at once. In fact, they are the greatest multi-taskers of the zodiac! This is due to their lightning quick minds. Virtually all of these people possesses high intelligence. Even if they don't consider themselves to be academic titans, they still have the Gemini personality traits of having a very clever and creative mind. Usually their particular brand of intelligence is clearly shown by their wonderfully creative problem-solving abilities. (http://www.inner-flame-astrology.com/gemini_personality_traits.html )

Witty? Brilliant? Intelligent? Academic Titan? Friendly? Sociable? Life of the party?

Damnit... I guess Astrology is right after all.

 

[Gokul43201]

Here are some Gemini profiles as provided by... well, the internet. I hope you don't mind that I simply pulled excepts. I'm providing links for you to use to discredit me as quickly as possible. I chose Gemini because I am one... as long as you discount Ophiuchus (or if you only count it as occupying December... or, whatever).

• The Gemini personality stands out as the zodiac sign that knows something about just about everything, making them good conversationalists and interesting acquaintances. Intelligent and logical, but with a lot of nervous energy, Gemini likes to keep busy and expand their horizons whenever opportunities arise, often multitasking between several interests. (http://www.mysticalblaze.com/AstrologyGemini.htm)
• Geminis also love to talk. Because of this, and perhaps in part because of their impulsive behaviour, Geminis are usually the life of the party. They are lively and energetic as well as versatile and intellectual. Their minds are always working, which often results in them telling people what they are thinking. Their wit and humour attract people and because Geminis are such fun to be with, they are often surrounded by many loyal friends throughout their lives. (http://www.exploreastrology.co.uk/PersonalityTraitsGemini.html)
• These people are intellectually versatile and adept at juggling many ideas or activities at once. In fact, they are the greatest multi-taskers of the zodiac! This is due to their lightning quick minds. Virtually all of these people possesses high intelligence. Even if they don't consider themselves to be academic titans, they still have the Gemini personality traits of having a very clever and creative mind. Usually their particular brand of intelligence is clearly shown by their wonderfully creative problem-solving abilities. (http://www.inner-flame-astrology.com/gemini_personality_traits.html)

Witty? Brilliant? Intelligent? Academic Titan? Friendly? Sociable? Life of the party?

Damnit... I guess Astrology is right after all.

I find a lot more that's common between those three descriptions than aspects that are different - how could you not see it?

 

[FlexGunship]

I wasn't being facetious. In fact, there are tons of similarities! I'm sorry if my response came across as overly vague. Let me try again:

• most astrological profiles flatter the reader
• we are all tempted by flattery
• astrological descriptions have similarities for the same reason that descriptions of fictional animals (i.e. unicorns) have similarities
• I was also acknowledging (humorously?) that there was much more coincidence of description than I had originally thought

 

[Ivan Seeking]

See reference above.

28 astrologers (self-selected from among 90 nominees named by the National Council for Geocosmic Research, as being astrologers who were "held in high esteem by their peers" were given profiles (one correct, two incorrect) to match to a natal chart. The personality test used was the CPI (California Personality Inventory) because that was the one specifically chosen by the Astrologers advising in the study "because they judged the CPI attributes to be closest to those discernible by Astrology." Moreover, the Astrologers that participated were allowed to attach a weight (0-10) to the confidence in their match. A weight of 10 meant that the CPI profile very closely matched a set of attributes that could be derived from the natal chart.

The study tested for two things:

1. Whether the astrologers were able to significantly beat the 33% odds from random guessing (the advising astrologers estimated that they would beat 50% accuracy),

2. Whether the accuracy of their matching varied in proportion to the weights that they assigned to those predictions.

As I read this, great care was taken to ensure that all involved thought this was a fair test. In the end, the astrologers predictions were consistent with those expected due to chance.

However, this does not address my original concern about the reliablity of the personality profile. Do we have a reliable baseline for comparison?

Correlations between CPI scales and related external criteria tend to fall in the .2 to .5 ranges. This degree of correlation is typical for much of personality research. Extremely high correlations are not likely to be found for personality measures because the scales typically try to assess rather broad behavioral tendencies. [3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Psychological_Inventory#cite_note-Gough-2

 

[physicsdude30]

I would love to see a serious comparison study of zodiac sign against personality type. I bet there's a genuine correlation.

As far as I can find, there are no statistically significant correlations between personality and time/date someone is born.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology" (Although Wikipedia isn't scholarly, the second paragraph has links to sources about not finding any statistically significant correlations)

One source it lists is http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1623400.htm" Basically, this discusses an extensive peer-review study which found no correlation between the time/date of birth and personality traits, using categories such as psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and social desirablity. This study also found those born July through December were on average more intelligent by less than one IQ point, compared to those born January through June. However, the other part of the study evaluated data which found the exact reverse of those January through June having the extremely slight IQ edge. The researcher said the IQ thing wasn't worth being concerned about.

 

[sujiwun]

The idea that the stars and planets affect peoples lives in the classical sense is plain lunacy of course.

However, bear with me a moment - Is it completely insane to suggest that the time of year that someone was born might have an effect on their overall nature and outlook on life?

I'm a Capricorn - we're famous for being miserable, introverted sods. In my case, I was born during one of the foulest, coldest, darkest and longest winters of the last century. So it's hardly surprising, is it?

I would love to see a serious comparison study of zodiac sign against personality type. I bet there's a genuine correlation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Gauquelin

 

[DaveC426913]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Gauquelin

Was there anything you wanted to being to ouir attention, or do we simply read the whole thing?

 

[FlexGunship]

Was there anything you wanted to being to ouir attention, or do we simply read the whole thing?

Well, I read the whole thing and walked away with an academically null statement; a lot of correlation studies done by one guy (probably under the category of data mining), but no testable theory of causation.

That actually raises a good question here, are we just discussing correlation? Or is the goal of this discussion to delve into causation at some point?

It would seem to me, that even if we grant for a very strong correlation, that the problem of causation is far from being solved.

 

[loseyourname]

An actual astrological profile relies upon time and date as well as the coordinates of your birth. Location matters, too.

I think it's a load of crap just because it makes no sense to me why any of that should have an impact on your personality, and even if it does, choosing the moment of birth to imbue personality traits seems fairly arbitrary. Why not conception? Is there something special about breathing air for the first time?

That said, if you're going to test the claims of an astrologer, you have to test their actual claims. Even they'll say internet blurbs about an entire sun sign aren't terribly useful. Other aspects of the cosmos can interdict and it's the complete set of interactions that matters. My ex-girlfriend who used to post here put together astrological profiles, so I know far more about this than I really care to.

 

[FlexGunship]

That said, if you're going to test the claims of an astrologer, you have to test their actual claims. Even they'll say internet blurbs about an entire sun sign aren't terribly useful.

Sigh... the "no true Scotsman" seems to be the fallacy du jour around here. A good point, loseyourname, that's why it's so hard to test some of these things. When someone fails, the astrology community simply says he or she isn't a real astrologer or that they didn't take into account the rotation of Niburu.

 

[sujiwun]

Was there anything you wanted to being to ouir attention, or do we simply read the whole thing?

"Although he always remained highly critical of astrology in general, his attitude towards its existence changed as his studies progressed in the study of the diurnal cycle, which is related to the astrological houses.

"Subsequent results only confirmed and amplified my initial discovery about the physicians. On the whole, it emerged that there was an increasingly solid statistical link between the time of birth of great men and their occupational success. ... Having collected over 20,000 dates of birth of professional celebrities from various European countries and from the United States, I had to draw the unavoidable conclusion that the position of the planets at birth is linked to one's destiny. What a challenge to the rational mind!"[2] (Neo-Astrology, 1991) "

Playing devil's advocate...

Here are two possible plausible defenses of astrology.

1) Its all in the mind.

All knowledge systems, be they magical, mythological, theological, or scientific, were conceived within the human mind. Whatever description of nature you favor, it was a human being who came up with it.

To this extent then different knowledge systems may be seen as equivalent accounts of nature albeit accounts that can be rated according to their perceived efficacy - ancient Greek mythology rating obviously lower than physics.

This dependency of the origin of knowledge systems, might perhaps connect them in some significant way, however different they may be. Human beings are known to share a common psychological traits, individuals being biased towards one or another direction. These common psychological traits and biases are routinely rolled out as the one dimensional archetypal characters of Hollywood blockbusters.

Might it be possible that in formulating a description of nature as a whole or just some particular aspect of nature, inevitably, something of the psychological bias of the human being doing the describing gets projected into that description. In other words, our knowledge of the external natural world inevitably contains a little of our own internal world.

Astrology, then, might stand out as being somewhat unique among knowledge systems, because it, unlike most, in seeking for signs of human traits in the heavens, actually and quite deliberately projected all human psychological traits outwards onto its description of the natural world.

So rather than the motions of the heavenly bodies having a direct physical causal relationship with human traits and fates, and rather than there being a mystical synchronistic relationship between the two, perhaps when astrologers read the heavens they are merely recalling common traits of human psychology that were originally projected outward - a map of the human mind projected on our description of the night sky.

The motions of the heavens mark time and as the original post suggested personality and psychological bias may be dependent on the seasonal variations and time of ones birth, so a correlation could conceivably be made. Who knows, maybe the degree of sunlight one is born into determines ones personality - that would make a lot of sense since sunlight is responsible for pretty much everything else.

The difficulty in finding such correlations scientifically perhaps being due to the fact that these traits are traits everyone has and it is only bias that is unique to individual psychology. Also, bias says nothing about aptitude, ability or competence. Just because ones astrological sign suggest one might be prefer work in a particular career, and just because one actually does prefer that particular vocation doesn't automatically mean that one will excel in it or that there won't be anyone of a different sign in the same line of work who isn't better at it than you and still be of a personality described by his/her own star sign. Scientific studies would likely lose any correlation if they take ability as synonymous with bias.

2) Argument from the need of social power elites for a guide to maintaining dominance.

Back in the days of small kingdom states and dynastic royal linages, would not ruling elites in each state gain some benefit from reading the heavens in order to maintain the dominance of their own familial lines?
Aside from the reconnaissance reports of spies and diplomatic communiques, a ruler would know precious little about how the current states of affairs changed in a neighbouring kingdom. Astrology would either consciously or unconsciously offer a surprisingly useful guide and almost telepathic powers to read the intent of a neighbouring ruler, and here's how.

If I am a ruler and I know that you, as a neighbouring ruler, consult the skies every night in order to gain foresight that may aid your decision making process - and I know damn well that you do, because we are all as paranoid and superstitutious as each other! - then surely I would consider myself a fool, if I were not to do likewise and incorporate what decisions you are likely to draw from your reading of the heavens into my own.

In this way there would be a time for war and a time for peace dictated by the heavens. As rulers, reading the heavenly signs and with executive power, we would have foreknowledge of these times and the power to initiate them. This edge would enable us to maintain dynastic dominance within a kingdom, regardless of the sway of political relations between neighbouring states as they compete for resources and collaborate for trade.

It is easy to see how in this way astrology might have played a significant role in the rule of ancient dynastic kingdoms far off in humanities distant darker history, but, it might be somewhat unsettling to consider that perhaps global power brokers even today still employ the same reliance on the motions of heavenly bodies to guide them.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

My horoscope is wrong.

I thought that my wife and I get on so well because I'm a Gemini and she's a Virgo. Also because we love each other. However, this is not the case. The reason is that I'm a Taurus and she's a Leo. Also because we love each other.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41062376/ns/technology_and_science-science/?GT1=43001"
Is there anyone else here laboring under the delusion that their moon is in the wrong house? A Capricorn trapped in an Aquarius body?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Unintended consequences: That invalidates any tests that falsified the claim.

 

[Evo]

Carl Sagan brought this up in his Cosmos series 20 years ago.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Carl Sagan brought this up in his Cosmos series 20 years ago.

How time flies. It was 30 years ago.

 

[Evo]

How time flies. It was 30 years ago.

Good gawd. I watched the original on PBS, then bought the VHS set when it came out around $150.00

The Japanese samurai crabs are my favorite part.

 

[Jack21222]

Unintended consequences: That invalidates any tests that falsified the claim.

There aren't any tests that support the claim, so it doesn't particularly matter how many tests that falsified the claim were invalidated.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There aren't any tests that support the claim, so it doesn't particularly matter how many tests that falsified the claim were invalidated.

You are talking about science, not perception.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Post 48 - 55 were merged with this thread.

How time flies. It was 30 years ago.

Jeez, your post is a little late. Why did you wait so long?

Just out of curiosity, have modern astrologers allowed for this? Perhaps the tests linked in the astrology thread, which do not appear to be conclusive, also allowed for this.

 

[russ_watters]

It appears that at some time a conscious decision was made to attach astrological dates to the seasons instead of the stars:

Tropical astrology is based on the idea that early astrologers (mid-to-late first millennium BCE) defined the star signs according to the seasons in which the sun rose in them; it wishes to preserve the seasonal associations of those star signs by laying out new horoscopes against a first-millennium sky. For tropical astrologers therefore it is irrelevant that the solsticial points (tropics) have drifted from one constellation to another over the millennia, due to the precession of the equinoxes. The underlying philosophy remains unchanged in spite of precession, because it is based on the Earth's (and therefore our) relationship to the sun, not to the stars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_astrology

The logic seems flimsy to me, but hey - it alwyas did anyway!

 

[nismaratwork]

I think that he is saying that when a child is "just" too young to get into elementary school, (s)he gets an additional year to mature before joining the process. Not an unremarkable result.

In Texas, parents sometimes hold back their kids academically in elementary schools to keep their High School football eligibility open as long as possible. Sick!

I read about that (Texas) issue once, and sort of passed over it... it's real?! I can't say that I'm really shocked, but... ugh... hold them back, then hope they get into a sport that's TONS of fun... and knocks your head around like a tether-ball!

Great... that's just great. When did we all suddenly need to be famous, super-rich, and THE BEST? When did people stop being OK with just being a good person, with your own set of talents and abilities?! I get flash-cards, or keeping a kid you think is going to have a hard time in school back a bit. I DON'T see the point of choosing a SPORT for your infant. Wow.

russ: You're right... I kept asking some... "experts" on the subject... I can't say that and not throw-up a bit in my mouth, sorry. Anyway, you're right for pretty much everyone except specific other Zodiacs (Chinese, some Japanese, etc)... and really... as you say... WHERE IS THE LOGIC?!

Oh no, I'm a different magical star-being now... oooh, stop it no... *snooooooore*

 

[SpeedOfDark]

The idea that the stars and planets affect peoples lives in the classical sense is plain lunacy of course.

You said it yourself, did you not? There is no correlation, it's just not there there isn't even a reason that a connect would be present and so there is no reason to even start a study.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

You said it yourself, did you not? There is no correlation, it's just not there there isn't even a reason that a connect would be present and so there is no reason to even start a study.

We are not addressing the question of causation. We are considering the potential for incidental correlation in that the positions of the stars and planets can serve as a clock - could there be time-dependent patterns for personality traits due to unrecognized but explicable influences, that have been observed over the ages but incorrectly attributed to the stars?

 

[nismaratwork]

We are not addressing the question of causation. We are considering the potential for incidental correlation in that the positions of the stars and planets can serve as a clock - could there be time-dependent patterns for personality traits due to unrecognized but explicable influences, that have been observed over the ages but incorrectly attributed to the stars?

I think this one might be bound in the human experience just a bit too much to separate objectively. After all, these constellations only take their forms and meaning from their appearance from Earth, at this (I admit, long by human standards) time. I'm not sure what's being postulated; is there some human element involved with belief that influences birth? I think the answer is that if there is, it's noise amidst the many other reasons people 'time' pregnancy, such as avoiding holidays, birthdays, or hitting a given month or sign out of belief.

At this point, it might not be possible to conduct a meaningful examination without undue cost, and with no real hypothesis...?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think this one might be bound in the human experience just a bit too much to separate objectively. After all, these constellations only take their forms and meaning from their appearance from Earth, at this (I admit, long by human standards) time. I'm not sure what's being postulated; is there some human element involved with belief that influences birth? I think the answer is that if there is, it's noise amidst the many other reasons people 'time' pregnancy, such as avoiding holidays, birthdays, or hitting a given month or sign out of belief.

At this point, it might not be possible to conduct a meaningful examination without undue cost, and with no real hypothesis...?

Perhaps you can comment on this point. It seems to me that we have learned that no quantitative statements can be made about this claim because there is no accepted personality test that can be used for comparison. It follows, therefore, that no study would be useful.

Correlations between CPI scales and related external criteria tend to fall in the .2 to .5 ranges. This degree of correlation is typical for much of personality research. Extremely high correlations are not likely to be found for personality measures because the scales typically try to assess rather broad behavioral tendencies. [3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Psychological_Inventory#cite_note-Gough-2

Note that that the CPI [California Personality Inventory] was used in the study linked by Gokul, on page 2 [3?] of this thread.

Late edit: qualitative changed to quantitative [sorry about that]

 

[nismaratwork]

Perhaps you can comment on this point. It seems to me that we have learned that no qualitative statements can be made about this claim because there is no accepted personality test that can be used for comparison. It follows, therefore, that no study would be useful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Psychological_Inventory#cite_note-Gough-2

Note that that the CPI [California Personality Inventory] was used in the study linked by Gokul, on page 2 of this thread.

I can, but at the risk of going off on multiple tangents: in my experience the accuracy of all matters psychological increases from nebulous -> specific as you move along the scale of attempting to find a "normal", and rather attempting only to isolate what is abnormal by definition of clinical significance. In the same way that a neurologist is likely to have a set of views that are... uncertain... compared to those of a neurosurgeon, it's really hard to get a read on the content of a single person's... personality.

Again, because it's the best way to do it: look at Gabrielle Giffords: she's going to rehab, where one of the major issues they'll test for is how much of her former "self" (personality) she retains, if any, or all of it. Remember however, that this is arguably the hardest thing to quantify, yet for people who knew her before this event it's going to be easy to tell if it's still Rep. Giffords in there.

We're talking about an involved process involving the baseline as perceived by friends, and family, as well as her contact with a large network of volunteers and public officials. Most people don't offer a clear baseline as the result of any single test, or even series of tests. Sure, you can rapidly rule out or in some things relating to personality DISORDERS using tools such the the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), or even Rorschach Inkblots. Those same tools are not so useful as windows into the "soul" however, and developing any such tool is by its very nature a departure from science.

I'm a real bastard when it comes to psychology and neurology: there's the medicine side, and the science side... and too many people like to see bleed between the two. Well, they're not sciences, they're collections of knowledge and experience, and art... they are not open to the scientific method as of yet. fMRI and MEG begin to give us the broad "Phrenological" hints as to what is going on in our brains, but they're a LONG way from allowing a scientific personality test to exist.

Given that, it's my view that there is no valid test to apply that isn't open to so many known and unknown biases as to be worthless. Given the accuracy, you'd need to do this MANY times, and observe statistical deviations, if there are any notable ones. I suppose what I'm saying is: Psychology is at it's best when it's really ABNORMAL psychology, or the psychopathology of illness... it stinks at inventories of personality as the term is casually used.

If you can't test a hypothesis, it remains a conjecture at best although given the scope of the claim I would say the evidence is painfully insufficient.

edit: NP re: your edit; As you can see I got off on those tangents anyway...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Given that, it's my view that there is no valid test to apply that isn't open to so many known and unknown biases as to be worthless. Given the accuracy, you'd need to do this MANY times, and observe statistical deviations, if there are any notable ones. I suppose what I'm saying is: Psychology is at it's best when it's really ABNORMAL psychology, or the psychopathology of illness... it stinks at inventories of personality as the term is casually used.

If you can't test a hypothesis, it remains a conjecture at best although given the scope of the claim I would say the evidence is painfully insufficient.

edit: NP re: your edit; As you can see I got off on those tangents anyway...

Note that the point is not to assert that the conjecture is true, rather than it can't be falsified at this time. Consequently, it is not possible to "debunk" astrological claims about personality. Consequently, it would be crackpottery to do so.

Again, just for clarification, this is in regards to incidental correlation, but not causation. We all agree there is no reason to believe the planets and stars could influence our personalities.

 

[nismaratwork]

Note that the point is not to assert that the conjecture is true, rather than it can't be falsified at this time. Consequently, it is not possible to "debunk" astrological claims about personality. Consequently, it would be crackpottery to do so.

If the methods used to debunk astrology depend on the fiction of "personality measurements", then yes: it is currently beyond our capacity to falsify and would crackpottery to claim to have done so.

 

[SpeedOfDark]

We are not addressing the question of causation. We are considering the potential for incidental correlation in that the positions of the stars and planets can serve as a clock - could there be time-dependent patterns for personality traits due to unrecognized but explicable influences, that have been observed over the ages but incorrectly attributed to the stars?

If you think about the people who attributed to the sun, stars, and time you'd understand that it's bogus. Scholars have not been making these links and claims they've been refuting them. Mystics, mislead youth, and bored mothers listen to this stuff. It's not real, I know you really want to be a skeptic but there's no skepticism in this case it's total bogus and all who claim intelligence know this. There isn't a chapter in psychology, personality of people depending on birthday.

I know you guys have been ridiculing me about being a "cynic" and not a skeptic, and that's because there is things to be skeptical about and there is things that are already know to be a crock. Also, you can never be TO SKEPTICAL

 

[nismaratwork]

If you think about the people who attributed to the sun, stars, and time you'd understand that it's bogus. Scholars have not been making these links and claims they've been refuting them. Mystics, mislead youth, and bored mothers listen to this stuff. It's not real, I know you really want to be a skeptic but there's no skepticism in this case it's total bogus and all who claim intelligence know this. There isn't a chapter in psychology, personality of people depending on birthday.

I know you guys have been ridiculing me about being a "cynic" and not a skeptic, and that's because there is things to be skeptical about and there is things that are already know to be a crock. Also, you can never be TO SKEPTICAL

You know what's real and what isn't: so... what's real?

By the way, do you understand the difference between trying to explain a concept like: you're a cynic who thinks he's a skeptic... and RIDICULE? You seem to make a lot of these threads you post in about you... and other threads.

What in your post adheres to the scientific method, which is at the core of Skepticism? You're making an outrageous claim: that you have such a lock on reality that you don't need to examine anything beyond what you have already... support it.