BAN #347: Astrology is Taurus feces

[The planetary nebula M 2-9, winds from a dying star. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Legacy Archive / Judy Schmidt]

Subscribers are culminating on the ascendant house of the rising Sun.

Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

[Artwork depicting a red giant blowing off a wind of gas and dust. From Thursday’s article.Credit: JAXA]

Monday 2 August, 2021: A magnetar is outbursting again right on schedule

Tuesday 3 August, 2021: Is Saturn’s moon Dione still cryovolcanically active?

Wednesday 4 August, 2021: What is this cloud of gas bigger than a galaxy doing all by its lonesome?

Thursday 5 August, 2021: First a red giant cooks its planets, then it turns them into mini-stars

Friday 6 August, 2021: Sometimes, galaxies collide

Debunkening

You can’t debunk something unless it’s bunk to start with

I was pleased to get an email recently from Ivan Kelly, a philosophy professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Kelly has published quite a few papers on a variety of topics, but what originally caught my eye from him years ago was a series of papers looking at the Full Moon Effect, where people swear weird things happen during a full Moon. Spoiler: Nope. He and his coauthors looked at various different potential effects (emergency room visits, car crashes, etc.) and found no correlation at all with the Moon phase. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone saying “It must be a full Moon tonight” due to something weird, because not so much.

He has also looked extensively into the claims of astrology, and has written about it multiple times. In fact, based on his work and some research I did I wrote a lengthy debunking of astrology years ago on my Bad Astronomy website (please excuse the ancient design; I haven’t updated it in a very long time). Nothing has changed since, and I still stand by what I wrote.

Kelly is still doing work in this field, though. He just published another paper on astrology, this time from a more philosophical angle, and, as he has done before, shows that there is just no basis for it at all. Nothing physical, metaphysical, supernatural, mythical, or any kind of –al explains it, because it’s a gigantic mishmash of different ideas that are so scrambled there’s no hope of any realistic basis for it working.

My own problem with astrology is pretty simple: It’s nonsense. Sure, there’s no possible physical way any of its claims can be correct, but it also doesn’t make testable predictions (or when it does it’s easy to show it fails). It’s extremely similar to things like people who claim to talk to the dead: It throws out a ton of predictions, the majority of which don’t come true, but ones that do by coincidence are remembered by the believer. It’s a form of postdiction, a logical bias where we remember the hits and forget the misses.

Moreover, when astrology does make a hit it tends to be from a vague prediction. “Money will be important today” — duh — or “something will happen involving water”. Duh again. Sometimes the predictions are more specific, but again the vast majority of times they’re wrong, but when they’re right, it makes a mark.

A whole lot of pseudoscience relies on that very common and powerful aspect of the human mind, including astrology.

Despite that we are inundated with astrology all the time, everywhere. It’s maddening. And the reason it irritates me so is that it weakens our ability to tell real from unreal. True from false. Actual from fake. If you don’t question the basis or the methods of astrology, then what else are you willing to slip by? A politician’s claim? Something from a climate science denier, a religious leader, a — shudder — Facebook post?

And if you think I am exaggerating or being otherwise unfair, I invite you to examine everything that’s been in the news for the past 4+ years. The GOP is currently trying to memory hole the January 6th insurrection, people in Congress believe Jewish space lasers start forest fires, and compare having to wear a mask to the Holocaust.

Think I’m kidding? Yeah, no:

Now, I’m not saying believing in astrology leads to thinking COVID is a liberal hoax, but I am saying there’s a throughline there. I’ve been very clear about this for decades: Reality is a narrow path, and if you step off it all possibilities are equally likely.

We live in the consequences of a world where a lot of people have not just stepped but leaped off that path, and look where we are now.

I know a lot of people play with astrology and have fun with it, and I also understand that the harm in that is minimal. But it’s not zero. Nonsense is cumulative, a mental entropy that is extremely difficult to reverse unless a lot of energy is expended.

And the dangers of this are legion. Voltaire said it best, and it’s no exaggeration: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” They never start big. They start small, with something that seems harmless, but over time the effect can grow, and before you know it the effects are far, far from harmless.

And that’s a prediction you can bet on.

Et alia

You can email me at [email protected] (though replies can take a while), and all my social media outlets are gathered together at about.me. Also, if you don’t already, please subscribe to this newsletter! And feel free to tell a friend or nine, too. Thanks!