Astrology, why it has been around so long and how to get rid of it once and for all.

in #science8 years ago

Astrology or the pseudoscience of "the plants and stars can change my personality trust me.". It has been around a long time, way too long. Today you will learn why it has been around so long and how we can get rid of it. Hopefully you already know why it is absolutely completely wrong and pseudoscience.


I'm sorry if you now have to scrub your eyes out with bleach after seeing that picture.



Why it is absolutely wrong.

The planets can only effect us in two ways. Gravity and electromagnetically, through light. The light is far too dim to even change a single base pair of DNA, and nowhere near strong enough to have any affect on neurons. A single sheet of paper is enough to block most of visible light and anything stronger than that is almost completely blocked by our ozone layer.
Don't even get me started on that the changes would be completely random.
What about gravity?

What about gravity, it might be able to change the tide by half a centimeter let alone be fine tuned enough to change your brain or body.

The only changes are the ones made from believing in it, not because it works or even exists.


Why has it been around so long?


Well this one has been around a while. Nobody actually cares about the history of it. I will just say older than most pseudoscience and a few thousand at least.

It has been around simply for three major reasons.

  • People are stupid and believe in anything that's told to them.
  • Due to human behavior patterns when you were born does change a bit Link here.
  • The Barnum effect
The first is simple to explain. Look at people who think the American education system works.

Human patters due to the winter cold etc. tend to stay more inside and are exposed to allergens in nature more often in the summer than the winter. What happens is people born in fall are more likely to have allergies than those born in spring, because of how much you are exposed to them early childhood. This is behavior patters and fully explained by science. Link here.

The last I will simply copy a definition from Wikipedia.
"The Barnum effect, also called the Forer effect, is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them but are, in fact, vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, aura reading and some types of personality tests.

A related and more general phenomenon is that of subjective validation.[1] Subjective validation occurs when two unrelated or even random events are perceived to be related because a belief, expectation, or hypothesis demands a relationship. For example, while reading it, people actively seek a correspondence between their perception of their personality and the contents of a horoscope."



In other words people think it's true to fill their empty life with something. They want to believe in magic like a third grader reading harry potter. So many people believe in it that social validation takes effect and they think because other believe in it, it is true.

How can we get rid of it?

Well the problem is that too many believe in it and too many are exposed to it. The first step is limit exposure to the general population, especially children. I see it in school newspapers and regular ones all the time. Do not take them. Do not look at them, boycott them. Make sure they know why as well. A "fun pastime" that encourages believing in pseudoscience and not looking for the truth behind things hurts the future of humanity.
We must seek out all in our family and tell them why it is fake if they believe in it.

We must take away the social validation. If they see people boycotting and calling people out for believing in it, that may be enough to break its hold in the general population.




tissue box link nobody wants the astrology, they are from the same website anyway

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Astrology is fake. Thanks for sharing this cool article with us @science-beatdown

Astrology is not a science in the strict Karl Popper sense. And of course there are many people with a wrong attitude towards it. But statistical research has been done over the years that clearly shows the "non randomness" of the horoscopes, I don´t know how Gauquelin is spelt. It sounds like astrology is the greatest danger of humankind, having killed more people than the scientist-invented automobile.

The planets can only effect us in two ways. Gravity and electromagnetically, through light. The light is far too dim to even change a single base pair of DNA, and nowhere near strong enough to have any affect on neurons.

Perhaps there's more than this though....

The planets do emit EM, which we can imagine as ripples in a pond... Depending on their relative positions (and frequencies) then the EM radiation on Earth, will vary as the waves interfere.
The whole of space around the solar system is filled with interference-patterns, like standing-waves, from the planet's emissions, and as things move through space, and in orbit, those will change.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that these EM standing-wave interference patterns could have an effect on humans.

We'll never get rid of superstition if we just replace one with another... Any blind belief is a superstition.

Scientific enquiry can determine the facts though, and then no opinions would be needed.
At the moment, science hasn't really done that, as far as I know. It just pretends the ideas are 'preposterous', and doesn't investigate... It seems most unscientific.

the earths magnetic field m8

magnetic fields don't block EM.

they redirect it

ok, and your point is?

that astrology is fucking autistic pseudoscience

I see, thanks for clarifying that.

Of all the dangerous and/or ignorant ideologies, superstitions, misconceptions people have, astrology is probably the most benign...

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