Weekend Post - Bad ideas stick around. Like astrology.

I find it amazing how certain ideas stick around, way beyond the end of their natural lifetimes. There are still people who believe in witches, evil spirits and mysterious forces controlling our destiny. There are still people who believe, fundamentally, in fairy tales. However, perhaps the longest running nonsensical and straightforwardly WRONG belief is in astrology.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology

Astrology is based on the belief that the planets have some sort of effect upon our daily lives. It suggests that the date and time of your birth and the position of the planets at that moment have an everlasting influence on your life and the events it includes.

Most astrologers also suggest that we can all be grouped according to the month of our birth into so-called star signs. These signs are named after a range of astronomical constellations like Cancer, Libra, Taurus and Sagittarius. Apparently people in each of these groups share similar personal characteristics and, if you believe the astrological predictions published in newspapers over the world, identical life experiences each week.

Where to begin on this one?

To begin with let's think carefully about each of the issues. Firstly that the planets have a direct influence on our lives. How do they do this? The only force we know of that might do this is gravity. Gravity can act at a huge distance, it holds the planets in orbit around the sun and the sun in it's place in the galaxy. There’s no point in going into the physics of this other than to point out that there’s a greater gravitational attraction between you and your husband or wife than you have with Jupiter. The moon has a much greater gravitational influence on our planet than all the planets combined so why do astrologers ignore it's influence?

So, given that the gravitational effect of the planets on us is insignificant isn't it also stretching our credibility a bit too far to believe that the effect they have on us is at the moment of our birth and not at any time later? Oh and why don’t astrologers consider the moment we were conceived rather than the moment of our birth? Surely that would be more logical? However logic is not something that astrologers seem to rate very highly.

So perhaps there is some other force that has this effect. Some force that we don't know about yet? If astrology is actually a good predictor of life's events maybe that would be good enough proof? If astrologers could show us that their predictions were accurate that would be a good thing wouldn't it?

Unfortunately it's simply not the case. Every truly scientific analysis of astrological predictions has shown that astrological predictions are nonsense. They predict nothing. If they did why didn't astrologers tell us about 9-11, the banking crisis or who was going to win Big Brother? And why aren’t they all multi-millionaires having predicted lottery results?

Experiments that looked at couples who got married and analysed their star signs showed that there was absolutely no relationship between the so called compatibility of their signs and whether their marriages lasted or not. The same thing happened when researchers examined people in various professions and found that their astrological signs were in no way related to their professional success.

However my favourite experiment has been undertaken several times, notably by the French researcher and astrologer Michel Gauquelin. He gave a large group of people a horoscope and asked them to rate how accurately it described their personality. Ninety-four percent of the people said it accurately described them. The bad news though is that they had all been given the very same horoscope, that of Marcel Petiot, one of France’s most vicious psychopathic serial killers.

This is an example of the so-called "Forer effect", the tendency people have to consider general statements about them as correct, particularly when they're flattering. It's our nature to believe this sort of garbage when we hear it. But that doesn't mean we have to give in to idiotic temptation.

So why do so many people read their horoscopes and feel that they actually mean something? Why do they genuinely seem to believe they predict what will happen and give guidance on what they should do?

I think it's quite simple. We all want certainty. We want to be able to understand our lives and astrologers give us this. They give us simple, amazingly broad generalisations that can apply to pretty much anyone. A horoscope in a newspaper here recently stated that any Capricorn should"

"Use your time as productively as possible. Individual achievements are possible within a working team structure. A game of one-upmanship might ultimately benefit everyone."

What utter rubbish. What on earth does this mean? What sort of a prediction is that? Notice how deliberately vague that all is? Couldn't it apply to anyone at any time?

People believe astrology because they seek simple explanations for a complex life. Fortunately life is much more complex and interesting than this and astrology is utter nonsense.

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2 

Some months ago I visited a web site that offered me a free astrological reading. I got an email from the site from someone called Sara Freder. She sent me a long email but at the end it wanted me to spend money to get the full report which I ignored. Since then I received many emails asking for money and warning me about both good and bad events in my life that only she can tell me about if I give her money.

Do you think I should send her the money?

Absolutely NOT. Please don’t even think of sending this crook a thing. Two reasons why.

First, you do realise, don’t you, that astrology is hogwash? This is one of those ideas that needs to be consigned to history’s dustbin. There is simply no sense to astrology. Every time real scientific research has been done into the relationship between your birth date or your star-sign and your life events or personality it has shown there is simply nothing to it. It’s all rubbish.

Then there’s the web site you visited. Let’s get straight to the point. Firstly, this “woman” called Sara Freder is really a man called “Jean Christopher Maires” who lives in France. Are you suspicious yet? (More links here 1, 2, 3)

In the interests of research I did a little experiment. I went to the web site and completed the form asking for basic personal details twice, once as a man, once as a woman but both times giving the same date of birth. I gave two different email addresses and waited to see how similar the “readings” would be. When they arrived it was clear how this worked. The two readings were, on first glance, different but as I read them it became clear that they had been constructed from basically the same text, it was just the order that was different. Both emails talked in the vaguest possible terms about my future but the message was very simple. I get more when I pay for it.

That’s all there is to this scam. The Frenchman just wants your money. Once you’ve paid you can be assured that there would be more and more emails sent your way, encouraging you to spend more money for more readings.

I’ll make an astrological prediction for free. If you send this crook money for a reading, he will get richer and you’ll get poorer. Guaranteed.

It’s in the stars?

I've been naughty again. In fact I told a lie. I deliberately told someone something that I knew to be untrue.

I've been lying to astrologers.

Last week I was surfing the web when I saw a link that offered a free personal horoscope. Now of course I know that astrology is nonsense. It’s based on rubbish and produces nothing but rubbish.

However, just as an experiment, and as it was free, I thought I would see what happened. Off I went to the web site of an astrologer called Jenna who claims to be a Professional Astrologer, Psychic-Born, a Tarot Card Reader and a Numerologist.

Her web site asks for just your first name, email address, date of birth, sex, whether you’re happily married and if you’re employed. That’s all she needs.

A couple of hours later I got an email from “Jenna” saying she was working hard on my horoscope and that I should expect it within a couple of days. Two days later it arrived.

So how did I lie? Where was my wicked deception? My guilty secret is that I did this twice. The first time I gave Jenna’s web site my correct personal details and the second time I lied about everything. I changed sex, cut 10 years off my age and changed my birthday completely as well as my marital and employment status.

And how did the results compare? Both were about 2,500 words long and were virtually identical. The clever thing about this web site is that the “readings” I was given weren’t exactly the same. The sentence order was different but the message was exactly the same. Both said that I was going to live through “an event of great astrological importance”, that I was soon to be “in a rare astrological Transit which will not occur again in your skies before a very long time” and that if I “do not act in a very decisive manner concerning this period then it is extremely likely that all of these important opportunities will simply pass you by”.

[You can see one "reading" here and the other here.]

Of course this is the usual self-fulfilling claptrap you get from astrologers. Vague predictions about opportunities, challenges and life-changing events. Isn’t it curious how not a single astrologer specifically predicted 9/11, any earthquake or my cat dying last week?

What do I, sorry both of me, need to do to take this “decisive action”? That’s simple. All I have to do is give Jenna US$60 and she’ll give me a complete analysis. This, of course, is what the whole thing is about. You get a free teaser and then have to cough up real money if you have taken the bait.

Let’s be frank about this nonsense. First of all Jenna isn’t human, she’s a computer. The wonderful thing about the internet is that once they’ve been set up computers can perform many mindless things without any human intervention. Use sites like Amazon and eBay and you’ll have virtually no contact with any real people. Jenna’s site is the same. You give it some details and it assembles some standard sentences in semi-random order and emails them to you. It then sends the many later emails to encourage you to part with your cash.

The only difference between human astrologers and computerised ones is the efficiency with which they try and deceive you. Astrology is silly at best, abusive at worst.