Some people claim that Astrology can help a user accurately predict certain things. Other people do not believe it can predict anything. Still other people are open to the possibilities of what Astrology can do. Here is an opportunity for people who believe in Astrology to show us how it can work, scientifically. And everybody can help ensure we stick to science.
There are other threads discussing aspects of Astrology other than science. So, to post validly here, please stick to science aspects only. Possibilities are suggestions for experiments that we could perform, and the conducting of and reporting on actual experiments. I see the biggest need being our coming to agreement on what would constitute a valid experiment.
So, first, we need to devise a scientific test (or more than one if possible) that we can use for experiments. I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask people here their personal data. So, what else might work for us? Maybe using data on celebrities or something like that? Besides personal relationships, what else is Astrology supposed to work on? Well, I really don’t know, but I know of a potential expert in our midst.
Source: Astrology vs. Christianity?
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| (As a note, if scientists were not so arrogant and tested astrology based on the sort of predictions that it actually makes, it would be very easy to find powerful statistical correlations. The predictive power of astrology is in “aspects” (angles between planets). Only Carl Jung tested aspects. In the century since, scientists have tested everything but aspects, but not one additional test of aspects. And surprise, surprise, only Carl Jung found a statistically significant correlation. Despite this, no scientist has ever had the guts to try his experiment again. They’ll test anything but what Jung tested and usually the tests are of a severely adulterated sham of astrology. It is pathetic really, a form of atheism. It simply wouldn’t do if they were to find objective proof of the hand of God.) |
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| I once made the assertion to a co-worker at Symantec that I had 100% accuracy in predicting the final outcome of a relationship between any two people I hadn’t met based on their birth data. |
That’s fascinating! What could we devise so that you could show off your skills to us? 
Who else has something science-related to offer? Unfortunately, you can't really test most astrological predictions, because they're so vague and open to interpretation. So before you can really do any practical testing, a standard has to be developed for interpreting astrological signs.
I would say that before any experimentation is done, research is first required to determine what astrological phenomena are supposed to have what effect on what variables. To put it another way, it should be possible for a non-astrologer to look at astrometric data and come up with a set of predictions. Further, two different people looking at the same astrometric data should make the same predictions, astrologer or no. Until we get that kind of standard, we can't test astrology in general because there is no "genera" astrology - although you could still test individual astrologers. (Of course, then the problem is that even if you prove a bunch of astrologers wrong, believers can still argue that the astrologers were flawed, not astrology.)
The next thing that is necessary is to pin down exactly what constitutes a "hit" or a "miss" for a prediction. If the prediction says "you will meet someone very important to you from your past", what exactly will constitute a successful score for that prediction? When I go to get my morning coffee, if I see the same coffee lady I see every morning, will that count? She is after all, someone from my past (since I haven't seen her since yesterday), and she is/was very important to me (since I require coffee to get through a day).
Until those points are pinned down, I don't see astrology as being practically testable.
| Indi wrote: |
Unfortunately, you can't really test most astrological predictions, because they're so vague and open to interpretation. So before you can really do any practical testing, a standard has to be developed for interpreting astrological signs.
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That is guaranteed to fail and is not a test of astrological predictive power. The predictive power in astrology is in the ‘aspects’ – the angles between the planets. Sun trine moon, venus square mars, etc.. That is what makes specific predictions in astrology.1. If you could get birth data on divorced couples astrology would predict a statistically significant lack of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects between the couples.
2. If you could get data on long term marriages astrology would predict a statistically significant increase of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects vs. the general population.
3. If you could get birth and death data for people who died of illnesses, astrology predicts that there would be a statistically significant increase of stressful mars/neptune aspects in transit at the time of death. A statistically significant increase of stressful mars/uranus and mars/pluto transits would be predicted for violent and accidental deaths vs. the normal percentage of occurrences of those transits.
4. If you had a series of famous sex symbols for which you had corroborating evidence of their birth dates, since women in particular tend to lie about it, then you could have people subjectively evaluate their attractiveness. Astrology predicts that there would be an elevation of subjective scoring for sex symbols who had sun/moon and venus/mars aspects with the subject doing the evaluation, verses the average scoring given to that sex symbol.
| Indi wrote: |
| I would say that before any experimentation is done, research is first required to determine what astrological phenomena are supposed to have what effect on what variables. To put it another way, it should be possible for a non-astrologer to look at astrometric data and come up with a set of predictions. Further, two different people looking at the same astrometric data should make the same predictions, astrologer or no. |
That is an excellent observation, and precisely why no scientific test that failed to find a correlation was a valid test. All of those tests failed to do any of the above. | mike1reynolds wrote: |
1. If you could get birth data on divorced couples astrology would predict a statistically significant lack of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects between the couples.
2. If you could get data on long term marriages astrology would predict a statistically significant increase of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects vs. the general population.
3. If you could get birth and death data for people who died of illnesses, astrology predicts that there would be a statistically significant increase of stressful mars/neptune aspects in transit at the time of death. A statistically significant increase of stressful mars/uranus and mars/pluto transits would be predicted for violent and accidental deaths vs. the normal percentage of occurrences of those transits.
4. If you had a series of famous sex symbols for which you had corroborating evidence of their birth dates, since women in particular tend to lie about it, then you could have people subjectively evaluate their attractiveness. Astrology predicts that there would be an elevation of subjective scoring for sex symbols who had sun/moon and venus/mars aspects with the subject doing the evaluation, verses the average scoring given to that sex symbol. |
Most of these tests we could run ourselves.
1&2. Given the number of Hollywood divorces, it shouldn't be hard to get us a good list. Birthdates should be easy to come by, too. Just to mix it up, we could throw in corporate personalities and scientists, too.
3. This is also possible, and not particularly difficult to do either. We don't even need to use celebrities for all of this - a lot of crime data will include all of that information.
4. I'm not touching this one. I mean who defines who's a sex symbol? David Spade could be a sex symbol for all I know. And one of my girl friends has a poster of George Costanza from Seinfeld doing a sexy pose in his underwear on her wall.
The first three for sure we can test, but let's set some boundaries.
1. This shouldn't be too hard to agree on standards for. Any divorce would do? Are there any limits on the number of marriages either partner has been involved in, or the duration of the marriage in question?
2. What constitutes a long-term marriage? How long? Does it have to be happy?
3. Illnesses unrelated to old age? Or death by cancer or liver failure at like 80 is acceptible?
And finally, what is the objective way to determine what dates correspond to what aspects? Is there a chart or table that can be consulted?I don't believe in the prediction-thing. (How can the same thing be predicted to 1/12th of the population of Earth? It is around 500000000 people!) But I do believe that characteristics of people are determined at birthdate. Of course the experinces will affect those, but the basics are determined.
And I must admit that the solar system is a great tool!
I mean if I was a god, I would create and use one. It is perfect for determining those characteristics!
People are different. That is the fun part of the whole life! But it's very hard to keep in mind the characteristics of several hundred people - not to mention milliards of them! So let's use our handy tool!
The planets rotate at different speeds, and these are not multipliers or dividers of each other. So the same constellation will happen very rarely (if ever). So this is a great base for forming the characteristics! There will be some similarities, but there will not be two exactly same person! And we don't have to memorize anything!
What do you think?
PS: I'm Scorpion.
Its more of perception because its based off of your biology and what type of person you are. Back when astrolgy was made im sure it was more accurate because there were only a few dominant behavior patterns.
Now it is more general and like a horoscope.
| Indi wrote: |
Most of these tests we could run ourselves.
1&2. Given the number of Hollywood divorces, it shouldn't be hard to get us a good list. Birthdates should be easy to come by, too. Just to mix it up, we could throw in corporate personalities and scientists, too.
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People already prone to divorce would be bad subjects. Also, I didn’t pose the divorce test criteria correctly. Certain Saturn aspects and stressful attraction aspects should be correlated, along with a lack of correlation for positive aspects of attraction. Especially in the case of Hollywood divorces with many marriages, there could well be a strong attraction, coupled with the afore mentioned negative aspects.
I should also stress that since the moon moves 15 degrees a day, and more than 4 or 5 degrees is out of aspect, so for the female exact time and place are required to determine the moon location.
| Indi wrote: |
4. I'm not touching this one. I mean who defines who's a sex symbol? David Spade could be a sex symbol for all I know. And one of my girl friends has a poster of George Costanza from Seinfeld doing a sexy pose in his underwear on her wall.
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I just used the term sex symbol to emphasize the nature and objective of the test. Anyone (of the opposite gender) will do, as long as there are enough subjects to make at least one hit likely with the evaluator. Also, this assumes that the evaluator is heterosexual. Astrological factors for homosexual attraction are different.
| Indi wrote: |
The first three for sure we can test, but let's set some boundaries.
1. This shouldn't be too hard to agree on standards for. Any divorce would do? Are there any limits on the number of marriages either partner has been involved in, or the duration of the marriage in question?
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Ah, you anticipated me. Too many divorces is bad.
| Indi wrote: |
2. What constitutes a long-term marriage? How long? Does it have to be happy?
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It’s kind of arbitrary, but anything over 15 years would be a good limit.
| Indi wrote: |
3. Illnesses unrelated to old age? Or death by cancer or liver failure at like 80 is acceptible?
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Actually, I think the correlation would be stronger with older people, since they would be more susceptible to small factors.
| Indi wrote: |
And finally, what is the objective way to determine what dates correspond to what aspects? Is there a chart or table that can be consulted?
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You use an astrological ephemeras to get planetary locations for each individual, and then subtract the difference in angle. If the angle is within 5 degrees of an aspect, it is still in aspect. Here are the angles and their titles:
0 Conjunct
180 Opposite
120 Trine
90 Square
60 Sextile.. more importantly... how is this stuff gonna get me laid??
Please explain to me your definition of “aspects” as used in the following:
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| significant lack of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects between the couples. |
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| significant increase of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects vs. the general population. |
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| increase of stressful mars/neptune aspects |
I’m assuming that “aspects” is implicitly within the following:
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| significant increase of stressful mars/uranus and mars/pluto transits |
Am I correct?
~~~~~~~~~~
I’m curious as to why you do not capitalize “venus”, “mars”, and the other planets. Is it that you are not actually referring to the planets, but possibly some phenomena whose names were inspired by the planets? Or is this just a convention you use that doesn’t mean anything in particular?
~~~~~~~~~~
With the way you use this term.....
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| statistically significant |
.....am I to understand that to perform a valid experiment, we would first need the data you mention for a group only -- and that, the larger the group’s data you have, the better that you and Astrology can predict?
If this is so, what size group do you need? And how accurate would you expect to be, given that size?
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If I’m understanding your view of Astrology, we are to treat it like we would treat any social science, where we need an aggregate of data, etc. Do you see it as a social science? I can't comment on astrologers predicting the future, but I have observed character traits amongst many members of my family and friends that coincide with the ones the astrology charts say apply to their birth signs.
I have two daughters who have been brought up in the same manner and they are so different in their ways it is unbelievable. They are both great kids, but I never cease to be amazed at their differences, which I must say have been obvious since birth.
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| I should also stress that since the moon moves 15 degrees a day, and more than 4 or 5 degrees is out of aspect, so for the female exact time and place are required to determine the moon location. |
Oh, that kinda blows the practicality of any casual experiment out of the water. >_< Getting that kind of data is not impossible, and there are websites that do attempt to list celebrity birth times and places, but it severely limits the pool of potential names we could use. Number 3 may be the only practical test we can run here.
| mike1reynolds wrote: |
| Actually, I think the correlation would be stronger with older people, since they would be more susceptible to small factors. |
You mean that we can pretty much just list any dead people, separate them into death by natural causes vs. violent death, and then check the stars at that date and the relationship will show? Or to put it another way, if Mars and Neptune are only in aspect say 2% of the time, we would find that they would be in aspect for more than 2% of a list of dates of deaths by natural causes?
If so, then all we'd have to do is set a period - say 1-Jan-1950 to 31-Dec-2000 - and calculate the percentage of time that Mars and Neptune are in aspect in that period. Then we would take a list of dates of deaths by natural causes in that period and count the ones that are during Mars/Neptune aspects. If the theory is correct, the percentage of dates that occur during Mars/Neptune aspects should be statistically significantly greater than the percentage of time actually spent in aspect.
The same procedure would apply for testing for Mars/Uranus and Mars/Pluto aspects vs. violent and accidental deaths.
Does that sound like an acceptible and unbiased testing procedure?
Incidently, as an unbiased means of selecting the actual people to use for the test, I was thinking that we could use a site like this one, which has profiles for a huge number of people encoded numerically - for example, Sam Giancana is http://www.nndb.com/people/979/000113640/ - so that we can use a random number generator to generate 12 digit numbers then pick our people that way. | Indi wrote: |
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | I should also stress that since the moon moves 15 degrees a day, and more than 4 or 5 degrees is out of aspect, so for the female exact time and place are required to determine the moon location. |
Oh, that kinda blows the practicality of any casual experiment out of the water. >_< Getting that kind of data is not impossible, and there are websites that do attempt to list celebrity birth times and places, but it severely limits the pool of potential names we could use. Number 3 may be the only practical test we can run here.
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There should still be Venus/Mars correlations, but they are more physical and less emotional, i.e. less stable than Sun/Moon.
| Indi wrote: |
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | Actually, I think the correlation would be stronger with older people, since they would be more susceptible to small factors. |
You mean that we can pretty much just list any dead people, separate them into death by natural causes vs. violent death, and then check the stars at that date and the relationship will show? Or to put it another way, if Mars and Neptune are only in aspect say 2% of the time, we would find that they would be in aspect for more than 2% of a list of dates of deaths by natural causes?
If so, then all we'd have to do is set a period - say 1-Jan-1950 to 31-Dec-2000 - and calculate the percentage of time that Mars and Neptune are in aspect in that period. Then we would take a list of dates of deaths by natural causes in that period and count the ones that are during Mars/Neptune aspects. If the theory is correct, the percentage of dates that occur during Mars/Neptune aspects should be statistically significantly greater than the percentage of time actually spent in aspect.
The same procedure would apply for testing for Mars/Uranus and Mars/Pluto aspects vs. violent and accidental deaths.
Does that sound like an acceptible and unbiased testing procedure?
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Yes, that would be a valid experiment. Well done! | The Philosopher Princess wrote: |
Please explain to me your definition of “aspects” as used in the following:
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | significant lack of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects between the couples. |
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | significant increase of sun/moon and venus/mars aspects vs. the general population. |
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | increase of stressful mars/neptune aspects |
|
I already did in some detail.
| The Philosopher Princess wrote: |
I’m assuming that “aspects” is implicitly within the following:
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | significant increase of stressful mars/uranus and mars/pluto transits |
Am I correct?
|
Yes.
| The Philosopher Princess wrote: |
~~~~~~~~~~
I’m curious as to why you do not capitalize “venus”, “mars”, and the other planets. Is it that you are not actually referring to the planets, but possibly some phenomena whose names were inspired by the planets? Or is this just a convention you use that doesn’t mean anything in particular?
|
It is just a reflection of lazyiness.
| The Philosopher Princess wrote: |
With the way you use this term.....
| mike1reynolds wrote: | | statistically significant |
.....am I to understand that to perform a valid experiment, we would first need the data you mention for a group only -- and that, the larger the group’s data you have, the better that you and Astrology can predict?
|
No. It is purely a matter of statistical correlation. Small samples are less compelling.
| The Philosopher Princess wrote: |
If this is so, what size group do you need? And how accurate would you expect to be, given that size?
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That is a matter of statistics and I am not a statistician. All I know is that the larger the sample the more compelling the result is.
| The Philosopher Princess wrote: |
| If I’m understanding your view of Astrology, we are to treat it like we would treat any social science, where we need an aggregate of data, etc. Do you see it as a social science? |
Since the predictions made by astrology are purely psychological, it makes perfect sense to treat a test of it in the same manner as a social science experiment.Astrology is nonsense from every point of view. You cannot predict such a "simple" thing like weather, because it's nonlinear system and if you don´t know accurately the actual situation (which is impossible) you get very far in prediction from the right way after just few cycles of prediction algorithm. So, the more complicated system - human - is even more "nonlinear" and so the result will be far much worst. And the positon of objects in universe is irrlevant to our future, because we need to know the position of all particles and in fact not only the position but the velocity too. Astrology is the biggest nonsense, which is still belived.
