Of all the woo beliefs, astrology seems the most persistent, the most resistant to evidence, and the most frustrating to debate with believers. I am reminded of Randi’s unsinkable rubber ducks - no amount of contrary evidence will ever un-convince the true believer in astrology. Why does this irrational nonsense continue to flourish despite the complete absurdity of its premises and lack of evidence for its efficacy? This persistent belief in the teeth of evidence would in itself make an excellent psychological study.
I can only explain it in terms of the power of confirmation bias and the forer effect.
Confirmation bias occurs when we selectively notice or focus upon evidence which tends to support the things we already believe or want to be true while ignoring that evidence which would serve to disconfirm those beliefs or ideas. Confirmation bias plays a stronger role when it comes to those beliefs which are based upon prejudice, faith, or tradition rather than on empirical evidence.
Confirmation bias is a godsend to astrology. The many different predictions of astrology, with its numerous aspects to consider, and the different possibly interpretations of the data mean it is child’s play to cherry pick predictions that match the actual characteristics of the person, and ignore those that don’t. No matter who the person is, there will be something in the horoscope that fits, and what doesn’t fit will be forgotten. Confirmation bias means the believers don’t even realize they have done this.
The Forer Effect refers to the tendency of people to rate sets of statements as highly accurate for them personally even though the statements could apply to many people.
Psychologist Bertram R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone.
These two biases (plus some others), convince people that astrology works. Couple this with a strange apparent need for it to be true, and you have your rubber ducks – they just keep bobbing back no matter what you say.
18 months ago I posted my Astrology Challenge. The premise was that we know how we know what we know. That is, if we look into any piece of scientific knowledge, we can always find out how the original people derived it. I asserted that astrology was not derived in the way that (for example) the speed of light was derived, it was just made-up fairy-tale fashion. And, as I wrote back then, if it was made up, it is highly unlikely to be true. At the very least, astrology’s doubtful provenance means we would need extraordinary evidence that it works, before we should accept it does. But we are only offered weak evidence. And when tested, astrology fails again and again. I challenged proponents of astrology to prove me wrong. The post is now closed, but recently I have received emails on this subject from someone calling himself Cassini. The following is his latest email, with my attempts to reason with him. I publish this as a response to Cassini, but also as a general response to astrology believers, in an attempt to get them to think honestly and critically about astrology. (I can only try.) All punctuation, spelling, capitalization and grammar are as in the original. Here goes:
But there are no hard and fast rules -you appear to be regarding astrology a a 'cookbook' its not like that - I will spell it out for you as you have not grasped the concept at all .
ASTROLOGY IS AN EVOLVING PROCESS ,THERE WAS NO ONE MOMENT WHEN SOMEONE CRIED' EUREKA THIS ASPECT MEANS THIS.OR THAT '.
OVER MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS THE ASTROLOGERS OBSERVED AND NOTED THEIR OWN AND OTHERS PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AS TO EVENTS HAPPENING AROUND THEM .THEY OBSERVED THAT WHEN THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE THE PLANETS/STARS IN THE HEAVENS WERE IN CERTAIN POSITIONS. OVER TIME A CORRELATION BETWEEN THESE PLANET AND STAR 'PATTERNS AND EVENTS ON EARTH THAT WERE THE SAME OR SIMILAR TO ONES THAT HAD GONE BEFORE UNDER THE SAME PLANATARY PATTERNS WERE NOTED - THIS IS HOW ASTROLOGY EVOLVED AND IS STILL EVOLVING..
But where was this process “noted”? It’s a nice myth, but you don’t have a shred of evidence that astrology evolved this way. None. The above is just your assumption – you cannot show me any data to support this claim of how the rules of astrology came about. Consequently we cannot examine the process, the data you say were used, to determine if the correct conclusions were reached. In reality, the process you say occurred is absurd. It’s absolutely absurd to suppose, without one shred of evidence, that all the detailed rules of astrology were derived from unbiased observation of hundreds of thousands of events correlated to astrological positions.
You have to keep an open mind in all things
So do you. Is your mind open enough to admit the possibility that astrology doesn’t work, that you have been fooled? If not, you are the closed minded one.
Your argument is a fallacious appeal to be open minded. An open mind is open to all ideas, but it must be open to the possibility that the idea could be true or false. It is not closed-minded to reject claims that make no sense, but if you can’t accept the possibility that astrology might be false, then you are the closed minded one. So please, examine with an open mind, these tests that astrology failed. Tell me honestly how astrology could be real if the expert astrologers recommended by the National Council for Geocosmic Research couldn’t do better than chance in the test they designed themselves?
-realise that astrology is not an exact science in the way you obviously think it is .
I don’t think astrology is an exact science, or even any kind of science. What I have said is that astrology fails when tested scientifically – ie using a double-blind protocol to control for confirmation bias and the forer effect. You appear to be agreeing with me here by saying that astrology cannot be shown to be real using science. This is just an appeal to other ways of knowing – you are claiming there are valid ways of knowing things other than the scientific method. Science has proved to be the most reliable method we know for evaluating claims and figuring out how the universe works – arguably the only reliable method. If you claim there is a better method, it is up to you to explain your better method and justify how it is better – something you haven’t done.
It is not black and white but perceived by the individual who is experiencing a particular transit to his natal chart from his own point of view ,his own life experience .ASTROLOGY doesn't state this will DEFINITELY happen when a certain transit is affecting your chart (in the way that you can reproduce a scientific experiment the same results occurring again and again) What it does do is show you the timings when you MAY experience some of the conflicts , good things , unexpected events that life may throw at you
How convenient to be able to say the predicted things may or may not occur. The way you have described it makes astrology unfalsifiable – according to you it works no matter whether it passes or fails a test. Answer me this please – are the predicted events more likely to happen than pure chance? If you answer yes, then how do you explain the fact that when tested, astrology doesn’t perform better than pure chance? If you answer no – astrology is no better than chance – then if you still insist that astrology “works”, precisely what is your definition of “works”?
How they are experienced by you as an individual is unknown until they occur
Precisely – the predictions of astrology only become apparent after the thing astrology is supposed to predict, has occurred. And a prediction that is only known after the predicted thing has occurred, is a pretty useless prediction. In fact, it is not a prediction. You are fitting what happened after the fact, to some aspect of the horoscope. That’s like shooting a load of arrows at the wall and then drawing the target where most of the arrows hit.
but they will correlate with the meaning attributed to the planatary aspect taking place.
Except the evidence is that it won’t correlate, unless you know in advance what the person’s horoscope is, and therefore you know what to look for. Tell me, why is it that when astrologers try to do this blind, they perform no better than chance?
This meaning as I stated above is the result of millennia of thought and observation by astrologers –the subject is too big to compartmentalize and decimate in the way you are trying to do it .
Then it is too big to have been done at all, ever. Don’t you see this? If you can’t demonstrate now that astrology works, using any kind of test, then it would have been impossible to do in the first place, impossible for those detailed rules to have been worked out. How do you think the originators of astrology did this, and managed to come up with all the detailed rules the way you claim they did, if the subject is too big to compartmentaliz this way?
Im a computer programmer with a maths degree, not some air head new age type .I have a good understanding of scientific principles but I love astrology because it WORKS .
Sorry Cassini but you have demonstrated you have a very poor grasp of scientific principles and the scientific method. You have invented an absurd process that you think the ancients adopted to derive the rules of astrology, and yet you think modern science is incapable of replicating this process. You do not understand the biases that are fooling you, or that scientists must control for those biases when performing experiments. You do not understand the principle of falsification that guides the scientific method. You think it is beyond the wit of humans to compare the predictions of astrology with what actually transpires. It is not. It has been done and astrology doesn’t work. Perversely, you ignore these studies because you just “know” astrology works. You have no interest in testing astrology to see if it could be proven wrong. Your reasoning is totally contrary to any scientific principle.
Im sure your an Earth sign !!
I’m sure I’m not: I’m Libra which is an air sign. However, I’m equally sure you will now be able to fit some aspect of my personality to that sign, as you would whatever my sign was. And that is why you think astrology works – it is so vague, and there are so many possible combinations of planetary aspects, that you can always find something to fit and ignore what doesn’t.
Cassini, it is a sign of intellectual honesty to answer reasonable questions arising out of what you have written. The following is a list of questions that have arisen from your email: Where is the evidence the rules of astrology were derived in the way you claim? How could the ancients have figured out all the rules of astrology, if astrology really is too big to compartmentalize this way? Are you open minded enough to admit that astrology might not work? What evidence, if any, hypothetically, could ever convince you that astrology does not work? Do you understand that you may be influenced by confirmation bias and the forer effect. If not, why not? If so, do you accept that you could be mistaken when you say “astrology works”? What other method could be used to evaluate the accuracy of astrology, if the scientific method is inadequate? Are the predictions of astrology more likely to happen than pure chance? If the answer to the above question is “yes”, then how do you explain the fact that when tested astrology doesn’t perform better than pure chance? If you answer “no” – astrology is correct no better than chance – in what way are you claiming astrology “works”? The comments are open below – please use them to answer the questions. Don’t be a rubber duck. If you answer the questions honestly you might learn something about what is really behind astrology.
September 28, 2006 – Edited to add:
The above questions were specifically for Cassini – they arose directly from what he had written. It is clear now that Cassini is not going to even consider these questions, and so I decided to amend this post to leave just one question for astrology proponents to consider. Here it is.
Question for astrology proponents
Look at my tests of astrology summary. Specifically read my summary of one of the tests written up by Shawn Carlson in Nature in 1985:
Test #2: 116 people completed California Personality Index (CPI) surveys and provided natal data (date, time and place of birth). One set of natal data and the results of three personality surveys (one of which was for the same person as the natal data) were given to an astrologer who was to interpret the natal data and determine which of the three CPI results belonged to the same subject as the natal data.
The astrologers chose the correct CPI in only 40 of the 116 cases. This is the exact success rate expected for random chance. The astrologers predicted that they would select the correct CPI profiles in more that 50 per cent of the trials.
Here is the question: why did the astrologers perform no better than random chance?
The comments are open for your answers.
Some advice. Don’t tell me astrology can’t be tested this way, or that astrology is somehow beyond the abilities of science to measure, unless you can explain exactly why this specific test is unsuitable as a means of testing astrology. Don’t reply that I need to study astrology more, or with a list of books I need to read. And above all, don’t reply that I need to approach astrology with an open mind, unless you can demonstrate you have a mind open enough to consider the obvious answer to the question – namely that astrology is nonsense. Ignore this advice and you will be ridiculed. For bonus points you could also tell me (with evidence please) how astrology was derived – although I won’t be holding my breath.
Over to you – answer the simple question.