
Ask HN: Astrology? Yay, Nay or Meh? - jelliclesfarm
For a ‘pseudo science’, astrology and horoscope chart making is heavily dependent on the gifts of CS.<p>What would a marriage of AI and Astrology come up with..?<p>Example:<p>1. astronomy says Jupiter, Saturn and mercury will be in the constellation of Sagittarius on Christmas Day.<p>2. Vedic astrology marks dec 25th as a day when a cluster forms in the house of Sagittarius with 6 celestial bodies(three planets, sun, moon and Ketu, the imaginary south node of moon).<p>I don’t know astrology and so I don’t know what it means. And let’s assume that it is significant for some world event.<p>A rational non believer would say that any events on that day is common place and a coincidence.<p>But can AI map ‘coincidences’ to come up with a pattern? If it does, would it be able to transform a pseudo science into a valid science.<p>In other words, what’s the difference between pattern recognition and prediction by AI vs pattern recognition and prediction by old world knowledge?
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rraghur
Since you asked :) - Nay!! (what's meh?)

and you said it - it's a pseudo science... so why, even?

If you hadn't said 'pseudo science', I'd have assumed you're a believer and
that the question was in earnest.

OTOH - you do end with 'old world knowledge' so I'm not sure anymore.

but you're not asking that...I suppose what you're asking is akin to training
an AI on two unrelated datasets and asking it to predict one based on other...
sure - it's going to spit out some 'pattern recognition' where none exists.
Basically, AI (or anything else) can't manufacture causality.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
‘Meh’ = ‘I don’t know.’

1\. Psychology is also considered pseudo science. The age old question about
economics is whether it is science or art...some ..usually the cynical..settle
on pseudo science.

Pseudo science is a catch all term.

I am reluctant to dismiss something that captures the attention of so many
people..now and in the past. Many mathematicians were Astronomers as well as
astrologists. When did astrology become the illegitimate bastard child of
astronomy? Why?

What about personality tests? What about algorithms? Google search algorithm
is not a secret. It must be easy to reverse engineer it, but only a small
percentage of the population who use google know how it works. For the rest of
the layfolk, it is magic and for others, it’s something advanced enough that
it’s beyond their comprehension. But nobody really believes or calls google
search results = ‘divination’. Because we know and accept that it’s in the
realm of mathematical possibility.

Why not astrology too?

2\. Can you explain a little more about AI part of your response. That’s what
I want to understand. I can’t even articulate well what question I am thinking
of..but I think if you expand upon that I might find the right words.

------
mindcrime
Sure, you can parse over huge amounts of data and find all sorts of bogus
"patterns" that don't actually mean anything[1][2]. But you can't make a valid
science with real predictive power out of something where there is no actual
causal connection between event A and event B.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_correlation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_correlation)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
So you are saying astrology is ‘phony’?

Learning Vedic astrology is my 2020 goal. I find it compelling enough to try
to understand what is about...it’s something I have been looking into for 5-7
years and I am no longer skeptical about it.

Can you change my mind? (Despite the awkward wording, it’s a sincere query)

~~~
krapp
Yes, astrology is phony. It's nothing but confirmation bias, placebo effect,
paredolia and fraud.

There is no known physical mechanism by which astrology could possibly work.
Its claims have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked through
experimentation, and the psychological biases which cause it to appear true
are well known and documented[0,1].

Note that this applies to all forms of astrology. Doesn't matter if it's
Indian, Greek, Babylonian or generated by algorithms - the thesis that
astrological phenomena and star patterns have an influence on human
personality, behavior or events is demonstrably and universally false.

Please spend 2020 learning something of value, rather than continuing to be
intrigued by meaningless nonsense.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science)

[1][https://www.relativelyinteresting.com/astrology-and-
horoscop...](https://www.relativelyinteresting.com/astrology-and-horoscopes-
debunked/)

~~~
karmakaze
Saying astrology is placebo effect is giving it a lot of credit. Placebo
effect is fairly strong and positive. It's hard to develop drugs where its
effects aren't masked by placebo.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I agree. It’s not a suitable parallel.

------
masonic
Note that the traditional date/sign assignments don't even resemble the
current calendar relationships. Most people were born with the sun _a full
sign off_ from what pop culture horoscopes say. Plus, for a bunch of those who
think they are Scorpio, the sun was actually in _Ophiuchus_ on their birthday.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I don’t know about that. I am planning on studying Vedic astrology or Indian
Jyotish. It uses the sidereal zodiac which is based on the fixedness of the
stars and is moon sign based rather than sun signs. They also have north and
south nodes of the moon which are technically shadow planets as they don’t
really exist but are only part of the moon.(in myth, they cause the eclipses)
It’s an entirely different system. I am looking forward to learning and
studying more. I want to do it right and expect it will take me 3-5 years as
does any in-depth study of any subject. I haven’t decided how to go about it.

