If you don’t like being smacked with the ‘cold reading’ explanation, then perhaps you could clarify what you mean by “bountiful harvest” and “energy missing”. If it means “astrology is worthless if I can’t judge the subjects responses as I go and tailor the chart interpretation to match”, then bingo, you’re doing cold reading. If it means “If I can’t refine the results through consulting with the subject then I’m left with a lot of open-ended choices that can be interpreted to apply to anyone”, then you’re starting with the Forer effect, and using cold reading to refine it. If you meant “It’s just as accurate when done alone but it’s lots more fun if I can jam with the other person while doing their totally unambiguous reading” …then I have no idea why you used the phrases you did.
I can totally understand that you find doing reading more satisfying when you can spend the time hanging out with some supportive, interested and complimentary person; besides the sociabilty, it’s probably also very uplifting for the ego to have somebody thinking that you’re a font of knowledge and wisdom. (This also matches up with how you seem repelled by the idea of anyone -not just yourself- doing a reading of a skeptic; there’s no accolades to be expected during that reading!) However, I’m not really interested in whether astrology is uplifting to the person doing the reading. I, and others around here, are primarily interested in the question of whether it works.
Good lord man. Are you so entrenched in your faith that it’s real that you can’t even fathom a person unsure about it who wanted to check and see? “Done right, a chart reading won’t surprise you much, its you, after all,” feh. The question on everyone’s minds (but yours) is whether it can be done “right”.
Clarifies how? For example, there’s a difference between clarifying from, “You have dark hair” to “You have dark brown hair”, and reaching the same conclusion when clarifying from “As a whichever, you tend to have light color hair, unless you are occasionally moody or willful, which is represented by dark locks”. Whether the conclusions of a reading tend to be more like the first of these examples or the second is one of the things we uninitiated are trying to find out about this whole business. It’s why we want to see an example of a (non-collaborative-with-subject) reading!
I have never seen any kind of astrological chart or reading that doesn’t involve sun signs. You don’t look at them at all? They are utterly and completely meaningless? Or will you assert that there is at least one lone trait that is associated with a particular sun sign so that we can analyze it?
Heck, forget sun signs. Pick any one single solitary verifiable correlation. Anything. If someone has Scorpio rising and Neptune in Taurus and the moon in Aquarius, then they are more likely to be criminals. We could verify that. The problem is that (to the best of my knowledge) in the hundreds (thousands?) of years that people have been practicing astrology, there hasn’t been even one claim made that can be proven!
(Bolding mine) Thank you, Musicat. The bolded phrase above cuts directly to the heart of the matter and should put an instant end to the debate.
A test can be devised to see whether an engineer can design a bridge, a chemical engineer can synthesize a chemical, or a pilot can fly an airplane. If there were any validity whatsoever to astrology–any at all–then astrologers would be able to determine whether somebody could cast a valid, meaningful horoscope. Since no such test exists, then there’s obviously no such thing as a valid, meaningful horoscope.
What does that mean? If everybody has Neptune, then everybody’s vague, watery, and unstable? Who decided that? Has anybody ever attempted to draw a statistical correlation saying that people with more Saturn are more committed? Anybody?
To go back to the OP, do you believe that the person who first decided that Neptune stands for vague and unstable had any evidence to support the proposition? Did that person believe it, or did it just make it easier to remove specificity from the charts and increate the hit rate (i.e., increase his or her income)?
I agree that certain things get harder if you don’t practice them. However I don’t understand why astrology is one of them
For example, won’t two astrologers produce exactly the same results when given exactly the same information by the subject?
Does the reading vary over time?
I would appreciate a competent professional job. I could learn what a reading looks like. If it’s all you need, why the personal contact?
Of course playing chess is more satisfying emotionally face-to-face, but I can still demonstrate my full skill over the Internet.
I realise that this may bug you (sorry :o ), but the problem with saying that personal contact makes a difference is that there are people who are not genuine who could use the contact to make things up. You come across as sincere and I am hoping to learn something from you.
(We know that teachers / police / spouses can all ‘read’ people without having any training.)
I have the evidence of my ‘remote viewing’ thread to show why I am interested. I have never had an astrology reading and I would like to see what you can say about me.
I joined this board for many reasons - one of them was to learn stuff. Having an astrologer talking to me is an opportunity. I don’t want to shrug - I want to see your side of things.
OK, I agree that there is likely to be a hostile reception.
How about this:
I start a new thread where you do a reading on me
I state that no insults are allowed and get the Moderators to back me
My bad, made an unsupported assumption, that pretty much everybody knew why “sun sign” stuff was deep dish crapola. I blame the educational system.
OK, briefly…
Boiled down, the “sun sign” is the relative position of the sun to the ecliptic. The Spring Equinox is the O degree of Aries, each sign begins at 30 degrees increments. Unless they moved the damn constellations again! Wiat a sec…no, they’re still in the same places. (I would support legislation to make those locations permanent, the nation can’t take another major precession…)
The position of the sun is the single most important “planetary” position. As you might well expect, being the sun, and all. Hence, the convention of describing by the sun sign, you are a Libra, you are a Scorpio, etc. Everything else in the chart modifies this. The moon has it own significance, as does Mars, Venus, etc.
Further, the position of the sun within the sign matters: the sun in the first few degrees of Virgo retains some Leo “hangover”, towards the last degrees it begins to “anticipate” Libra.
So, as I’m sure you readily see, any analysis by the sun sign alone is whoafully inadequate, it ain’t shit. Popular culture, being unable to deal with complexity, has reduced the public awareness down to near idiocy about this, what with the cocktail napkins and the crap about Sag’s looking for Libra’s, etc.
OK, look, you have nothing but contempt for this stuff, fine. But honest engine, crazy as we are, we are not trying to suggest that there are 12 kinds of people in the world and you can glean substantial information from that one bit of info. I mean, I got a lot of faults, but stupid ain’t on the list.
Why wouldn’t it? Oh, it would if it were something you had to be smart, huh? Like maybe, oh, I don’t know…chess maybe? I mean, so long as any damn fool can do it, what difference does practice make, huh?
Nureryev could still dance well into middle age. But he had the good sense not to do it in public.
Couldn’t tell you. Have never seen another work.
It matters, but not so much in this instance, its not a biggie. Basicly, I just don’t want to. Now it might be one of the coolest things to happen on the SDMB, outside of Scylla waterboarding himself, or it could be a fart Hindenburg. And aggravation, I don’t need.
This is one hell of a straight line, you seem like a nice guy, so I’m gonna let it slide. This time.
Sure there are. Why is that an issue for me? I got to prove I’m* not * one of them? Oh, fuck that.
Dunno. Not sure about that one. What little I know about the cold read technique suggests it takes a lot of native talent and much practice. Besides, if I’m so good at it, howcome I sometimes lose at poker?
And you don’t?
Ya think, maybe?
I appreciate it, but no. When I reflect on it, my Higher Power says “Are you out of your pea-pickin’ brain? Not just no, fuck no!” Tell you what: if some time passes and I think better of it, I’ll get back to you.
(Maybe somebody else? I’m probably not the only. Likely the best, sure, but not the only…)
It goes back to my psychological take on astrology, the idea that the astrological chart is a picture of human psyche, by human psyche. Every chart has every planet in it; every person has the entire complement of human qualities. Each planet is a symbol of some attribute(s). The symbols come from ancient, multi-layered, mythological archetypes. They weren’t decided by some one person to fatten his or her wallet. They were arrived at by years of observation - of people and of nature - and spring from a settled consensus that recognizes certain commonalities or correlations. They are obviously not the only way to categorize things. They just happen to resonate with some of us.
So I would say, yes, every one has the capacity for both Neptunian expression and Saturnian expression. The chart gives you a way to look at, or for, those expressions in your life, should you choose to.
The only studies I know of that test statistical correlation of planetary attributes are the Gauquelin studies (the so-called Mars Effect for athletes, Venus Effect for artists, Saturn Effect for scientists/physicians), which I understand to be flawed. It doesn’t matter to me, since my non-traditional take on the subject doesn’t require the symbol to have any “effect” to be useful.
Incidentally, I hope we’ve put the sun sign thing to rest. People seem to keep misunderstanding it. Is it understood that all horoscopes contain sun signs, but horoscopes based solely on sun signs are not useful because they are only a very small portion of what a horoscope should be?
I find this an odd question in light of the fact that I think I’ve mentioned in this thread that:
I don’t “do” charts. I dabble, mostly for myself. To be clearer, I could pull up a natal wheel for (generic) you off the computer, but you could do that yourself. I wouldn’t presume to provide interpretation.
If I did do charts, I would not do them without input from the querent, because I don’t think astrology works that way. It would be a dialog and the person would essentially be doing their own guided reading. I am not qualified as such a guide, which is why I wouldn’t do it.
Let me rephrase the question.
In your opinion, if two people were to have readings done by a professional astrologer, and said astrologer were to put the results down on paper, would each person who has had a reading done be able to tell which reading belonged to them?
Have you an established metric for self-assessment? Some way of reliably measuring the capacity of the subjects to judge thier own characteristics to a scientific standard of accuracy?
Will you vette the horoscopes to ensure that one is not more positive than the other? You know the old joke, right? “I am firm, you are stubborn, he is a pig-headed fool”.
How will you ensure that there is sufficient distinction? Lot of folks are dull and ordinary, what distinguishes dull and ordinary A from dull and ordinary B?
These “professional” astrologers? Does that include vile conmen who use the techniques of the cold read to fleece their gullible victims? Whats the metric here, you cashed a check, you’re in? How do you propose to test for competence in a subject for which you have utter contempt? I mean, its pretty clear that you think they’re all a bunch of jerk-offs anyway, so you have no motivation. But I do, and to be frank, I haven’t the slightest idea how I would test for competence. I would probably test for the degree of thier agreement with me, which is just as biased but in a different way, if we’re determined to be relentlessly empirical here.
What about sample size? If its ten, and “my side” scores 6, do you then throw yourself at my feet and blubber apologies? That wouldn’t be right. Gratifying, perhaps, but corrupt.
Who’s going to fund this? Who is going to vet the referrees?
“Why, look here, 'luc, we have a staff of volunteers from the Skeptics Club, surely you can’t ask for a more unbiased bunch than that?”
“Actually,** Czar**, old chum, I was leaning towards the Pixie Dust Enthusiasts Society, splendid bunch…”
(You know what would be totally cool? To cobble together an experiment to our mutual satisfaction and have it return a negative out of the bounds of chance? Like 9,000 out of 10,000 wrong, rather than the expected 50% That would be disconcerting as hell, but it would be cool…)
A question for astrology supporters on the SDMB-do you believe it is possible to get a decent astrology reading that doesn’t involve cold (or hot) reading? One that would involve giving out only that information that doesn’t directly reveal personal traits, fears or aspirations?
In other words, do you believe that Astrology, in and of itself, can reveal information?
It was not a test proposal, it was a question. More of an “is this possible”, not an “how would we test if this were possible”.
Still, if you actually wanted to devise a test, you could probably elimiate most or all the problematic variables readily enough, I’d think, at least to the satisfaction of both parties. For an off-the-cuff example:
Sure. We give a copy of both readings to each subject, and say “pick the one that’s most like you”.
Then we also give a copy of the readings to three close friends or relatives of the subject’s, and ask them the same question. We ignore the subject’s respose (:D) and take note of whether all three friends/relatives pick the correct chart.
No. Asking the friends/family should elimitate selection based on this factor.
That is what we’re testing for. If the readings all produce indistinguishable results, then they’re a joke. To avoid the random luck of randomly picking two people who are clones of one another, though, we’ll happily do a couple more people, say for a total of four. (Too many more and it’ll become too tedious for the relatives to read all the readings, not to mention the poor astrologist making them.) I’d thing the odds of picking four identical people are pretty low; don’t you?
We’ll let the astrological community pick. However they wish. Perhaps jello wrestling?
Three of the four sets of friends/relatives should all unanimously select the correct chart. (We can assume that one family might just be coked up or something.) Alternatively, after making the charts the astrologer may select one subject/family/reading to discard (perhaps becuase a couple of the people were clones, which would of course confuse both families if both readings were included); however if the astrologer eliminates one subject, all three remaining families must all select the correct reading (as the ambiguity has been removed).
The friends/families judge, so there’s no refs of note whose biases matter, though we should scrape up somebody to make sure the psychic didn’t write the subject’s name, birthdate, sun sign, etc on the reading anywhere. (The reading should be filtered to mention only the personality attributes and stuff like that, with the astrological reasons for reaching those conclusions omitted. Oh, and of course they’re done without interaction with the subjects or families.) Maybe a couple of people can verify the filtering, a skeptic and a true beliver who hate each other bitterly maybe, if we can’t find people we actually trust.
One presumes the psychic will volunteer his time in hopes of getting validation by the testers, and maybe a reward, if they could find somebody with money to offer a reward if somebody satisfyingly demonstrated psychic abilities and who would accept this test (or one like it). No payment for failure, though.
Sure it’d be cool. (Woudn’t count as a “win”, though.) Not that you could reasonably run that many tests to get the level of probabalistic gradiation you mention, of course; no matter how hard we crack the whip, eventually our volunteer astrologist will give out.
So, can you answer the question now? If you like, assume a fully honest, capable, knowledgeable-in-the-ways-astrologist and honest subjects (in provioding their information and doing their selecting) for the sake of the question.
All in all, no major objections. Of course, as dishonest a man as I stand accused of being can simpy say “Sure!”, score points with the sublime assurance that no such thing will ever happen…
Except for this:
Just for myself, I’m pretty sure I can take jello two falls out of three. If I have some time to train. Get in shape.
But, seriously folks…
What “astrological community”? It may shock you to hear it, but not all of us “true believers” are as reasonable as myself, some of them are…well, a bit odd. I don’t know if its normal or no, but I don’t know any astrologers, nor am I anxious to make thier acquaintance. (Had you walked the requisite “mile in my moccassins” you would understand…)
Over the course of my time, I had maybe 60-70 students, I haven’t the foggiest what became of them. But despite my best efforts to promote pragmatism amongst them, I just know several of them were snorting pixie dust behind my back, and couldn’t wait to use what I taught them and apply it to past-life regressions and burrowing ever deeper into the wonders and mysteries of their own charts. ('Lucs Law: Forget you even have a chart, its hard enough to see the forest for the trees, impossible if you *are * the tree…)
Look, I know there are some meatballs doing this stuff, just because they’re crazy doesn’t mean I am. But it does give me pause in terms of this, because I have no idea how many I could trust for this, and how many are loony birds. Not a clue. And after twenty years, I sure as hell ain’t going hunting for them.
But if a way could be found to clear that (having no idea what that would be, mind you), I would want this passed in front of people who have some expertise in family dynamic psychology, someone who has the credentials to assure us that, yes, indeed, family members are reliable judges…well, go for it.
Just don’t ask me for funding, I gave it all the Nessie Habitat Foundation (would you like our newsletter?..)
As for your protest about the “Astrological Community”, I don’t think that’d be too much of a problem; the fact that the readings would be made without interaction with the subjects would probably be good enough reason for the frauds to self-select out, since they won’t be able to use their cold reading. That would leave those who can genuinely do it (um, if any), and those who can’t do it but sincerely believe they can. (And amongst those: bring in the jello.)
And, why does it matter who is doing it, so long as they’re fully knowledgeable in the ways of the for- -er, the rules for drawing up and interpreting the charts? Shouldn’t this stuff work for everyone, so long as they know all the rules? So it doesn’t matter who we test*. We’re not technically testing the practitioner; we’d be testing the astrology.
*Noted that there are several different subsystems of astrology. If we really were going to bother doing this, it would behoove us to test all the different systems individually.
Theoretically speaking, that is. As you noted, we’re almost certainly not gonna do this on this website. (How do you double-blind on a website, anyway?)
I wonder if a test like this (of a format similar to this, I mean) has already been done? I was too lazy to read all the studies given; did one of them match this formatwise?
Oh, and a totally unrelated ‘technical’ question: what precisely is the information required to do an astrological reading? Do you need the person’s name? Or would their precise birthdate and birthminute suffice? Do you need to know locale, time zone, area code, etc?
I would buy a ticket to see Robert Hand take down Noel Tyl. That would be good.
Well, I got a reading from the website Waenara linked to and it reveals that my Sun-Venus conjunction causes me to be stunningly good-looking. This is obviously and objectively true, and they didn’t even see me! Lest you think I have been blindsided by the rainbow, I am also assured that a Pluto-Midheaven square causes me to abuse my power, crushing others in order to achieve my objectives. (OTOH, if I’m that kind of person, maybe I like that assessment, too.) Allow me to offer you one of these delicious apples…
Seriously, you seem to want a yes or no answer to your questions and, to my mind, they don’t have yes or no answers. More like yes AND no, plus some dickering over wording.
Yes, a reading can reveal information, the issue is the quality of that information. I don’t think it’s possible to get a “decent” (whatever that is - useful? meaningful? accurate?) reading without input from the subject. I would not call this cold/hot reading, because it wouldn’t involve intent to deceive, it would be a mutually agreed upon exploration. You may consider it cold/hot reading even without intent to deceive, and I won’t dispute with you over that opinion.
There may be information in a reading done without input, but I would expect it to be, as you and others have charged, either too vague/contradictory to be useful, too general to be meaningful, and… I guess I reserve judgment on the source of any specific accuracies that might emerge. My tendency is to think they would be coincidence/luck, but some might be due to skilled experience in evaluating lots of different interactions. I see the primary value of the system in its structure and integration, not in magically producing information that would be otherwise hidden.
That’s the nature of the beast. It’s not science. It does work. We make it work because we make symbols and meaning.
I realize this fence-sittting sort of attitude, besides being hard on my stunningly good-looking ass, will please neither side in this debate and may earn me the disdain and opprobrium of both. But them’s the results of my brain and my experience, both of which are always a work in progress.
Suppose someone had been misled all his life as to the actual date of his birth and such things, but remains entirely unaware of this. Would you expect an astrological reading for such a person to be significantly less successful, by whatever the appropriate criteria are, than one for a person whose beliefs about his birth time, etc., are accurate?
