NOTE TO GENERAL READERS: please do not waste your time replying to this now. wait until i get the results. thanks in advance for your patience.
i also would like to mention that i have a lot of regard for Cecil’s technique and his mind/abilities.______
However, i think he is as much of a fanatic as the next guy. Whether i am right or wrong about this, is what this entire challenge is all about.
TO CECIL :
Cecil, please provide me with your -
1./ Place of birth. Preferably (or if it is some obscure town) send me the latitude AND longitude to the greatest possible extent of accuracy. (please note that i live in india so i might not know the cities which you do. Therefore…)
2./ Time of day at birth ( said to be time of baby’s first cry for such purposes) to the greatest extent possible of accuracy.
3./ Date of birth.
though i myself am not an astrologer, i want to settle this thing once and for all. i will give these details to someone who i guarantee has not EVEN HEARD of Cecil Adams( i live in india, and though am a regular surfer with friends who are regular surfers no one has ever even mentioned SD, so i am confident this person who has never surfed the web will not have. I myself discovered this site by accident a couple days ago!)
The only thing i shall tell the astrologer is your gender(which is required to read the chart AFAIK). We shall see what predictions/analyses the astrologer makes about Cecil. I shall publically post the findings of one and only one astrologer. Then we’ll talk.
The findings i shall post will, (i expect) contain information about Cecil which is not available in any mass media. If i am unable to give convincing information, well then obviously the laughs on me. However, i am willing to take that risk. Also I DECLARE FOR ALL TO READ THAT YOU MAY OPENLY SPAM/FLAME ME AT MY EMAIL ADDRESS IF I HAPPEN TO FAIL. WEBMASTER, PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THIS AND DECLARE MY EMAIL ADDRESS TO THIS BOARD IN SUCH AN EVENT.
The million dollar question is : are YOU up for it, Mr. Adams? Because if i am able to do what i claim, YOU WILL HAVE TO PUBLICLY ADMIT THAT ASTROLOGY DEFINITELY HAS SOME MERIT, __IN SO MANY WORDS
I am willing to discuss the parameters of this “experiment” with only you or your authorized rep. absolutely no one else.
Like someone said, you never know if something is possible until you do it yourself.(or something to that effect)
Here’s to cultivating a truly scientific temper…
“There is no wisdom in this world - only degrees of foolishness” -
( I dont know for sure who said this, but it def is not the world’s smartest man.)
Well, it’s pointless to ask us to refrain from responding until you “get some results”, because if nobody responds to your thread, babe, it will just sink down to the bottom of the page, and end up in the archives, where it will be forgotten by everyone except you, and if you do get some “results” someday, you’ll have to go find it yourself and bump it back up to the top.
Um, I may be on very thin ice here with the other Dopers, but what would you say, Jabber, if I said (just for the purposes of discussion, you understand) that there is no such person as Cecil Adams, that it’s just a pseudonym for whoever writes the Straight Dope columns? How do you do an astrological chart for a pseudonym? Or is this some kind of clever trap to prove or disprove, once and for all, the existence or non-existence of Cecil Adams?
BTW, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board! Are you on some kind of mission from God to spread the Gospel of Astrology or something? Just curious–it seems like a rather confrontational way to start out. Although, on the other hand, many of us come to these forums with axes to grind, so I guess I’ll get out of your way and let Ed have the floor (assuming, of course, that there really IS such a person as “Ed Zotti”.)
My name isn’t really Duck Duck Goose, either.
And I’m assuming that your name probably isn’t really Jabberwalkie.
jab1 : you are right. i am an indian citizen and english is my 2nd lang. However, i realize that the mistake i made is pretty stupid. It should have read -
" The findings i shall post will, (i expect) contain information about Cecil which is not available in any mass medium. If i am unable to give convincing information, well then obviously the laugh’s on me.(or is it “laughs are on me” - or either?) "
hope there are no mistakes there too!
andros : i would be an apostate if i did not post this challenge. our beliefs dont have to be the same.
Duck duck Goose : 1./ Please read the original post. If i am successful then Cecil has to …
Therefore there will be no need for anyone to read the post. Besides, i think the position of the post does not depend only on the # replies. i think it also depends on the # people who read it, doesn’t it?
2./ Of course, i am assuming there is such a person who goes by the name of Cecil Adams. His name does not matter. All i need is the information i requested.
3./ This has nothing to do with whether the Cecil Adams actually exists. If Ed Zotti is indeed Cecil Adams, no problem. The important thing is - the data i receive should be authentic.
4./ Yes i do have an axe to grind - and it is this —>
What is a truly scientific temper?
In my book, it is not - question everything. It is not -assume that whatever has not been proven beyond doubt to be
true is false.
I would say, it is - assume that everything is possibly true, hell even probable, until disproven beyond doubt. It would be to say -
“YES! I am an intelligent thinking being. But i am NOT a thinking being only! Also, I realise that i have not even come close to explaining everything there is to explain around here. Therefore, i cannot assume that everything that is not proven(or explained in my terms) is impossible/false. Therefore i will go by the assumption that nothing is impossible. Nothing that hasn’t been proved is bunk.”
These are just some of my thoughts. maybe i havent been able to do them justice. i just barely managed to pass my communication skills class
5./ Yes my name isnt Jabberwalkie. How did u know?!!!
Four problems. One, you say that you believe everything unless you are given a reason to disbelieve it. So you must believe in invisible pink unicorns, right? The come into my garden every morning and nibble the rose petals. No, I can’t give you pictures, they’re invisible. I could show you the nibble marks on the rose petals…it turns out that invisible pink unicorn’s teeth are very similar in size and shape to deer. They walk very softly and leave no footprints. You believe in them, don’t you? What reason do you have for disbelieving in them?
Two, what steps are you taking to avoid inadvertantly giving clues to your astrologer friend? In order for you to do the experiment properly, you would have to give "Cecil"s name to a third party to give to the astrologer…naturally, you would say nothing to the third party about the Cecil. Better yet, you’d have a group of ten or twenty sealed evelopes with information on it, and give the astrologer several at random.
Three, you’d have to determine if the astrologer’s answers were better than chance. I can “read” your horoscope pretty well from here…lets see…you are an intelligent person, but you sometimes have difficulty getting along with others. You are creative, and sometimes shy…You are mostly friendly, but sometimes get frustrated and like to be by yourself…the point is that I can reel off platitudes that would match anyone. How can you tell that Cecil’s horoscope matches him better than it would, say, me? You’d have to have some way of scoring a horoscope for accuracy. One way this is done is for the subject to prepare several horoscopes for several different people. Code the horoscopes, and let a third party try to match the horoscopes to the people (they should have no communication with the other participants to avoid unwitting cueing). Remember that the larger the sample size, the easier it is to tell signal from noise.
Fourth. If your experiments fail to turn up evidence for astrology, will you think that astrology doesn’t work? Or will you just think that this particular astrologer doesn’t know what they are doing? I suspect that you’ll still believe in astrology no matter what the results. It doesn’t matter how many studies there are that fail to prove that astrology works, it still doesn’t mean that astrology doesn’t work, only that we haven’t proved it does. Given your statements earlier, it seems that there is no scientific study that can disprove astrology, since there is always a possiblity that some other future study will work. That’s why people still believe in this silly stuff. But still we continue our quest against ignorance.
I can “prove” astrology is a lot of bullhooky. OK, Jabber, get 2 horoscopes, for 2 persons of the same sex. Born in the same or nearly same year. Make them as opposite as possible ( Leo, Aquarius?). Have the 2 folks at a party, and then announce you have their horoscopes, and you are going to read them. Announce a name, then read the horoscope, but leave of the sign, birthdate, etc, just the personality section, ect. Listen as all say, “YES! that is him to a T” “exactly” “right on!”. Then do the same for the other person- listen to similar comments. Then, announce that you have (and you have, indeed", reversed them, you were reading As 'scope for B, and the reverse. Listen to stoney silence. All of a sudden, the “absolutely right on” horoscopes, are not so good, eh?*
Or, another test- get horoscopes for a group of 6, or so. Don’t read them. Give them to someone who will delete all the identifieing info from them (ie name, sign, birthdate, etc), but then add a “code #” for each of you. All of you sit down, read the 'scopes, and each (without consultation) indicates who they think #1 is for, and so on. No talking. Compare results. I am willing to bet, that the results are just about random.
One famous skeptic was given the job of doing the “astrology column” each day, for a newspaper. He went back in the archives/morgue, and cut out the ‘scopes for the last year or so, put them in a hat, and drew at random, for each sign. He was always getting letters that said "how accurate’ his “horoscopes” were.
By the way, I tried this with Myers-briggs, with nearly complete opposites, and most thought the profile was wrong. With 2 similar “types”, mixed up, most thought they were “right on”. So, there is something to MB.
Danielinthewolvesden : I assume you know what the initials Q.E.D. stand for. If my claim is proved successful then there is definitely some merit to astrology. On the other hand, you can give a million examples of why astrology is bunk but you havent proved a thing.
Lemur : Please read my OP. Think. Think again. then decide if you want to post.
and btw, you were right about my being intelligent (thank you, compliment accepted ), however you were far from the truth about the rest. The only time(s) i like to be alone is when i am in the loo/bathing and maybe when i am sleeping
and if my experiments fail, of course i will not think astrology is bull. Read on to see why :
Let’s assume you have a medical problem. It has the potential to become serious and maybe even life-threatening. You would first go to a few doctors, and depending on what each says you will select one. Now lets say something goes wrong during the operation (god-forbid!) and “your family members lose you forever…” to put it politely. Would you then say that the doctor does not know what is is talking about? Or that medical science is bull? Of course not!!! And why wouldn’t you? If you think a bit, you will probably come to the conclusion that it is not because you have studied medicine and then decided for yourself. It would be because you have been brought up all along with the belief that medical doctors are not quacks. More importantly, with the right doctor, you have in general had satisfactory treatment.
Note that i am not comparing astrology to medicine. i am just giving an analogy.
Please read this post and the OP again, before deciding to respond.
To everyone in general, i am willing to discuss the terms of this experiment only with C.A. or his rep(s)
How do you know that any astrological data you received from someone purporting to be “Cecil Adams” would in fact be the real thing? What’s to prevent “Cecil Adams” from sending you, say, the data for the philodendron in his living room, or for his pet lizard?
We are all just pixels here. My point is, you don’t know anything REAL about any of us. We could just make something up, send it along, you’d post your “results”, and we’d all have a nice laugh at astrology’s expense.
And if any of it did hit the mark, we could just say, “Oh, it was an accident, even a broken clock is right twice a day,” so your “experiment” would still have proved nothing.
You’re dealing with a bunch of people here who quite sincerely do NOT believe that astrology is real. Why are you here, then? I commend your persistence, but I hope you can keep some perspective on this.
Hey, let’s not be TOO skeptical… If Cecil sends jabberwalkie his date and place of birth, then I guarantee you that jabberwalkie will be able to post information about Cecil that has never appeared in any public medium… Namely, his date and place of birth. I hate to tell you this, jabberwalkie, but Cecil Adams (whoever he is) is notoriously shy about telling folks anything about himself… We can’t even get him to say what color his toothbrush is, much less his birthday. Lots of luck, and if you do find out when and where he was born, please let us know. Even aside from his astrological chart, there’s plenty of folks here who would love to find out.
if C.A. is unwilling to provide the details i asked for then all i can say is he is a worse fanatic than i originally thought. If he sends me unauthentic data, then he is also a fraud who fakes data.
Like i said in my OP :
"The million dollar question is : are YOU up for it, Mr. Adams? Because if i am able to do what i claim, YOU WILL HAVE TO PUBLICLY ADMIT THAT ASTROLOGY DEFINITELY HAS SOME MERIT, __IN SO MANY WORDS "
However, Chronos has raised a very valid point which i daresay is the first proper objection to my OP. I dont know why I did not think of it myself!
I dont want to force C.A. to “come out”, in a manner of speaking. What has not happened in all these years cannot be expected to happen just because some fanatic like me decides to throw a challenge at him , which he probably considers a waste of time in the first place! For all we know, maybe C.A. is the " Mrs. Adams " he is said to have mentioned!!! (come to think of it, that is pretty possible!!! Reminds me of …)
Therefore, I have decided on a nice workaround which will solve this problem and also some others you readers may have. C.A. can send me the details i requested BUT they do not have to be of him. They can be of absolutely anyone he wishes AS LONG AS they are authentic. Therefore he can even send me the details for his best friend who may have absolutely no connection with SD. So i wont even know who the damn guy/girl is in the first place! Therefore it becomes all the more difficult for someone to know anything about that person!
Hey chronos, thanks man! You helped me out tremendously, though w/o intending to at all!!!
duck duck goose :
"
And if any of it did hit the mark, we could just say, “Oh, it was an accident, even a broken clock is right twice a day,” so your “experiment” would still have proved nothing. "
do you mean to say that if i give you a broken clock and only a broken clock - absolutely no other way of knowing/calculating the time, you will be able to tell me the correct time twice in a day (using only two tries)? puh-lease!!!
u might have to read the above again, to get my point.
Also, you seem to be making strong efforts to be a living example of the expression - “missing the wood for the trees…” maybe you should stop trying to make smart comebacks and focus on the basic idea of what i am trying to do.
note : maybe the above expression should be “missing…woodS…”
I am not sure, but you get the point, i hope.
Here’s where we run into a couple more problems. First, I can post anything I want…as long as I don’t tick off our delectable, delicious, and dedicated moderators of course! Oh, and there were a bunch of rules that I had to agree to when I subscribed…where was the part that I couldn’t post if jabberwalkie asked me not to? If you want to talk to the person who uses the name “Cecil Adams” then go ahead. But remember that this is a public message board. That means you can post your brilliant observations, and I can lamely respond, and it’s up to the home audience to decide who’s right and who’s wrong.
Well, here’s the thing. That’s not going to happen, probably. Now, since that’s not going to happen, how about if we discuss astrology?
Oh, yeah, I was numbering…Second, you seem to believe that if we just did things your way we could establish astrology’s authenticity easily, and everyone would be happy. But the trouble is that we have to agree on ground rules first. I can set up a test where I flip a coin and ask you to guess and if you guess wrong it means astrology is false. But that wouldn’t be a good test of astrolgy, would it? You wouldn’t agree to that test, since it is unfair. For the test to be meaningful, we’d both have to agree on what results would support astrology and which results would not support astrology. If we conduct the test, and no matter what happens you say that it supports astrology, that’s not a fair test, is it?
So you see why we must agree beforehand on what constitutes a reasonable test. I was trying to provide you with some ideas of how to run a test so that if you did get results that supported astrolgy it would help you to convince others that it did. There are many ways I can find out information about someone. Perhaps one of those ways is astrology. If you want to convince someone the best way is to set up a test where the only way they could find out information would be through astrology. After all, suppose that even though the astrologer really did give “Cecil” an accurate reading, I claim that he really read about Cecil in the newspaper. Now, let’s say I’m wrong, but I’m stubborn, I won’t listen. But suppose you could show me that I was wrong…I’d have to change my mind if the test was set up so that there was no possibility of another explanation!
OK, what number are we on? Yes, Three: that’s the trouble with tests. Suppose we agreed on a test, and you conducted it, and you got results that supported astrology. But then I thought of some new objection, like I forgot about ionization of isotopes or something. So maybe you’d have to do another test, this time making sure that ionization of isotopes couldn’t be a problem. And suppose Chronos came up with another objection, and you’d have to do another test. You might be getting tired of proving astrology over and over and over again, right?
But that’s what we call the scientific method. Someone comes up with an idea. All the other scientists try to think of why the idea might be wrong, and the poor guy who came up with the idea has to answer all the objections and explain why they don’t make sense. Or maybe he’ll see that the objections do make sense and his idea was wrong after all. Or maybe he’ll see that the objections were partly right, but after he changes his idea a little bit it will be better than ever. That’s how science works.
Ummm…fourth? I disagree with your analogy about doctors. Medicine isn’t one idea…medicine isn’t either all true or all false. There are lots and lots of different ideas in medicine. Some are true, and some are false. Is it true that pennicilin kills bacteria? Is it true that magnets cure cancer? Is it true that nerves conduct electricity? Is it true that sleeping with a virgin will cure HIV? How do we decide which ideas are true and which are false?
Well, one way is to suppose that all ideas in medicine are true unless we can prove they are false. Unless I can prove that magnets don’t cure cancer, then we should use magnets to cure cancer. But there is a big problem with that approach. There are an infinite number of procedures that might have some medical affect. How can I prove invisible pink unicorns don’t cause cancer? Or invisible green unicorns? Or invisible pinky-green unicorns? I can come up with unicorn colors all day. It makes no sense to sit down and try to show why every possible color of unicorn wouldn’t cause cancer…that would take forever. And I haven’t even started on the invisible pink leprechauns. Don’t you see that if we started from that premise we wouldn’t get anywhere?
So we must start the other way. If you want to show that unicorns cause cancer, it is not up to me to show that they don’t…it is up to you to show that they do. It is not up to me to prove that astrology doesn’t work. I can do test after test, and I don’t find anyone who can do astrology. But that won’t prove to you astrology doesn’t work…maybe I’m doing it wrong. I can’t prove astrology is wrong, since by your own statements there are no results that you would say disproves astrology. How is it a fair test if you say that any result proves astrology? It is unfair. If you want to prove astrology, you have to do so according to my rules, since I’m the one (metaphorically speaking) that you want to convince. Since you want to convince me, or more properly, Cecil, that astrology works, wouldn’t it be helpful to figure out in advance what would convince him? It may seem unfair, but he’s already got his mind made up…it will take some doing before he’s ready to change. Does that make sense? After all, I’m only trying to be helpfull…
Lemur : seems you did not read my post again. not oce did i say do not post. i assumed all of us are offering constructive criticism. therefore i warned you against making, as you say “lame” remarks.
Again, i have said all along that i am willing to discuss the terms/parameters of this experiment-of-sorts, though only with C.A. or his rep(s).(kind of like, too many cooks spoil the broth.)
You have vindicated my stand by adding your own thoughts on how the experiment should be performed, or why it wont be successful (before trying) in the first place!
Also, the comment you made about medicine vs. astrology proves you have absolutely no idea what astrology is all about! maybe its not you, maybe it’s just that since childhood you have seen only “pop astrology” like the kind in the papers, or that you have met only pseudo-astrologers who consider astrology as a profession. True astrology, on the other hand is absolutely,positively,definitely NOT supposed to be deterministic. any astrologer (atleast any indian one) worth his salt will NOT make simple yes or no predictions. free will is a very important concept in astrology. therefore, the information i get from the astrologer will not be in absolute terms. however, it will be like, for example, at age 5, he had a bad accident, or he did very well in his career from this-to-this period etc. the information will be very accurate, though not 100%. however, it will not be generally applicable to anyone like someone(duck duck goose?) pointed out.
A true astrologer will not charge you anything. if you wish to express your thanks then you may voluntarily give him something. Some might not even accept a gift! Their philosophy is that they simply wish to guide people through difficult times, or that they simply wish to undertstand human nature.
Another thing, i never stated that you should say every thing is definitely do-able until disproven. I said assume that it could be possible, and not make blanket statements such as it is impossible. this is why i said please read the OP before posting again.
Finally, if C.A. is so stubborn in his beliefs that he is not even willing to consider that he is wrong, then he is hardly a man of science, is he? Frankly, i think he is just waiting to see how this thread progresses before deciding on a course of action. Atleast I hope that is the case - i would hate it if he isnt even considering my point of view!!!
jabberwalkie, I think now you’re the one not reading the posts. Lemur was not telling how your ‘experiment’ wouldn’t work before even trying it, he was pointing out why the results might be considered ambiguous, and hence of less (or no) usefulness. His suggestions were good ones.
However, let’s leave that aside for the moment. If Cecil doesn’t want to play with your experiment-of-sorts, I’ll take you up on it, in the following manner:
I’ll send you the exact time and place of birth, along with the sex of two of my kids (you did say you needed to know the sex, is that right?)
I’ll send a short biography and description of the two kids to someone at the Straight Dope to hold, assuming they wouldn’t mind doing this (Tuba, is this a possibility? I know you guys have lots of other things to do.) If not someone at the SD, we’ll have to agree on a trusted third party. In addition to the biographies and descriptions of the two kids whose birth information I send you, I’ll also send biographies and descriptions for 3 other kids (for a total of 5) to the same third party to hold.
You come up with your astrological predictions, and send them to the same third party to hold until the end. Then you and some other people (It’d be nice to get 10 or 20 folks to do this, in order to get a good sample) look at the 10 biographies and see which ones each of you thinks the astrological information refers to.
After all the guesses, the person holding the biographies can reveal which birth information went with which biography, and which biographies were wild geese.
Then, it is easy to calculate if more people pick the right biographies than would be expected by chance. If so, it means the astrological predictions are obviously correct enough to be not due to chance, and you get to crow about being right.
On the other hand, if no more people pick the correct kids than chance would predict, the astrological predictions were obviously not specific enough to be of any value, and you get to eat that crow.
In order to fair to you, if you tell me the kinds of things that an astrological chart may reasonably be expected to tell (now that sounds like an oxymoron if ever I heard one), I will be sure to include that information in the biographies of each of the kids. That way, we can agree up front what kind of information constitutes a match to actual person, and you won’t be in the position of providing correct but non-matchable information.
I hope you would agree this test sounds fair. If so, and if Cecil doesn’t want to go ahead (or if he does and you still want to add this to the test) let me know, and we’ll iron out the couple of details and get to it.
