Possibly the smartest woman I know does too.
Some people believe strange things because they make them feel as if there is some hidden order to everything. I have several friends who believe in astrology, and when I am asked about it, I usually say, “Well, I’m a Virgo, and we don’t believe in astrology.” I have a very close friend who believes that chemtrails are real, that 911 was faked and that the Fukushima disaster will eventually kill everyone on the planet. What is strange is that this guy is a very upbeat type of person. He seems to like the idea that secret agencies control the world in the shadows.
You humans are a strange species.
On the subject of “hate”, I don’t understand the worldview of people who think that everybody who disagrees with them must be a racist, or sexist, or homophobe, or probably all of the above.
I don’t hate Obama. I disagree with his policies. I disagreed with those policies when Kerry advocated them. And when Gore advocated them. And Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, and Tip O’Neil and Ted Kennedy. I would vote for Allen West in a heartbeat, if he were on the ballot in my precinct.
I don’t hate Hillary Clinton. I just think that Condoleeza Rice’s policies would be better for women, and blacks, and everybody else.
Astrology is indeed nonsense, but this is a facile and fallacious “refutation”. People who believe in astrology are not at all committed to what you claim. It is not just the day you were born that they believe determines your fate, both the precise time of day, and the location of your birthplace on the Earth’s surface (or, rather, under the heavens) are also supposed to be important. Everybody gets a different “destiny”.
According to “newspaper” style horoscopes, of course, everybody born during the same month long period (under the same “sun sign”) is subject to the same destiny, but no serious believer in astrology takes those any more seriously than you or I do, and the vast majority of those who enjoy reading them take them with a large pinch of salt, and do not have any serious commitment to astrology.
If this one is not true, it ought to be. 
I have a co-worker who has actually published a book about how the Bush administration did 9/11.
An acquaintance I’ve known all my life routinely posts on Facebook about Mercury being in retrograde.
You had me going until you brought up Allen West. And what are Condi’s policies, pray tell? I wasn’t aware she had any.
Back to the topic at hand- the doomsday preppers are batshit crazy. I suppose it’s nice to have a hobby, but good heavens they spend shitloads of time and money turning their homes into fortresses to fight against… well somebody I suppose. Best case is I guess in the event of nuclear war they might survive a few weeks more than the rest of us. Maybe it’s just me, but if things ever get so bad that they need these fortresses then when they inevitably have to leave them, they’ll be as screwed as the rest of us.
Well, to be honest, there are preppers and then there are preppers. It is always a good idea to be ready for some disaster, whether a long-term civil crisis or a relatively short-term natural disaster. The former is unlikely, the latter appears to be inevitable (given enough time). I live in a temperate rainforest. Every few years, it floods here. Roads disappear and getting to the store becomes problematic for several days. Therefore, it is only prudent to stock up on necessities such as dried beans, rice, canned vegetables and so on. We used to use the term ‘emergency preparedness’ but I suppose the marketplace needed a word for those who take such measures because ‘emergency preparedness people’ is a bit clumsy.
There is a major supposedly respectable UK newspaper which I used to read that had a full page opinion piece article during the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign which had a basic point/accusation stating that if someone didn’t vote for Clinton it was because she was a woman and they were sexist.
That’s it, there couldn’t possibly be any other reason for not voting for her or disliking her other than she is female, I thought it was a rather sexist position in itself and is one of several reasons I no longer furnish that newspaper with my money or attention.
I’m a prepper, she’s a prepper, wouldn’t you like to be a prepper too?
I’ve run into this. It happens and it’s nuts.
But FAR MORE OFTEN I see people claiming that they aren’t racist, and everyone just says that because they disagree with whatever, but if you listen a little longer… they are totally racist.
You have one of those, too? Mine is a college professor.
I understand that you’re just presenting their point of view and not supporting it. But I’d have to ask such an astrological believer where the dividing line is between serious astrology and the fake astrology we see in newspapers.
Okay, a horoscope based on just your sign - something that applies to all Capricorns for example - is wrong. And a horoscope based on the day you were born is wrong. But how precise does it have to be before it “locks in” on you? Is a horoscope accurate if it has your birth time down to the minute? Down to the second? If two babies are born thirty seconds apart do they have similar horoscopes or does a thirty second difference make their horoscopes completely different? If every horoscope is unique based on the time of birth, how do you know what they are when a new horoscope is being created every second? Do horoscopes repeat in some kind of cycle? How could they do accurate horoscopes back when there were no clocks precise enough to measure a minute, let alone a second, if you need that kind of accuracy?
I’m not trying to overwhelm you but I am trying to point out that it’s not just a matter that astrology is based on false premises. It’s more like astrology doesn’t even have any premises. I’ve seen magic systems in works of fantasy that are better worked out.
I never fail to be amazed at the strength of addiction denial. People lose friends, family, jobs, money, health and continue to swear that they don’t have a problem. The worse the problem gets the stronger the denial.
It’s downright eerie.
If your objection were to policy as opposed to party label, your sequence would be somewhat different – Obama, Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dole, Howard Baker, Reagan, Ford, Nixon.
While I’m less one-sided about it, my own oddball world view is that humans-- nearly ubiquitously and overwhelmingly–ignore the effects of chance, pareidolia, and confirmation bias. We attribute situations to choices and causes much more often than they actually merit.
It’s a big part of why I’m a liberal: the hardest working people I know are some of the least successful – to the point where I’d argue the actual relationship between hard work and success is–across statistically large samples–actually the inverse of what people believe (also, that the cause and effect is reversed). I’ve seen actual studies that show that wealth generation with the original distribution being completely random leads to outcomes identical to our real world. Heck, I make Nassim Talen (of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan fame) look like an old fashioned determinist.
Many, many people seem to think this is an unfathomable world view.
This. Astrology is “not even wrong”.
And you need to know each person’s exact latitude and longitude (and altitude?) of birth too!
It must be an application of chaos theory: A difference of just a few feet or just a few minutes between two births can change everything. Bill was at 4:55 a.m. in a hospital in Los Angeles, while Bob was born at 5:02 a.m. in the same hospital just the next room down the hall. It’s just as if a butterfly flapped in the Brazilian jungle at just the opportune moment, so their lives will be completely different! What astrologer’s charts have the necessary resolution to describe that?
Yeah but see, getting arrested for DUI? Totaling his car from DUI? That isn’t because he had been drinking and driving. That isn’t because drinking and driving is incredibly dangerous. He was arrested because the police are trying to keep him down. He’s just so powerless against the massive corruption of the police and the police state we live in. It’s not like these things are really bad. And while he’s at it, how dare they make wearing seatbelts a law. Just another facet of the power those pigs have over us.
That’s his worldview. Nothing, NOTHING, is ever his fault. Not his suspended license, not his failing business, not his ruined relationships. Nothing.
I don’t think the worldview you and I are talking about are the same. Your worldview may suffer from some confirmation bias of it’s own, but yes, I do think chance has more to do with what you get in life than most people give it credit for. Also, people don’t like that worldview because they want to believe that working hard will get you somewhere - they couldn’t have been working all this time for nothing. All the fairy stories said that good guys who work hard get good things. It’s a pretty deeply ingrained measure of our self-worth, taught from childhood.
Hey, denial has important evolutionary benefits, too, I’m sure. (That comment aimed at him, not you.)
Now you’re making me try to remember an NPR report from months ago. It could have beenthis.
Although, really, the 2008 project listed in the article sounds closer to what I remember than his newer, 2012 project. Ah, here’s another article on it, from a blogger. Looks like he used, or was proposing to use, iron filings.
Aha! I got a raise that was retroactive to three years. HR recommended that I contact payroll and fill out a new W-4 with a bunch of dependents listed to be used for the pay period in which I got the lump sum pay, and then re-fill and accurate W-4 for the next regular paycheck.
The reason? The single unnaturally large paycheck will be taxed at a rate consistent with that being your regular paycheck for the whole year. You’ll get the overtaxed amount back when you file your taxes, but why let the government have so much of your money for so long. (Assuming it’s months until the end of the year.)
This is probably what your coworker is complaining about. Although she may mistakenly think that she’s not going to get it back come tax time.
I did not, btw, mess with my W-4. Instead I shifted most of the lump sum into my 457, which kept most of it untaxed anyway.