Re: Nice Try, Wise Guy

Beats me if anyone really knows. I read the original post in the light of "interesting trivia" and not as a challenge to my own world view, or something that needed to be shot down.

Astrology, as I understand it, was a study on behavior and occurances and events which shared some correlation with astral phenomena. It reflects tendencies. It isn't about absolutes. It doesn't cause things.

This, of course, makes it unsuitable for scientific analysis.

When I was younger, I read a lot of material on various topics, including astrology. I was pretty amazed at how well Linda Goodman, for example, could peg people and matched the behaviors I observed in my friends pretty well -- not perfectly, but amazingly close in all cases. She didn't use generalities in her books, either. She was pretty specific. Linda Goodman's Sun Signs is one of them I read, and you could evaluate it yourself to see whether or not it comes across as vague or specific. A common argument against astrology is that the language is always too vague. I'm still trying to find this vague astrologer who discusses behavior in such a way that the signs are all the same.

Predictions, on the other hand, are generally vague, and certainly *could* apply to anyone. Different astrologers look for different things, have their own biases and preferences, and communicate what they see based on their understanding of these "influences" of the planets and their positions. Thus, horoscope predictions from different astrologers tend to differ.

You claimed, however, that you've seen predictions from different astrologers which are directly opposed to one another. I'd sure like to see evidence of this. For awhile, for amusement, I've been following the three different horoscopes offered by America Online via Instant Messenger's IM Today interface. Each of these is written by different astrologers. While sometimes each has touched on wildly different things, I have never had two of them contradict each other. Given how many possible things there are to discuss, the odds of directly opposing predictions for a specific day is extremely small. So, I'd really like to see some concrete evidence of astrologers' advice being directly contrary for a specific day.

=-John-=
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