On May 9, 2009, at 3:37 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
me:
to test astrology's validity, I'll tell you all the details about my
life (except my birthday and related) and you tell me when I was
born.
Shane:
Astrologers don't do that sort of stage-magic trick. Anyway, a
sample of
one has very limited statistical significance (nor am I, though
literate, a
competent astrologer).
it's not a stage trick. If astrology can crank out "predictions"
(vague that they are) about X (the stars) causing Y (my life), then
they should be able to predict X based on Y. A chemist can tell pretty
well what chemicals were involved just by looking at the nature of the
reaction, for example.
That's not how any scientific method works. A "prediction" is a
specification of *probabilities*. Because of the random element in
all natural occurrences it can never be anything else, so a unique
occurrence can never be retrocalculated validly to some set of
previous conditions (otherwise one could, from the fact of a
hurricane, discover exactly which butterflies were flapping their
wings when). Moreover the "X causing Y" model, because of multiple
causation, never works (outside utterly trivial cases like the motion
of my body, once my foot is descending, determining just where that
foot will land--and even then retrocalculation of exactly where my
foot had been when it left the ground would be utterly impossible).
That's why a statistical test of the sort I outlined ("Take fifty
matched pairs--one a lottery winner, one a victim of a fatal
automobile accident. Give birthday/time/place and event day/time
place for each to 200 professional astrologers [sample size=10,000].
Tell them to identify which was which in each case. Test the
percentage of correct identifications for statistical significance")
is the only way in which a complex model--like one that claims for the
"stars" (the electromagnetic balance of the solar system) a degree of
influence over the course of an individual life--can be "confirmed" or
"disconfirmed."
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
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