Horoscopes??

[Oneiros]

Astrology offers very interesting insights into the personalities of oneself and others, but predicting the future is always a little here and there. Also it's good to remember that there are a few star signs that influence our character - the sun sign is the most well-known one, but there is also the moon sign (the relationship between these two is also significant), along with venus (the love planet) and mars, and probably more as well.

I am a triple Aquarian, which means that my sun sign, moon sign, and venus are all in Aquarius.

[Christine Callisen]

I truely believe in them - if they´re good!!!!

Christine

[Art Rock]

Aries.
Strangely enough I see better results in terms of predicted character traits with the Chinese horoscope (which is based on year rather than month, in a 12 year cycle, or a 48 year cycle if you take the refined version). I am a (fire) rooster by the way.

[JLS]

Check this out. pp. 32-33 especially...

[Sybarite]

I don't know who started it but as an impoverished student in the UK I did my share. I used to write them for a local paper. It was easy money for about 6 months until they gave the task to a staff writer.

~~LOL~~ Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I used to do natal charts when very broke a number of years ago.

I no more believe in it these days than I do in fairies at the bottom of the garden or bearded men in the sky.

Oh, Saggitarius, by the way.

[Farrahcat]

Libra. I don't think I have the Libra personality and traits though. I should be diplomatic, romantic and idealistic. I totally am not. I have the negative traits though. I am indecisive and easily influenced.

I never believe it anyway. However, I love reading my horoscope just for fun.

[Basia]

Aquarius here. I'm studying psychology at the moment and check this out:

YOUR PERSONALITY PROFILE

You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you. You have a tendancy to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused energy which you have not turned to your advantage. Wile you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Your sexual adjustment has presented some problems for you. Disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. (not whole article)

Did this profile describe your personailty? Well only out of 79 students, 5 said it was incorrect under a study by a psychologist.

Horroscopes surround the factor of balencing the paragraph; with positive traits, as well as negative. And blindly, we tend to believe all of the positive traits and forget the rest...

And that's how horroscopes work, really.

However, at times, I still do belive in them... why not?

[Strunch]

I'm a Capricorn, and I have been a member of an International skeptics society since 2003, so as you might imagine by now, then I'm not the greatest fan of astrology. Many of my friends have been banned from astrology forums worldwide.

I'll throw in my 2 cents.

First of all, you can carry out a rather easy experiment to verify the merits of astrology. What you do, is to take yesterdays daily newspaper horoscopes (for instance), and then you mix them up. Make the Taurus the Scorpio, the Capricorn the Cancer etc. etc., then you make someone else read the (rigged) horoscopes to someone who believes in astrology, both should be unaware of the rigged status in order to double-blind test it. And the "victim" and the reader should also be believers in astrology, yet not scholars on the subject - otherwise they'll might be able to spot that the characteristics belong to another zodiac sign. The result is that people will nod knowingly while being exposed to a wrong horoscope - I have seen it many times. This is confirmation bias at large, also known as the Forer effect, which is closely related to pareidolia.

Here's a funny article on astrology written by a good friend of mine who is highly unpopular among the Danish astrologers. He lives undercover as he has been threatened several times by business astrologers et al. Yes, it's way out there.

Anyway, I once made a small program where you choose among several characteristics that you think is related best to your personality, 12 times. Then the program shows you how many percentage of each zodiac sign you are. This is called reversed astrology =)

I don't hope I offended anyone with this post, that wasn't the intention, but a subject was brought up that I know a little bit about, so I jumped in =)

[Krummhorn]

Interesting points, Thomas ... appreciate your sharing of your respected viewpoint. I for one, certainly enjoyed reading the article ... I seldom read my 'horrorscope' until the day after ... sometimes it is similar to actual events/circumstances, but most of the time it's way off center, so I guess I would be classified as quasi-skeptical

[traveller]

~~LOL~~ Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I used to do natal charts when very broke a number of years ago.

I no more believe in it these days than I do in fairies at the bottom of the garden or bearded men in the sky.

Oh, Saggitarius, by the way.

One thing that always surprised me was that occasionally people would tell me how accurate theirs was. This when then they knew that I had made them up!

Pisces. And I dive for a hobby

[Albert]

A study was done by a psychology professor. He/she (got it from two she/Phd/psychology people, one of whom is my daughter) handed out horoscopes to his class. He had asked them to submit there birth dates before hand and carefully took a week to calculate all the data.

ALL the students thought their horoscopes were on the money - 90%, 80%, 70%, and a couple outside the range.

He then disclosed that everybody had received the exact same horoscope.

Whatcha think?

[Strunch]

Interesting points, Thomas ... appreciate your sharing of your respected viewpoint. I for one, certainly enjoyed reading the article ... I seldom read my 'horrorscope' until the day after ... sometimes it is similar to actual events/circumstances, but most of the time it's way off center, so I guess I would be classified as quasi-skeptical

Hehe, yea, I guess.. Thank you yourself! =)

[Strunch]

A study was done by a psychology professor. He/she (got it from two she/Phd/psychology people, one of whom is my daughter) handed out horoscopes to his class. He had asked them to submit there birth dates before hand and carefully took a week to calculate all the data.

ALL the students thought their horoscopes were on the money - 90%, 80%, 70%, and a couple outside the range.

He then disclosed that everybody had received the exact same horoscope.

Whatcha think?

Forer effect (see my former post and the links included).

Nice (and typical) story! =)

[JLS]

Well, it seems to me that something shouldn't have to be shown to be false for people to stop believing in it...it should have to be shown to be true before people start believing in it...

[Sybarite]

Well, it seems to me that something shouldn't have to be shown to be false for people to stop believing in it...it should have to be shown to be true before people start believing in it...

So I'd have to give reasons for believing in the flying spaghetti monster?