While the gen-z comment is unwarranted, I have to side with the frog on this one (and not just because of my username), even if he’s being contrarian just to feel superior.
‘Harmless’ things like astrology and other types of magical thinking can become a larger problem if your society has a failing, inadequate or inaccessible education system. Without adequate education of critical thinking, they’re taken more and more seriously by wider swaths of society, which can foster mistrust in the scientific method, sometimes leading to deeply unhealthy outcomes, such as using crystals and other alternative ‘medicines’ for ailments instead of using scientifically backed methods.
It can also lead to increased susceptibility to manipulation via conspiracies and misinformation that confirms the mystical thinking.
Carl Sagan gets to the heart of the problem in his book, A Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle In The Dark:
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
No I get that the frog is pulling a ‘I am very smart, I’m better than you plebs’ and being a complete buzzkill in the process, but I think the artist could’ve picked a better topic to demonstrate that mentality instead of framing a potentially harmful thing as harmless, even if the bird knows its bullshit.
Robert Anton Wilson would vehemently disagree with you and Sagan here. I’m not saying who’s right but I think criticizing a reality tunnel like astrology is a waste of time when there are drastically worse ‘slippery slopes’ in existence
I’m sure Mr. Wilson would indeed. I was not familiar with him until your mention, and upon researching him briefly, I would hedge that Sagan (and certainly myself) would disagree with him as well.
Firstly, I would ask how, or rather who, determines what misinformation is worth advising against and what isn’t? The relative harm of astrology is indeed low compared to say, Capitalism, but then again, the effort to write my initial comment was also low. I don’t expect it to do much, but on the off chance it steers someone away from magical thinking, it was worth writing.
As to why I would disagree with Wilson: I could never subscribe to his concept of trying to get people to become ‘agnostic about everything’ because the minute you take a hard stand on a single thing, you discover that to be agnostic about everything is just harmful. I think it’s good to be open-minded, and I’m not one of the dogmatic religious-level scientific fanatic he describes who blindly follow the AMA or any other scientific institution that insists they have everything figured out and demands you not question the sacred gospels, but his method seems like the ultimate cop-out: “We can’t truly know anything with certainty, so it’s all possibly right, just with different probabilities!”
I don’t buy into that one bit, because otherwise one could use such a worldview to justify saying “Hmm… I guess maybe eugenics could be right? I’ll give it a low probability, but can’t be too sure!”
It also could be used to justify belief in Scientology, literally any debunked scientific theory, climate change denial, radical religions, etc.
I think it far healthier to have an open-mind to new concepts that can be proven good, and to have an active and healthy skepticism for anything that makes claims without evidence. But that’s just my 2 cents.
I should mention that I don’t mean to strawman your argument, as you didn’t mention Wilson’s ‘agnostic’ concept, but that seems to be at the heart of this philosophy, and why he prescribed to mysticism and would likely find astrology harmless.
I give you a lot of credit for looking into RAW, I’d encourage you to look into more of his work and the work of Greg Hill and Kerry Thornly and how easily reality can be subverted.
I’ll also say it’s cool for us to agree to disagree on this issue as I imagine there are a lot of more important things going on in this world we’d agree on
I personally find pan agnosticism to be the correct path but that’s my reality tunnel and I’m happy with you having yours
Edit: just to address your critiques, you can make any ideology or worldview into eugenics without much effort. ‘Maybe logic’ doesn’t encourage it any more than any other ideology.
And I just find it hilarious that my original criticism was that it was a waste of time to criticize astrology, which you never addressed in your comment back that undoubtedly took away a lot of your time
I think there’s another thing to pick here too. Horoscope makes some assumptions based on which time of a year you have been born. This obviously has very little effect on your life.
However the generation you’ve been born in has a massive effect on you. Each generation grows up with other kids from that generation, they learn from each other often more than from the older gen. This sorta creates a cultural gap between the generations, or generational gap as it’s called.
So when your mom says she was a hippie and got conservative along the years, it’s fair to call her a typical boomer
Time of year athletes were born correlates with hockey performance or something right?
I’ve tried to use a fact like that to bridge the gap between me and those who like astrology.
I recall hearing that there’s a correlation with being good at sports and having a birthday earlier in the school year. Reason being, at a young age, on average there’s a big advantage to being 6 months older, and that advantage can often result in a positive feedback loop. You get selected more for showing aptitude and thus receive more training, which results in being selected more.
In absolute terms, Boomers didn’t get more conservative as they aged, they got more liberal. Just at a much slower rate than the younger generations.
I think the context matters. Just reading the paper and ask someone what their sign is so you can laugh at the horoscope section? Not really a huge deal. First date and using it as an ice breaker to get someone to talk about themselves? Mayyyyybe. Treating it with any actual level of seriousness is definitely a danger zone.
Hello there, my amphibian friend! You’re the first other frog I’ve seen on here :)
I had an encounter with @MisterFrog@lemmy.world recently. Lemmy is a great pond :)
Generational divides are at least based in broadly shared material conditions, and while they shouldn’t be used to make assumptions about individuals, they can be used to draw conclusions about large populations as a whole. Astrology simply has no basis whatsoever for anything.
Yeah. Look, it’s a dick move to roll your eyes at gen-whatever but there are solid reasons that things are different. Foremost being that generations dictate the age of a person so you could say “those 18-30 year olds don’t know shit about how hard we had it when dinosaurs wrecked homes and ate our children.” I mean, being raised during different technological eras alone can change a lot. There is a clear difference. There might be something to astrology too but we don’t have very good evidence of that.
Generational divides are at least based in broadly shared material conditions
material conditions are not the primary factor, imho.
your shared experience and life expectations differ wildly, depending on whether you saw the berlin wall or the twins going down in your formative years.
That comic feels very strawman-y
Everyone is stupid
Your cohort when you grow up can predict your development because people of a particular generation share a great multitude of environmental factors.
Edit: this does not mean we should foster intergenerational conflict.
Boomers are actually an amazing example of how a cohort’s shared experiences can shape their collective psychology. The cohort was born into a time of unprecedented economic prosperity and as such are unable to understand the problems of their children.
