Date: June 29th, 2026 4:14 PM Author: laughsome location dysfunction
I read most of this. Can you explain what fundamentally separates this from the "tabloid version" other than that it's more specific and intellectualized? Epistemically it seems like the same type of reasoning process the casual believers would invoke, even if not every witchy girl has read Eysenck or Gauquelin or Morth and Schlamminger or whatever.
I will say that this sentence is extremely credited: "Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying Whig history is wrong, our ancestors were smarter than we acknowledge through our modern prism, and that part of the job of reorienting the public away from globohomo’s toxic vision of humanity, life, and history is to re-engage with a better respect for why people did things historically."
Date: June 29th, 2026 4:49 PM Author: Awkward Personal Credit Line Gay Wizard
The tabloid version looks only at sun signs and applies it to 1/12 of the population, which is so broad that it can't possibly be predictive (and no real astrologer approaches it in this manner). One can reach oneself into almost any of the interpretations.
What convinced me over time, although I am by no means an expert or even intermediate-level astrologer, was I spent a stupid amount of time looking at natal charts of specific individuals, both historical and personal, using the full chart on Astrotheme (https://www.astrotheme.com/birth-chart-sign-ascendant.php ): planets, houses, aspects, and degrees (especially degrees). I found that the descriptions lined up much better than chance. I also found an astrologer I like who does natal and progressed readings (Indian, woman, she does it as a hobby, not a career); without knowing me, and with only my birth data, her readings were surprisingly accurate.
Epistemically, what separates it is specificity and falsifiability. A tabloid horoscope says "you will have a challenging week" which is vague and un-falsifiable. A detailed reading says something like "you have a Saturn-Pluto square in the 7th house, which suggests a particular kind of relational tension that will manifest in a specific way." Again, this isn't proof, but it is evidence of a sort, and I would also point you to this:
"“In 1951 Jung’s synchronistic theory of astrology began to waver. That year Max Knoll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Knoll) delivered a lecture at the Eranos meeting in Ascona, Switzerland, on “the Transformations of Science in Our Age.” He pointed out that the proton radiation from the sun is influenced to such a degree by the conjunctions, oppositions, and quartile aspects of the planets that the occurrence of electromagnetic storms (sunspot periods) can be predicted with a fair amount of probability. And since correspondences have been established between sunspot periods and the mortality rate, as well as disturbances of “radio weather” during those periods, there is a real possibility of causal connections and direct influences. These astronomical observations have confirmed the unfavorable influence of planetary conjunctions, oppositions, and quartile aspects, as always assumed by astrology, and the positive influence of the astrologically favorable trine and sextile aspects.
The scientific discovery of these causal relationships gave Jung an unexpected glimpse into the theoretical foundations of astrology. At first he was inclined to repudiate its inclusion among the mantic methods based on synchronicity, for, according to the new findings, the possibility of a causal connection between the planetary aspects and man’s psychophysiological disposition would have to be taken seriously into account. “Astrology,” he said, “is in the process of becoming a science.”
Later Jung revised this somewhat too drastic or one-sided statement and opined that synchronistic as well as causal connections would have to be adduced in explaining astrology. In April 1958 he wrote in a letter: “Astrology seems to require differing hypotheses, and I am unable to opt for an either-or. We shall probably have to resort to a mixed explanation, for nature does not give a fig for the sanitary neatness of our intellectual categories of thought.”…After the death of Jung, science made no further endeavors to solve the problem.”
- “From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung” by Aniela Jaffe, p. 32-33.
Date: June 29th, 2026 5:12 PM Author: Accurate at predicting vs Measures of probability
"I spent a stupid amount of time looking at natal charts of specific individuals, both historical and personal, using the full chart on Astrotheme [...] planets, houses, aspects, and degrees (especially degrees)."
Date: June 29th, 2026 6:10 PM Author: Impressive nibblets theater
You are probably the smartest stupid person in the world. If you were around in medieval times you would be one of those people who focused on inscrutable codicies written in indecipherable code about weird pagan rites and you would bask in the glory of having received secret knowledge and passed it along to the three other people who agreed with you. Truly an esotericist to the hilt. Gleaning everything, producing nothing of value to anyone.
Date: June 29th, 2026 6:49 PM Author: laughsome location dysfunction
Oh, by "tabloid" you literally just meant the 12 star signs thing that nobody under 80 even bothers to look at, let alone take seriously. I don't think TPTP was asking if you believe in "Pisces will have a new career opportunity this month!" type shit lol.
I assumed you meant to differentiate your view from the modern astrology that half of the women and gay guys I meet believe in. They all know their whole charts with the houses and degrees and all that. And they all believe, with different levels of depth to their theories of the exact mechanisms, that the cosmic conditions at the moment of your birth determine who you become and the movement of the planets affects how your life unfolds in a predictable way.
If you had just replied "yes I believe in the same thing all the witchy girls believe, here's an article about it" then I wouldn't have asked for clarification.
Date: June 29th, 2026 6:55 PM Author: Impressive nibblets theater
I know a guy who inherited millions of dollars from his dad and became a massive true believer in astrology. Think of him like boomer RSF. He won't interact with anybody until he's read their star chart. Friend of my dad's. I never liked him even as a kid always thought he was totally psycho. People who inherit life changing generational wealth they never earned always turn out weird af. I hated astrology ever since. Apropos of nothing boomer RSF was a total asshole.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:03 PM Author: Impressive nibblets theater
I can picture you with a look of disgust handing up your chart to some asshole like here you go fag...
When I was in LA I met a dude from San Francisco and he always used to say that the biggest difference between LA and SF was how often people talk about astrology (way more in Lalaland). He was like I came down here and people are so dumb I want to move back lol.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:07 PM Author: laughsome location dysfunction
one time a (gay man) Uber driver insisted on putting my info into a star chart site on his phone while he was driving, I was worried we were gonna crash. fortunately we survived, thanks to The Cosmos
Going to check my chart on there right now actually, see if it fits me at all. I actually have a 180 sign imo, and from what I remember it fits me really well.
Date: June 30th, 2026 12:11 AM Author: Richard Ames
In part the work of John Michael Greer. In part the realization that all of the stars were mapped at a certain point in time such that the stars in the sky corresponded with events on Earth and events in civilization tend to be cyclical and that the civilizational cycles likely tie to the cycles of the stars in the sky.
There was also a dude, I forget his name and can't pull up the video now, but this older French-Australian astrologer who in fall 2019 basically did an astrological reading that more or less predicted Covid and mass social upheaval. And it was all tied to a number of intense planetary alignments involving Mars.
Part of me thinks "well The Powers That Be seem to either believe this stuff or use this stuff to coordinate their efforts..." but even if that is the case, it seems to be having an influence.
The empirical argument doesn't hold and the weakest point is the use of Kuhn. Kuhn's point is not that "science has been wrong before, so rejected ideas deserve more credence". It's that normal science operates within paradigms, anomalies accumulate, and occasionally a viable rival framework with its own predictive traction precipitates a crisis and shift. The inference "some rejected ideas were later accepted, therefore this rejected idea may be right" has the same structure as "some lottery tickets win, therefore this one probably wins."
There are other issues too, for instance with the Gauquelin section, which is worse than just "validity remains up for debate," and the degree astrology section, which is basically just post-hoc Forer/Barnum-style symbolic overfitting (the celebrity examples are just retrospective pattern matching), but I don't feel like turning this into a redditor-style debunking poast and noone is going to read all that anyway.
The part I agree with is that ancient people were not idiots, cultural practices can preserve useful knowledge, and modernity can be arrogant toward premodern systems. Astrology has historical and symbolic richness. But that doesn't mean astrology has predictive validity. I think the stronger version of the argument wouldn't need Gauquelin at all, you should just make the case that symbolic frameworks and causal explanation address different orders of reality.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:23 PM Author: laughsome location dysfunction
anyways I don't think Consuela's article reads like AI, either. the cadence and rhythm are nothing like what it would come up with by default; he'd have to have given specific instructions about writing dense, overly-long sentences with a lot of commas.
Date: June 29th, 2026 6:54 PM Author: laughsome location dysfunction
the first para is GPT-coded so I'm guessing you stopped reading there because the rest is obviously written by a person. sometimes clarity and conciseness can read like AI, especially if it's evocative of the "it's not X, it's Y" structure.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:07 PM Author: Accurate at predicting vs Measures of probability
"redditor-style debunking poast"
You'll just chalk stuff like this up to "well of course *SOME* of it was edited personally" so you can handwave away any pushback, but this phrase, which occurred in the middle of his poast, could not have been generated by AI unless he's been training some chatbot specifically for xo, and even then it would have capitalized Redditor.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:11 PM Author: Accurate at predicting vs Measures of probability
No you see he generated the poast with AI and then added in minor errors and niche things only xo would understand to make it believable to the 5 people who will read it, which would take significantly longer than if he just typed it up from scratch anyway.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:14 PM Author: checked out chud
Idk why you're so uptight about this
It's just shtick like any other shtick. He's always been one of the smartest poasters here. You'd have to be very smart to do his shtick, because you have to be smart enough to understand every topic and actually understand the LLM output on every topic and edit it accordingly if necessary
Consuela is what it looks like when someone who isn't smart tries to do that shtick. Copy pasting of completely incoherent LLM babble or non responsive LLM output because he didn't understand the topic well enough to prompt it correctly
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:27 PM Author: Awkward Personal Credit Line Gay Wizard
Goy Retardstar is legitimately retarded - just in this thread alone he's objectively wrong about multiple substantial things he expresses with great assertiveness - but I agree with your second part, obeezy
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:44 PM Author: Awkward Personal Credit Line Gay Wizard
i agree that often feuds are triggered by mirror images of posters, like RSF and benzo
but there are other highly assertive posters who don't like me much that don't bother me and who i enjoy, such as TBF, who is highly amusing
so i don't think it's Retardstar's closed-mindedness + ultra assertiveness that triggers me, its that combination with his approach to the world, which places tremendous faith in "The Science" and "official expertise", which is the antithesis to my approach
i don't know what that means for your theory, but i generally appreciate it if he just stays far away from my posts
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:54 PM Author: Accurate at predicting vs Measures of probability
My question didn't have anything to do with that premise. You said you agreed that Goy Superstar is a very stubborn extremely online type, and I asked if you thought that fairly described you too.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:56 PM Author: Awkward Personal Credit Line Gay Wizard
Your specific argument is what I outlined, where you stated: "The persistent feud between you two is rooted in identifying , and hating, aspects of yourself you see in the other."
I disagree with that argument, and I specified exactly why. Now you're reverting to your well known wormy self.
Date: June 29th, 2026 7:34 PM Author: checked out chud
I assume that some of his poasts are his own words pretending to be AI. There's no real way for me to tell. A smart enough person can make themselves sound indistinguishable from AI if they want to. It just requires substantial effort and I don't think he's doing it most of the time
He's having fun with it like anyone else doing shtick. I enjoy the shtick, I'm not badmouthing it in any way. Although sometimes I want his sincere opinion on something and it's a little annoying that I can never tell if it's him responding or not
Date: June 29th, 2026 5:25 PM Author: Accurate at predicting vs Measures of probability
"Modernity can be arrogant toward premodern systems."
The older I get, the more certain I become that the issue is that society has a hard time with nuance. The shift from religion/spiritualism to rationalism was very turbulent, and because rationality won people quickly became dismissive of everything else.
Now, with rationality* shown to often be flawed, we're seeing people reject it completely, and now there's people that believe every malady can be cured with fasting and a paleo diet, and all modern medicine is a lie.
*Not the system of rationality itself, but how things promulgated as indisputable "trust the experts" have been shielded from any criticism or nuance with "it's science!"