Renay Oshop, Peer Reviewed Science Comes to Astrology |345|

Hi Renay, please excuse me for the slight offtopic. Are you aware of the the Kolisko effect in astrology? I recently wrote about it here: http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/the-kolisko-effect-planets-affecting-chemical-processes.3738/ (please excuse my grammar, English is not my native language)

I think if more people decide to test it and show its validity, it would be very conducive to getting astrology into mainstream science.

This looks very interesting. I know of some MS's in nanotechnology in India who are also trained in astrology who are looking into something parallel in spirit.
 
Ms. Oshop, Twitter follower numbers are a wildly unreliable data set.

The numbers are gamed and manipulated by Twitter, by users, and by social media companies.

Some people purchase thousands of fake followers, some do not.

Some people employ sophisticated algorithms for increasing their numbers regarding times of day, tweets per week, optimized text, etc., while others don't bother.

See: http://buytwitterfollowersreview.org and http://buyfollowersguide.com

I didn't hear you mention this factor.

I think one can get even more ornate. For example, some people hire small (or large) teams to increase their follower numbers. Whose chart should we use? Etc., etc. And still, the data bears out the idea of using the account follower numbers to predict something about the account holder's chart

Even taking astrology out of it, the Zipf-Mandelbrot curve mentioned in the last Remark of the paper holds, no matter who is hired, no matter what gamings are attempted. Remarkable stuff.
 
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Fair point, Charlie, but the question occurs to me (however people gather their follower figures): how come is it that their birth dates correlate with certain planetary configurations that occurred around the time of their birth? It might be that the top 100 (Oprah, Justin Bieber and the like) aren't artificially beefing up their follower figures, hence the 100% correlation.

OTOH, who knows, maybe the lesser correlation with people further down the follower scale is accounted for by a proportion of their number massaging their follower numbers. Maybe the real correlation isn't with people who necessarily get lots of followers, but with those who want lots of followers, even if they have to buy them.

Me, I'm not even on Twitter and if anything would give me the heebie-jeebies, it'd be the thought of thousands of people I don't know following me, hanging on my every word. Yuck!:eek:

That is an interesting point, Michael.
 
Renay,

I appologise that I am going to come across as an arch sceptic on Astrology, but I can I assure you that is not my general position on the subjects of interest on this forum!
The incidence of the signature in the simulated general population from the paper is 55.4%. (It rose to 71.4% in the top thousand Twitter accounts for which we could get birth data and 100% for those Twitter accounts in the top hundred.)
I know there are some variations in educational success depending on the month someone is born. There are several conventional explanations for this variation, for example, children are going to start schooling at a slightly different age depending on when they are born, or the baby may thrive less well if it is born in the winter, etc.

Therefore it would be interesting to know if this astrological signature is distributed evenly over the months - particularly over the years when most current celebrities were being born. This would not require more data, just a program that could determine whether the signature did or did not apply at a given moment.
[Warning: complete and utter speculation follows.] I think quantum entanglement may prove interesting in regards to mechanism. If a small diamond chip can instantly cohere with another diamond chip miles away, maybe a huge planet like Venus can cohere with us. [End of complete and utter speculation.]
I am rather wary of what exactly quantum entanglement as such can achieve, even in ψ, because no information can ever be passed through an entanglement link. There is a correlation, but that is only revealed after all the information from both ends of the entanglement are brought together and analysed. On the other hand, who knows if standard QM is the end of the story.
I hear you regarding the sheer oddity of the idea of astrology. That is where we are right now.

Great!

David
 
I appologise that I am going to come across as an arch sceptic on Astrology, but I can I assure you that is not my general position on the subjects of interest on this forum!

Sorry if this video isn't scientific enough, but it confirms my own experience when astrology is discussed. Both my wife and daughter dabble in it and are both convinced that it 'works'.

 
I think one can get even more ornate. For example, some people hire small (or large) teams to increase their follower numbers. Whose chart should we use? Etc., etc. And still, the data bears out the idea of using the account follower numbers to predict something about the account holder's chart

Even taking astrology out of it, the Zipf-Mandelbrot curve mentioned in the last Remark of the paper holds, no matter who is hired, no matter what gamings are attempted. Remarkable stuff.

For anyone interested, I found a fairly simple exposition of the Zipf-Mandelbrot law in the introduction to this paper: cds.cern.ch/record/377204/files/9901035.pdf (highlight the address, right click and select "Search Google" in the right-click menu). Stated simply for human populations, it is that "most success seems to migrate to those people or companies who already are very popular", and the paper gives a couple of examples, which seem to occur in natural demographic situations as opposed to ones that are consciously directed (as quite often in countries like China and Russia).

However, the law is by no means restricted to human populations (i.e. demography), and can be found apparently operating in many other areas of scientific interest, such as biology and ecology. There is discussion in the paper as to whether the law is a consequence of stochastic (random) processes or, in some cases at least, indicative of a deep underlying regularity which as yet hasn't been fully understood. The jury appears still to be out.

If Renay's findings are the result of stochastic, also as-yet-poorly-understood mechanisms, then her correlations are no more than intriguing happenchance. OTOH, If there's some underlying, profound regularity, then perhaps there's more going on. But either way, I have no reason to doubt her findings. As long as she sticks with correlative rather than causative language, I don't see how her results can be questioned by "sceptics" who act reflexively on the slightest intimation of "woo-woo".
 
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Do you think there is a correlation between certain planetary alignments and physical things that happen down here on earth?

Do you think Renay's research moves us towards coming to that conclusion based on the statistical analysis of her data?

IMHO, there is no way a planet's apparent position in the sky relative to earth has anything whatsoever to do with anything. The data says there is a correlation, I can't argue with that, but I guess I'd say causation wasn't linked to the planetary alignment. Rather possibly the influence of several thousand years of collective consciousness co-creation, which would explain why it "works" but yet is rather messy.

A big thank you to Renay for participating in the discussion.
 
Also, because to my eternal regret I have never been any great shakes at maths, I wanted to find a simple explanation of the Monte Carlo statistical simulation, and found one here relating to a more detailed but still readily understandable one here. Check them out if you too tend to get lost in the jargon!
 
I don't understand what correlation you are talking about.

Then why don't you simply read Renay's paper and the links I have provided to explanations of the Zipf-Mandelbrot law and Monte Carlo simulations? The correlation is between the known birth dates of certain Twitter users (and hence certain planetary conjunctions occurring around those birth dates could be determined quite unambiguously using standard astronomical data -- note not astrological data), compared with the number of followers on Twitter of those individuals.

The Twitter users selected were those for whom birth data was known (with reasonable reliability), and who had the top 1,000 follower ratings. Not much to understand, is there? It's pretty straightforward. There was a definite correlation (according to ranking of follower counts) between these people and the number of followers they had. I don't get why you say you can't understand it.
 
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This was painful to listen to. The things said and introduced before the guest ever got to say anything were scatter brained and full of name calling and curses. It's really annoying to be totally interested in the guests of a podcast and totally distracted by the host. This show would be 100x better if the "shock jock" factor was removed, if the "angry baby boomer debate style a la fox news or CNN" factor was removed, and if the phrase "biological robot in a meaningless universe" phrase was not repeated over and over as the best argument to fall back on. Let the guests talk!!!

And as far as the guest's birth chart reading of Alex, it seems the birth time was twelve hours off... so this means that the whole reading doesn't count, and that he shouldn't have dismissed her as a bad astrologer. Astrology is much, much deeper than the "pass or fail" or "follow the data" attitude that i heard on this episode. Natal chart interpretation requires long investigation and is basically divination It requires abstract thinking and inner reflection that seemed totally absent In Alex's tone that suggested "she failed," and I was not surprised at all that Alex was not able to discover the truth in his own chart (even with help from a professional). This is proof that he just doesn't get it. And even though there are specific things within astrology that you probably CAN test, like the things the guest tested in her experiments, testing the validity of an entire natal chart for one specific person is NOT testable in my opinion, and falls into non-linear, non-binary, abstract thinking that science cannot even touch.

So despite the really rude tone deafness i heard throughout this whole episode, it seems Alex did not take the time to learn anything more about astrology than "are saggitarius's more likely to get into car accidents," and basically just yelled and interrupted the guest the whole time. And then somehow he still decides to believe in astrology, even though his own chart interpretation "failed" in his mind? Wtf?
 
Settle down Michael. You weren't clear about which correlation you were referring to.

Thank you for clarifying.

Well, the English language allows one to be precise in what question one asks. If you'd said something like "I'm not sure which correlation you're referring to..." I might have replied differently. It takes two to tango, no? But I'm glad you think I've clarified the matter.
 
And as far as the guest's birth chart reading of Alex, it seems the birth time was twelve hours off...

Oh: I missed that. Can you point me to the info that led you to that conclusion? And who is responsible for the time disparity -- Alex, Renay, or someone/something else? It could cast the issue in an entirely different light, and explain/excuse the inaccuracy of Renay's reading. TIA.
 
Both my wife and daughter dabble in it and are both convinced that it 'works'.
As a young mother I got bored and taught myself to cast charts. I found them to be quite accurate. However, when I started to try to learn the finer points of predicting daily or yearly events, I began to feel like I was being led down a rabbit hole. Thanks for the interview.
 
As a young mother I got bored and taught myself to cast charts. I found them to be quite accurate. However, when I started to try to learn the finer points of predicting daily or yearly events, I began to feel like I was being led down a rabbit hole. Thanks for the interview.

Interesting. Is that something you would want to explain a bit? Did you feel you were being nudged somewhere you didn't want to go or what?
 
This was painful to listen to. The things said and introduced before the guest ever got to say anything were scatter brained and full of name calling and curses. It's really annoying to be totally interested in the guests of a podcast and totally distracted by the host. This show would be 100x better if the "shock jock" factor was removed, if the "angry baby boomer debate style a la fox news or CNN" factor was removed, and if the phrase "biological robot in a meaningless universe" phrase was not repeated over and over as the best argument to fall back on. Let the guests talk!!!

And as far as the guest's birth chart reading of Alex, it seems the birth time was twelve hours off... so this means that the whole reading doesn't count, and that he shouldn't have dismissed her as a bad astrologer. Astrology is much, much deeper than the "pass or fail" or "follow the data" attitude that i heard on this episode. Natal chart interpretation requires long investigation and is basically divination It requires abstract thinking and inner reflection that seemed totally absent In Alex's tone that suggested "she failed," and I was not surprised at all that Alex was not able to discover the truth in his own chart (even with help from a professional). This is proof that he just doesn't get it. And even though there are specific things within astrology that you probably CAN test, like the things the guest tested in her experiments, testing the validity of an entire natal chart for one specific person is NOT testable in my opinion, and falls into non-linear, non-binary, abstract thinking that science cannot even touch.

So despite the really rude tone deafness i heard throughout this whole episode, it seems Alex did not take the time to learn anything more about astrology than "are saggitarius's more likely to get into car accidents," and basically just yelled and interrupted the guest the whole time. And then somehow he still decides to believe in astrology, even though his own chart interpretation "failed" in his mind? Wtf?
I have to agree. I found parts of the interview quite excruciating. Alex sounded really domineering and rude and there was no need. At several points, if I had been Renay I would have told him to get stuffed.
 
Interesting, one wrong or right hit doesn't make it true or false, but nonetheless interesting, I wonder what mechanisms would be behind it?
 
Sorry if this video isn't scientific enough, but it confirms my own experience when astrology is discussed. Both my wife and daughter dabble in it and are both convinced that it 'works'.

This reminds me of the experiments where mediums operate blindly and still obtain useful results. I can't help wondering if this astrologist is able to tap into something similar, even when blinded to the sitter.

Renay's evidence is of a different type, because it shows a correlation between an astrological indicator and an entire group of people. This is the strange thing about astrology - it seems to imply that a whole group of people born at the same instant of time, will have similar personalities/life experiences!

Therefore I think Renay's evidence is important, but I wonder if there the correlation may occur indirectly (see above).

David
 
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