• sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    I am at the point where if anyone, ever, for any reason, asks me what my astrological sign is, I stop communicating with them.

    They always turn out to be irresponsible, narcissistic idiots every time.

    An exception would be if this interaction is taking place completely within the confines of an actually defined fantasy world like a video game or ttrpg.

    But real life? People who actually believe there is, or could potentially be anything to astrology?

    Dangerous morons.

    • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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      7 hours ago

      devil’s advocate: there are people like me who don’t take it seriously. like I enjoy talking to astrology people because listening to anyone talk about anything they’re interested in is downright entertaining, even if I personally don’t believe planetary positions have any influence on humans

      • Klear@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Astrology has one major and tangible benefit - it lets you easily remember when roughly are people’s birthdays coming up.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        I’m not gonna tell you that you shouldn’t talk to, or shouldn’t enjoying talking to astrology people.

        I just have a lower threshold for bs I put up, and do not personally enjoy listening to enthusiastic yapping about absurd nonsense, I infact fact it insufferable, assuming it isn’t a child who is in the learning/development process.

        Were you and I to be friends, irl or otherwise, I’d respectfully ask you to not waste my time with astrology, unless you want to have a meta or academic level discussion about … the psych tendencies/profiles of astrology believers, the actual real world history of its growth and development (which is very often completely different than what many astrology practitioners believe), how you can track the general decline of literacy and critical thinking skills and the education system by using the proliferation of astrology as a proxy…

        … I would find those topics interesting.

        But generally speaking, in an irl, casual conversation scenario?

        Yeah my rule of thumb is that if we are just recently met and you are ardently asking me what my sign is, you’re a person I would rather not know at all.

        • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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          6 hours ago

          Nothing wrong with having a filter. I suppose mine is that I won’t be friends with anyone who insists on contact through social media apps instead of regular texting (maybe Signal if they’re cool)

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 hours ago

            I also have that same additional filter as well, haha.

            Maybe… we could… be friends lol?

            I am so very tired of trying to explain how awful social media apps are to everyone, how they don’t realize they’re addicted to a digital drug that makes them angry, depressed and misinformed…

            And then you also try to explain how to actually do online security, and they usually get angry when you tell them that all the marketing and advertisments lied to them.

            • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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              4 hours ago

              Probably lol. I’d wager most of us Lemmy dorks would get along with most of us Lemmy dorks IRL or otherwise

              I suppose Lemmy is social media but its non-monetary, completely-volunteer-run nature really does make it feel like a different animal. At least I’m not horribly addicted like I used to be with Reddit, anyway

    • Diurnambule@jlai.lu
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      10 hours ago

      We of tend play choose your horoscope at work. We gather free or paid newspaper and around a coffee we read the horoscopes and chose the best or the funnier.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 hours ago

        I’ve worked as a copy editor for a small newspaper.

        You wanna know how the horoscopes are written?

        Lead editor pulls them out of his ass, often laughing while doing so.

        They tended to be based on the plots of, or scenes in movies he’d recently seen, shows he was watching.

        I’m not even kidding, this guy would also bombard me with variations of the GI Joe ‘porkchop sandwiches’ memes, in all likelihood was an editor by day, 4chan shit poster by night.

        • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
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          7 hours ago

          My wife makes a newspaper about me for my birthday every year. She makes the horoscopes too and that’s one of the most entertaining parts for her.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 hours ago

            Yep they are literally complete bullshit and you have to be an actual moron to take them seriously…

            Also I edited in more to my original comment after you replied, did not expect you to reply so fast, haha.

            • Diurnambule@jlai.lu
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              8 hours ago

              He I see, yeah that what i though, their can’t be science behind this. I wonder when we will start to get “AI” horoscopes.

              (I am waiting to enter a music festival, nothing more to do than speak or argue with people)

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                6 hours ago

                There are various complex systems, calculations, tables and such that people use… but there is absolutely no actual empirical science that backs up any of any of them.

                Therr are no plausible causal mechanisms.

                There is also an immense wealth of scientific evidence showing how the predictions are uselessly inaccurate, as well as a bunch of other studies explaining how and why such vaguely worded predictions are convincing to certain kinds of people.

                If there is any science to astrology, it is a science of being a scam artist, of psychological manipulation tactics.

                As for the actual purported mechanisms of generating a horoscope, they often have psuedoscientific levels of complexity that fools rubes who cannot think critically:

                Its complex, and I had to learn it, therefore it’s true and worthwhile!

                Nevermind that it often doesn’t even make testable, falsifiable predictions, and when it does, they are not accurate, they are wrong.

                Throw it out like we did with bloodletting, ‘body humors’, ‘vitalism’, trying to solve disease with sacrifices and prayer, Lamarckian evolution, etc…

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 hours ago

        Then astrology would be the equivalent of an entire belief system that functionally is so complex it essentially contitutes a religion…

        Astrology would be that, but built on urban legend, pre-internet era myths about older video games, like Mew being in the back of a truck in Vermillion city.

        It would be fake cheat codes that don’t work.