The Placebo Effect in Astrology

[Guest guest]

Hello, everyone.

 

When I was in college, I took a course called " ESP and the Paranormal. "

 

One of the things that came up was a study which has great relevance to

astrologers, since, like a sugar pill that cures a sick person because the

sick person thinks it's real medicine, astrology can " seem " to work when it

doesn't.

 

A group of students were presented in class a handout describing the

correlation between personality types and where students prefer to sit in

class. There were three categories: right side, middle of the room, and left

side, and three different personality descriptions, one for each part of the

room. Each student was asked to rate the accuracy of the description. Most

of them said it was, but what they didn't know was that the three personality

types were randomly distributed throughout the room.

 

Astrology has a similar potential for this type of effect, since the

astrologer is giving the client information that he/she obviously hasn't made

up, making it look " objective " . It can fool the astrologer, too, for similar

reasons. This is why I believe in delineations based on empirical evidence

rather than on tradition.

 

As Chuck Houck noted in a 1995 _The Mountain Astrologer_ article, roughly

seventy-five percent of his clients acted more like the preceding Sun Sign

rather than their own. That's when he started looking at Vedic Astrology,

which uses a fixed zodiac. (As most of you probably know by now, the

Tropical " signs " are almost a full " sign " off from the constellations that

gave them their names.)

 

On astrology , I've proposed an experiment, and t would go like

this:

 

Using several individuals, there would be three versions of each person's

natal chart, but using three of four possible zodiacs: Tropical, Sidereal,

Draconic, and a " dummy " . They would be sent out over a period of time, and,

to keep it fair, there would be no indication as to which version one was

getting. Each respondant would delineate each chart as if it were the Zodiac

of their choice. For the last step, I would reveal the individuals' names

and then we'd see which Zodiac everyone thought fit each person best.

 

Already, even before it's begun, one of the Tropicalists has tacitly admitted

their Zodiac will fail by explaining why " it won't work. " (Similar

criticisms were made against rockets, vaccines, computers, and other useful

inventions, too, so I'm going ahead with it.) I, OTOH, will concede that the

Tropical Zodiac is useful -- IF and only IF -- the Tropical delineations turn

out to be the more accurate.

 

Later,

Kevin/Baraka