…and this is a 
Stooping yet lower
Category: Skepticism
Posted on: August 13, 2007 12:21 PM, by PZ Myers
Richard Dawkins has stirred up a new nest of critics, and they're actually getting space in the media. This time, it's an astrologer complaining about those damned skeptics.
Evidently hoping to prove astrologers are know-nothings, Dawkins' interview started with a lengthy grilling about astronomy - the precession of the equinoxes, sidereal and tropical zodiacs, Kuiper Belt objects. There was the usual objection to astrology dividing people into 12 Sun signs, and my usual reply: that's eight more than the Myers-Briggs personality test used by commerce. Actually, astrology's basic personality types number 1,728.
Ooooh, 1,728. That certainly sounds precise and scientific and all that … of course, the real question is whether these carefully enumerated types correspond to actual personality types, and whether date and hour and place of birth impose that kind of disposition on people. And the answer is no. I could add another arbitrary signifier to his list — say, "were you born at or below sea level, or above sea level?" — and double the number of types assigned by astrology to 3,456 (or more if I start subdividing the altitude!), but it's all utterly meaningless without a mechanism or without replicable evidence.
Like many woo-woo crackpots, there's no brand of nonsense this fellow won't try to defend. Obviously, hard-nosed skeptics must criticize the unknown because it doesn't conform to their paradigms.
Homeopathy and acupuncture are particularly repellent since they work through mechanisms unknown to the laws of physics.
Actually, I think homeopathy and acupuncture are repellent because they don't work.
Oh, well. Critiqued by theologians, now by astrologers … there really isn't much difference in the collection of clowns that gather to throw marshmallows, is there?
Comments
No, it isn't. Myers-Briggs uses four binary categories for a total of 16 possible results.
Posted by: MartinM | August 13, 2007 12:29 PM
Evidently hoping to prove astrologers are know-nothings....
No, the implication is not that astrologers know nothing, it's just that the stuff they know is bullshit.
Phrenology was well-studied by experts in its time, with anatomical charts, formulae, and everything. It was certainly not a field for know-nothings. However, the only personality trait that could be reliably divined from the bumps on the head is clumsiness.
Posted by: Brownian | August 13, 2007 12:31 PM
Yet another article titled "The Dawkins Delusion"...Do people still think that title is somehow clever?
Posted by: Wes | August 13, 2007 12:32 PM
Shoot, he's as well-qualified as most of the others going after Dawkins; his profession is just less respectable, that's all. And I'm not sure that acupuncture is complete BS - it's that the majority of the claims made for it are.
Posted by: Cameron | August 13, 2007 12:37 PM
Exactly, Martin. And I've found that the MB test is incredibly accurate. So far anyone I know that has been tested has said it's been probably 95-99% accurate.
But that astrology test is just ridiculous. Not only because of the amount of personality types, but those questions... bleh. I can't imagine what on Earth the difference would make if I was born above, below, or, heck, AT water level.
Posted by: Tom @Thoughtsic.com | August 13, 2007 12:38 PM
(O)(O)
Posted by: wÒÓ† | August 13, 2007 12:40 PM
Isn't the Myers-Briggs personality test pseudoscience? If so, does this guy want to imply that astrology is 432 times more cranky than the personality test? Sounds about right, actually...
Posted by: valhar2000 | August 13, 2007 12:40 PM
This really nullifies the entire article, if nothing else does.
Posted by: robhoofd | August 13, 2007 12:40 PM
Ironically enough, the ladies who gave us Myers-Briggs were disciples of Jung, who loved astrology and the Tarot. In fact, the basic structure of MB (particularly the four binaries and their sub-structures) was probably taken from the four cardinal signs of astrology (or the four suits of the Tarot deck, with the Court cards being the sub-types).
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | August 13, 2007 12:42 PM
I haven't yet decided whether your MB type reveals any deep truth about your psychology, or merely tells you how you answered the MB test. But even if it's only the latter, deriving personality "type" fom questions about your subjective feelings and preferences is (pardon the pun) light-years more informative than deriving it fron the positions of various planets and stars at the moment you were born.
(I'm INTP, BTW)
Posted by: Eamon Knight | August 13, 2007 12:42 PM
MBTI has 16, not 4, types. And the MBTI is used by commerce, but that doesn't mean it's been accepted as scientific, either (mainly because it hasn't been). Still, INTJ tells you a lot more about me than "Capricorn", apart from my affinity for bock lagers.
Posted by: Dustin | August 13, 2007 12:44 PM
There's just as much evidence for astrology's efficacy as there is for that of Christianity. They both depend on faith in the supernatural and support the notion that some force lurking in the Heavens is controlling our every whim. It's all a ruse for the weak-minded ... but it's still kinda fun to watch from afar.
Posted by: Jeff @ The Atheocracy | August 13, 2007 12:45 PM
Actually, I think you may have overstated the case against both acupuncture and homeopathy. To date, while homeopathy hasn't survived any reputable study I know of, the evidence concerning acupuncture is still teetering both ways. Some studies seem to indicate efficacy in certain situations, at least as much as aspirin. I rather doubt that any discovered efficacy will be due to body meridians, but there are currently attempts to explain why it seems to work in limited circumstances.
Posted by: Tim | August 13, 2007 12:46 PM
No wonder he's so upset. I just ran his name through and determined his number is 3:
Posted by: Brownian | August 13, 2007 12:50 PM
The Myers-Briggs test touches on one of my peeves, personality testing. I've been appalled for years that it's accepted as science, when in reality no personality test has ever been proven to be reliable or valid. I recently read "The Cult of Personality Testing", which did a good job of summarizing the many attempts to capture all of human nature in a bottle.
Posted by: Tim | August 13, 2007 12:51 PM
IIRC, the MB puts you on a continuum of preferences, it doesn't pigeon-hole you into absolutes. For example, I am ISTJ, but the S and J are close to the 50-50 line. So I supposedly have little problem going back and forth from S - N and J - P, but I am hard over I, so have a hella hard time being the gregarious E. It corresponds, somewhat. FWIW.
If astrology is so durned wonderful, why haven't they started applying GPS to it? And why don't the serious astrologers criticize the obviously trashy ones in the daily paper (really, they don't apply any birth location data or ephemeris data, since they are independent of birth year)? Aren't those hacks giving astrology a bad name?
/Nelson HAha
Last, I suppose the dowsing faithful will enter the fray, since the esteemed astrologer slammed them.
Posted by: True Bob | August 13, 2007 12:54 PM
Any scale which claims that the number of basic personality traits or types is larger than 50, let alone 1,728, is clearly out of touch with reality - although I can hardly say say that's a very surprising characteristic of anything coming from an astrologist.
Posted by: forsen | August 13, 2007 12:55 PM
People generally behave fairly reliably in various situations, and different people will behave differently. This is essentially all that is meant by "personality" -- it isn't an attempt to dehumanize or "bottle" human nature.
Posted by: Tulse | August 13, 2007 12:59 PM
PZ, please ban wÒÓ†. (grounds: repeated stupidity)
Posted by: cm | August 13, 2007 1:02 PM
And I've found that the MB test is incredibly accurate. So far anyone I know that has been tested has said it's been probably 95-99% accurate.
Careful, Tom: people say the same sort of thing about their astrological "types", too. Self-reporting is not very reliable about this sort of thing.
Of course, I have to ask the further question: accurate about what? The MB type descriptions basically tell you how you answered the questions, so they could hardly be too far off, could they? Might as well devise a test to sort people into the traditional "four humours" types (as in fact Tim LaHaye's ministry did some years ago), or into the four Hogwart's houses (as I'm sure someone already has). The important question is: does your "type" (derived from whatever taxonomy) tell you anything beyond what you already knew, or the specific details of the questions themselves?
Posted by: Eamon Knight | August 13, 2007 1:04 PM
The number of possible basic personality traits is as infinite as the creativity of the test inventors. To me, all personality tests are sadly lacking, and often as bogus as astrology or phrenology. I don't have electronic text from books on the subject, but Wikipedia has a fairly good exposition of the objections to the Myers-Briggs. Among other things, Jung's theories were never tested, and the entire MB system was almost entirely designed by two women with no scientific training at all. Reliability is particularly poor, and the few studies done on the Myers-Briggs show clear that the "traits" will actually rise and fall unpredictably. Personality tests are proof that modern industrial populations are every bit as susceptible to pseudoscience as Medieval peasants ever were. Ask any HR professional today and they will probably proclaim personality tests to be valuable assets in hiring, when in reality they are unreliable and so flawed that using Tarot cards would yield as much good data.
Posted by: Tim | August 13, 2007 1:05 PM
wÒÓ† stays.
Posted by: Dustin | August 13, 2007 1:09 PM
Typologists like to associate "melancholic" with the NT group.
Posted by: Dustin | August 13, 2007 1:12 PM
cue: "Clown Strike" (Elvis Costello)
(reaching for putty nose)
That's right, kids! Check out my shoes! (honk honk)
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | August 13, 2007 1:13 PM
Aw, people, although I haven't even read the alleged astrologer's piece, I can tell it's a parody. He/she spelled "Myers" correctly!
Posted by: Pleistoscenic | August 13, 2007 1:14 PM
It's a dangerou slippery slope. First you believe in one Mid-Eastern woo about stars, next thing you know, you're believing in some other Mid-Eastern woo that has some myth about an all-powerful Sky JuJu.
Posted by: J-Dog | August 13, 2007 1:21 PM
Uhhh...I don't understand. The guy has posted like 10-20 times the same post which has no content other than uses parentheses and periods to look like this: (O)(O), and then it links to a page on boobies (the bird). You think this is worth keeping?
Accumulate enough inane detritus like that on a blog comments community and smart cool people get turned off. The internet has enough crap on it already. Let's not let good things get MySpace-ified by inane crap, OK?
Posted by: cm | August 13, 2007 1:23 PM
heh. when I was at Microsoft, they had us take this kind of test, except the categories were different (probably, we suspected, to avoid nastygrams from the Myers-Briggs copyright lawyers).
I don't remember all four categories, but "Artistic", "Technical", and "Driver" are the ones I remember. We were rated along two axes, so you might be "Driver Technical" or "Technical Artistic" or whatever.
One of our "Driver Driver"s began referring to his designation as "Asshole Asshole", and that stuck, at least in our group.
Posted by: thalarctos | August 13, 2007 1:26 PM
i sometimes wonder if there might be a grain of truth in astrological sign stereotypes, based on climate conditions during formative months in development (i started thinking this way when i noticed that i shared some similarities with other people i knew who had september birthdays). apparently no evidence of this has been found. however, there appears to be a significant association with suicidal ideation (see Stack & Lester, 1988). i don't know if that's been replicated or not.
it's actually not hard to imagine that if your first few months of awareness occur in the winter, when outside is unliveable and inside is toasty warm, it might affect you on a subconscious level. but i guess we'd expect a big effect in propensity for outdoor activities or something else that we'd have definitively documented by now.
Posted by: le_sacre | August 13, 2007 1:26 PM
Homeopathy didn't work for me, but I had my first acupuncture session as part of a larger PT session last Friday, and it seemed to help a lot. The trick is, it needs to be in conjunction with other methods, and be administered by someone who actually knows what they're doing (my PT friend is an expert in at least a dozen different PT techniques). That said, half the needles hurt going in and coming out so it's not something I'd likely try again.
Posted by: Elayne Riggs | August 13, 2007 1:29 PM
"i sometimes wonder if there might be a grain of truth in astrological sign stereotypes, based on climate conditions during formative months in development"
Then it would only work in one region of the world - it would be opposite int he wouthern hemsiphere and completely different in the torpics.
"Actually, I think you may have overstated the case against both acupuncture" I agree, acupuncture may have some pain relief benefits - aftera all they have done operations under it without the patient screaming (this could also be suggestion). Though as an entire medical system it is a failure.
Posted by: sailor | August 13, 2007 1:34 PM
Darn it, PZ, you're such a Pisces!
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 13, 2007 1:37 PM
I agree, Woot needs to go. Would you put up with other posters not contributing in any way to the conversation with inane crap?
As for Accupuncture, Elayne. If it was used in conjunction with other methods how do you know it wasn't one of those other methods working and not the AP?
Posted by: Jeff | August 13, 2007 1:40 PM
I thought that WOO's statement was a comment on the vapidity of the astrologers critique. But regardless, its a 6 character statement, and I'm not bothered by it. What I am bothered by is someone trying to get another commenter banned, even after the blogs owner has said he won't.
As for astrology, I'm sure better tests for validity have been determined, but I think if you took a random sampling of people and sat them down with an astrologer for ten minutes or so, and had the astrologer ask them questions to determine their personality traits, and then see if the astrologer can determine the persons sign. My guess is that they could get about 1 in 12 right.
Posted by: Robert | August 13, 2007 1:42 PM
You know, I'm always worry that I obsess too much with arguments in cyberspace.
But after reading the link provided by Dustin (#22), I feel completely normal. Dustin's right: wÒÓ† has earned a little slack. Perhaps his outbursts of juvenilia here is a way of letting off steam from his marathon slugfest with JAD.
Speaking of which, I knew the latter was a crank, but 900+ posts of insults and non-sequeturs? Is this a record? Has someone contacted Guinness?
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | August 13, 2007 1:48 PM
Speaking of the Tarot-reading subset of all such fortune-telling frauds, that was the source of the piece of damning footage which we are not now going to be permitted to see.
Posted by: SEF | August 13, 2007 1:48 PM
"For scientism, however, personal experience is not admissible. Everything must be subject to randomised, controlled double-blind trials."
Reminds me of Mr. Burns criticizing Martin's nuclear power plant model that actually generated power. "So cold and sterile. Where's the heart?"
And where's the pixie dust?
Posted by: Rey Fox | August 13, 2007 1:53 PM
Scott Hatfield, OM:
I'm not much of a drinker, but that much crankery would propel me towards a beer.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | August 13, 2007 1:55 PM
You overstate the case against acupunture. Its effective for treating a lot of pain. That doesnt mean that meridans exist or that an acupunturist is manipulating chi. But it is proven to reduce certain kinds of pain. If I had a pinched nerve or something, I'd feel good choosing acupunture.
Posted by: tomk | August 13, 2007 1:55 PM
Ok then, the non-intelligence of woot stays, some of us leave.
See ya.
Posted by: Jeff | August 13, 2007 2:03 PM
Have you seen the volume of inane crap that gets posted here?
(I'm not singling anyone out, and sometimes I contribute to the inane crap myself. )
I've emailed woot, and he's a reasonable fellow. I'm not going to evict someone for posting something that's short and harmless, if rather too repetitive, but you could try asking nicely that he limit the posting a little bit.
Posted by: PZ Myers | August 13, 2007 2:03 PM
I think Woot's cute, for what it's worth....
Posted by: Caveat | August 13, 2007 2:06 PM
My horospcope for today says to change my routine, so I'm going to resist the impusle to comment.
As the Moon prepares to move out of your second house you may find yourself reflecting deeply on your relationship to your day to day lifestyle. This is a great time to make changes in your routine in order to breathe some new life and enthusiasm into the way you look at your world.
On the other hand, I'm told by another horoscope site:
You're feeling pretty good about a recent development, and now is a great time to spread the word -- or at least to talk about building on it. Most people are ready to hear what you've got to say.
Hey, that's right, I feel really good about this new assault on stupidity by Dawkins. How did they know that!
Time to spread the word!
Posted by: CalGeorge | August 13, 2007 2:09 PM
Penn & Teller found someone that has a pretty good explanation. He also conducted experiments. Having once been a believer in it, he now goes around showing why its complete BS. His findings:
1. It works even if people merely *think* they have had needles stuck into them.
2. It works even if you use the wrong locations.
3. It works **as long as** the practitioner sounds like they believe in it and has a convincing and complicated explanation of how it works, where the version they use originated and how effective its been for other people.
I.e., its all placebo effect. It says more about how we have neglected the mental state of patients when treating them than anything else. But also represents a ethical issue. If lying to a patient about the effectiveness of a treatment improves its effectiveness, is it ethical to do so, or is just lying at all unacceptable?
Posted by: Kagehi | August 13, 2007 2:26 PM
To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced astrology ISN'T true. Although I'm fully aware that it can simply be a con job (having personally known more folks who do this, and do it well) I also think there may be some truth in it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out consulting astrologers or anything, but I'm intrigued by the basic theory-- and see if it doesn't make sense to you when I lay it out a bit differently:
If the universe has regular, understandable laws, then knowing the future of the system should be as obvious as understanding the past. Daniel Dennett (sp?) does a pretty good job convincing me that the universe is mechanical in nature, and also points out that if something is in the universe, it has to be connected to something else SOMEHOW....
Take all this, and set it aside for a second.
Now imagine that you're looking at this system, examining it to determine what's happening. To me, it makes sense to look at the largest moving "parts," especially if you're really just beginning to understand how everything is going together. Astrology seems to be doing just that-- examining massive movements to determine something smaller.
I don't think astrology is saying that the planets or stars are CAUSING these events, as much as they are allowing folks to read them-- the difference between believing an odometer causes your car to go fast, and understanding that you're reading a simplified indicator of what is occurring in your engine.
Without getting bogged down in the details of astrology (much of which I'm sure is either wrong or simply made-up) can anyone tell me why what I wrote above doesn't make sense?
Posted by: DaveX | August 13, 2007 2:27 PM
I read the article at the weekend, same as most of the others, someone who objects to the message itself, so complains about that rather than addressing what Dawkins actually says - what little criticism there is, is incorrect.
Which I don't recall Dawkins saying.There was another review in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2146483,00.html
Plus one in the Sunday express, complaining that the main thrust of The God Delusion was an attack on Creationism and that Dawkins was trying to tar all believers with that brush
Posted by: G. Shelley | August 13, 2007 2:39 PM
astrology is qualitatively different that creationism:
it makes falsifiable claims
we can propose experiments, and do statistical analysis. astrology make predictions, which we can then see if they come true. if they're worthwhile and specific enough. of course, the problem with making testable predictions is that, if you're bullshit like astrology, it becomes pretty quickly obvious.
Posted by: arachnophilia | August 13, 2007 2:42 PM
DaveX, one thing I can tell you is that it's a lot like acupuncture. As Kagehi noted well above, acupuncture is almost all placebo. Anything real results from acupuncture that aren't placebo may exist, but they have no thing to do with acupuncturists' explanations for why it works (meridians of energy throughout the body, and so on). There may be some explanation for the small percentage of it that's not placebo (if there is any at all), but meridians aren't it.
Same goes for astrology. There COULD be some relation between when you were born and what your personality type is. As we've seen through Dawkins and others, though, there's no PROOF of that, and there's certainly no real scientific evidence. There may be a relation between when you were born and what your personality is, though I doubt it, but the explanations about position of the stars in the sky when you were born hardly makes sense as an explanation.
Posted by: george | August 13, 2007 2:43 PM
Probably because in your example, there is a direct relationship between the two. There is no such relationship between events on earth and the stars - they continue on their way, no matter what happens here, we cannot change them, and there is no mechanism by which they can effect us. Nor is there any reason to suppose that some being set up the universe so that the stars would be a mirror of the events on this one particular planet.
That and the fact that study after study show that neither star signs, nor birth charts have any correlation to personality, experience, achievements or any aspect of life and that people can not pick out their chart any more than would be expected by random chance, or that astronomers cannot identify a person's chart from personality tests. Plus, there is no indication of how these ancients collated the vast amounts of data (including very specific birth times) and were able to extract valid traits out of them.
Posted by: G. Shelley | August 13, 2007 2:47 PM
Usually the inane crap that gets posted here is at least expressed in the form of sentences. Woot may be a decent chap and wrote that other screed against some flake, but who cares.
So, ok, if he stays, then can I ask you Woot, please stop posting that same post over and over? In fact, could you never post it again? That would be great.
(Sweet Jesus almighty I need to find something better to do with my time)
Posted by: cm | August 13, 2007 2:47 PM
DaveX (#45):
Yes: things fall. If you place something (like, say, an astrologer) someplace in the solar system, he will fall in a way proscribed by the placement, mass, and motion of these large bodies. And it (he) will either go into an orbit, leave the system, or smack into something.
That's a pretty simple and profound effect. But why would your personality and fate get affected by this? And if it did, why wouldn't it be a big and pronounced effect? And if it were that big and pronounced, why wouldn't there be less subtle variations: I.e. children born in the winter vs summer, or daytime vs nighttime?
This guy actually thinks it's a -strength- of his argument that there are many more than 12 Sun signs, when in fact it's a detriment. Your argument is that big simple things should have effects.. but big simple things should in general have big simple effects, and little distant things should have subtle or nonexistant effects. Not the other way around.
---Nathaniel
Posted by: Nathaniel | August 13, 2007 2:48 PM
See, only a fake astrologer (did someone say, "oxymoron?") claims 12 signs. The REAL astrologers (can you hear the sarcasm?) know about the 13th, Ophiuchus.
Of course, since there's this whole other guy in the sky, that leads them to realize that the sky and stars have moved over the years and the constellations no longer apply to the correct months which means that the little categories no longer apply correctly to personalities...Ophiuchus is the short-cut to making astrologer's heads explode via science. He's the freakin' symbol of modern medicine, snake and all, LOL, and yet very few astrologers even know he exists because it makes their little illusion go poof.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus
http://www.geocities.com/astrologyconstellations/ophiuchus.htm
Posted by: K | August 13, 2007 2:52 PM
Those of you who haven't been reading blogs for a long time, or haven't followed the progressive political blogs might be excused for not knowing this, but w00t is a blogospheric legend, and Pharyngula is blessed to have him.
I first ran into w00t on Eschaton's comment threads back in 2000, before most folks had even heard of blogging. There was a lot of talk about banning him them, too. And at first, I was one of his critics. But here's the deal: He's a mostly harmless guy who injects a note of juvenile whimsy into contentious threads. The boobies are a comment on the dimwits and rascals like the astrologer PZ linked to in this post.
He rarely speaks in his own voice, but when he does (as in the comment thread Justin linked to), he shows himself to be one of the good guys.
At some point, I lost track of w00t and assumed he'd retired from posting boobies, so I was really delighted when he showed up here.
And, c'mon, boobies! The most lovably goofy of all seabirds! What more could you want? Titis?
Posted by: HP | August 13, 2007 2:54 PM
The worst is this charlatan is paid by what once was a paper of reference. Nothing moves in the Media world without its astrologer. Lets face it, there is no proper news anymore anything printed is seen via the lens of entertainment.
Posted by: bruno giordano | August 13, 2007 2:54 PM
Chiming in: the MB test is considered a useful tool precisely because it is taken by rating the subject based on their ACTUAL responses and experiences and then comparing their answers to a huge huge statistical pool of other people's results on the same exact test. That's at the very least a _plausible_ mechanism by which people can get a sense of themselves as compared to others when looking for, say, a career that fits their personality and interests. If by and large people that feel they are successful and fulfilled nurses all score in similar ranges (and they do), and this i because nursing in general involves similar sorts of tasks and social interactions, then if you have similar scores this is at least a helpful guide to the fact that nursing might fit you well as a career. Remember: after stripping away the Jungian rhetoric, the test is basically pretty simplistic: successful nurses need to be able to relate well and empathize with patients, and the questions basically rate whether or not that sort of thing appeals to you. Not exactly rocket science.
I'm not trying to sell the test as purely scientific: it is, of course, a subjective tool and used in psychology. But it does have all the plausible mechanisms of usefulness that things like astrology completely lack.
Posted by: plunge | August 13, 2007 2:59 PM
Hey, 1728 is 12 to the 3rd! (Stop looking at me like that. There's a famous Ramanujan story about it, and a fairly well-known Feynman anecdote, too.) Without knowing anything else about this particular astro-buffoon, I'd guess that they sell you horoscopes with three Zodiac signs instead of one.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | August 13, 2007 3:10 PM
I'm liveblogging Dawkins sticking the boot in to wooists on UK TV
Posted by: lunartalks | August 13, 2007 3:12 PM
Just a note to say that Dawkins' "The Enemies of Reason" is broadcasting on Channel 4 right this moment. Oh, it's painful to watch, being exposed to this much foolishness.
Posted by: NelC | August 13, 2007 3:17 PM
It is simple. There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those that understand binary, and those who don't.
Posted by: Robster, FCD | August 13, 2007 3:17 PM
I think the Ramanujan story was about 1729 (which was the number of GH Hardy's cab when he was visiting Ramanujan in the hospital, Hardy said the number was unremarkable, Ramanujan said that it was in fact remarkable being the smallest integer which could be expressed two different ways as the sum of two cubes), unless we're thinking of different stories (there are quite a few).
Posted by: Dustin | August 13, 2007 3:19 PM
the MBTI test may not be pseudoscience, exactly, but that doesn't mean it's useful or meaningful. it might measure "real" aspects of personality yet not tell us anything we can use.
it splits people into binary categories based on where they fall on linear scales; very well, if that is to make sense, we should expect that the statistical distributions along these scales ought to be bimodal, so that relatively few people should fall near the dividing lines. but as far as i'm aware, this is not so --- the actual distributions appear to be nearly bell curves, and the dividing line seems to go through the curves' crests. (google MBTI criticisms for references, that's all i did.)
moreover, individual variability over time is large enough that people can randomly flip pigeonhole in any category where they're near the middle already, as most people apparently are. so the MBTI, for possibly most folks, is similar to flipping a coin four times.
i've taken the thing a number of times, and it seems i coin-flip along three of the four axae. the extroversion -- introversion axis i always, reliably, max out introverted. but i knew i was an introverted nerd long before i heard of the MBTI, so what good does that do me?
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | August 13, 2007 3:21 PM
The smallest positive integer that can be expressed in two different ways as the sum of two different cubes, that is.
Posted by: Dustin | August 13, 2007 3:22 PM
oh, and concerning w00t: i second HP, comment #53. that is all.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | August 13, 2007 3:23 PM
Well, sure, it's 12^3. The number makes perfect sense if you view a basic chart as requiring at least the Sun, Moon and Ascendent signs (the big three, you might say). Throw the other planets (Mer, Ven, Mars, Jup, Sat, Nep, Ura) into the equation and the number goes up fast:
61,917,364,224
Yup, almost 62 billion personality types accounted for based on planet/sign alignments, without even considering angles. That's a pretty fine degree of granularity - but, as everyone correctly points out, it's only meaningful if those types correlate to anything real. Sure, I have plenty of Gemini traits - but so do plenty of people who don't have a Gemini sun.
The argument that serious astrology is complex and nuanced is true enough, but hey, so is Middle Earth. If you lay out a complete chart, just about any observable personality trait can be accounted for by something in the chart, which lends an aura of accuracy and legitimacy to the chart, which proves... nothing, really, other than that the array of traits made available by any chart are likely to cover traits that actually exist. Traits that appear in the chart that don't seem to manifest in the individual to whom the chart applies are arbitrarilly dismissed as being below the threshold of observability.
Posted by: Kseniya | August 13, 2007 3:46 PM
ah the observer. The guardians embarrassing stable mate, as shown in the recent stupidity over MMR.
I am surprised they didnt stick it on comment is free blog though, since they have been constantly running pro-religion or pro-atheism threads just to watch the page count spiral.
Posted by: kevinj | August 13, 2007 3:49 PM
Damn, people! Sometimes I swear it's like I'm talking to monkeys or something. I don't think for a second that planets or stars CAUSE anything about our personalities. Get that? I'm sick of writing something as plainly as I possibly can, only to have it re-interpreted for me. It's frustrating, like pointing out circular arguments to a Jehovah's Witness.
What I'm saying is that if the universe is a closed system (and how could it not be? if something isn't affected by, or affecting something else, it CAN'T be IN the universe, right??) then I don't see how it isn't possible to look at ANYTHING and not use some sort of process to determine the past, the future, the present, etc. If I follow this thought to the extreme, I don't see why with a number of calculations, one couldn't read a snot pattern and tell you all about the life cycle of a cheetah. I am merely suggesting that it is quite possible that astrology is a simpler method of this-- not an act of divination or magic-- and that "reading" the stars or planets or whatever may be the easiest method, simply due to their enormity.
How can this be wrong?
Posted by: DaveX | August 13, 2007 3:56 PM
I wonder how many people who simply write off acupuncture as crap know what they're talking about. Double-blind studies about acupuncture are avaliable on PubMed and WebofScience and they're worth reading. The degree of placebo effect in acupuncture is overstated, and there has been evidence to support the theory that acupuncture works as a mechanism to stimulate biochemical responses in the superficial fascia. (As well as other testable hypotheses regarding its utility and function.)
Uninformed opinions are damned annoying.
Posted by: J Daley | August 13, 2007 4:03 PM
There are two problems that I see with the situation as you lay it out, DaveX:
1.) It isn't true that everything in the universe acts on everything else. First of all, things cannot have an effect on things that are too far away to be influenced within the life of the universe, given the speed of light as an upper speed limit; and
2.) The effects that are supposed might be so small or otherwise dwarfed by other effects that their analysis is meaningless.
Using your claim, if the positions of the sun, moon, and planets have an effect on my personality, then the positions must also contributed to the fact that English is my native language. However, I think there are better explanations for my Anglophoneness.
Posted by: Brownian | August 13, 2007 4:09 PM
Oops, forgot to add:
What's with the "Ban Woot" movement, here? I can't imagine a more harmless, even oddly charming, bit of running-joke silliness. I'd be more willing to support a six-month moratorium on the use and abuse of the "PYGMIES+DWARFS" reference. :-)
Posted by: Kseniya, OM | August 13, 2007 4:10 PM
Helene Langevin at the University of Vermont researches the mechanism of acupuncture. Go ahead and inform your opinion.
Posted by: J Daley | August 13, 2007 4:12 PM
DaveX:
Chaos. Quantum effects. The fact that mountains, much less our moon and sun, mass a hell of a lot more than a cheetah and have a far greater gravitational effect on snot than a feline ever will. The fact that physics isn't everything, and that chemical and biological influences impact on things like snot.
Posted by: Tulse | August 13, 2007 4:13 PM
DaveX
Re: Atrology as possible. Sure, why not! However, please enlighten me with some mechanisms that would somehow cause my personality to be corrolated with the mass of the universe? Is this gravitational? Electromagnetic? Neutrino-flux, perhaps?
To recap: *anything* is possible - but just saying so is merely a hypothesis. To move beyong mental wanking (which I indulge in frequently, I might add) you must define experiments that challenge the hypothesis to determine the (in)validity of the hypothesis.
This, demonstrably, has failed for atrology. I have never seen/heard of any experiment that supported *any* of astrology's claims.
So - sorry for crapping of the party. But bring a hypothesis that is somehow *TESTABLE* and then come back with the results.
As someone mentioned earlier, the number of 'potential traits' according to the position of the local planets is of the order 62 billion, without even considering discrete angles. Quite a challenge you've set yourself.
Posted by: tony | August 13, 2007 4:17 PM
Returning to the personality test pseudoscience, I suppose it would be harmless if it weren't taken so seriously by those who least understand it. Organizations make hiring decisions based on the Myers-Briggs, for example. Other tests purport to predict honesty, diligence, and performance. During one off-site extravaganza I attended some years ago, everyone was given the MB, almost as a lark. But then when we split into small teams to evaluate the resumes of hypothetical "new team members", people were seriously scrutinizing the MB attributes on the resumes of the fictitious new members, trying to see if they would fit into the team. It was obvious to me then and remains even more so today that only being on a team can predict how someone will function on a team. Social dynamics are extremely complex and no test will provide a reliable predictor. But mine was a lonely voice in the wilderness. New members were accepted or rejected on their MB ratings alone. It's a pitiful case of faux modeling, assigning useless numbers to a phenomenon and then pretending they have meaning. I've come to refer to this as GIGO - garbage in, gospel out. I see it in statistical analysis all the time. This is not rare behavior even by the educated among us. The hunger for determinism is as powerful as the urge for sex, and perhaps even more so. Men and women religious will forgo sex, belongings, and personal liberty to gain at least the illusion of determinism.
Posted by: Tim | August 13, 2007 4:17 PM
DaveX:
It's not *even* wrong. It's simply woo. (see previous post on how to get into the *merely wrong* category)
Posted by: tony | August 13, 2007 4:20 PM
Kseniya, I noticed that, while you don't normally append OM to your name, you did for this comment. Was that intended to inject a little seniority to your statement?
'Cause that doesn't make you the boss of the world you know.
Posted by: Brownian | August 13, 2007 4:23 PM
The claim of astrology having "1,728 personality types instead of 12" is undermined by Spencer's own horoscopes published in the same edition of that newspaper.
"There was the usual objection to astrology dividing people into 12 Sun signs, ... Actually, astrology's basic personality types number 1,728." - Neil Spencer, Aug 12th 2007, 'The Observer'
"Your astrological week ahead" (for each of 12 zodiacal signs) - Neil Spencer, Aug 12th 2007, 'The Observer'.
Posted by: Rob Hinkley | August 13, 2007 4:23 PM
Dustin (#60):
Sure, the Hardy/Ramanujan anecdote revolved around 1729, but you can't remember the punchline without knowing the significance of 1728.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | August 13, 2007 4:30 PM