Re: [Pen-l] Jared Diamond and the New Yorker, part 2

[Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 9, 2009, at 3:37 PM, Jim Devine wrote:

me:

to test astrology's validity, I'll tell you all the details about my

life (except my birthday and related) and you tell me when I was born.

Shane:

Astrologers don't do that sort of stage-magic trick.  Anyway, a sample of

one has very limited statistical significance (nor am I, though literate, a

competent astrologer).

it's not a stage trick. If astrology can crank out "predictions"
(vague that they are) about X (the stars) causing Y (my life), then
they should be able to predict X based on Y. A chemist can tell pretty
well what chemicals were involved just by looking at the nature of the
reaction, for example.

That's not how any scientific method works.  A "prediction" is a specification of *probabilities*.  Because of the random element in all natural occurrences it can never be anything else, so a unique occurrence can never be retrocalculated validly to some set of previous conditions (otherwise one could, from the fact of a hurricane, discover exactly which butterflies were flapping their wings when).  Moreover the "X causing Y" model, because of multiple causation, never works (outside utterly trivial cases like the motion of my body, once my foot is descending, determining just where that foot will land--and even then retrocalculation of exactly where my foot had been when it left the ground would be utterly impossible).  That's why a statistical test of the sort I outlined ("Take fifty matched pairs--one a lottery winner, one a victim of a fatal automobile accident.  Give birthday/time/place and event day/time place for each to 200 professional astrologers [sample size=10,000].  Tell them to identify which was which in each case.  Test the percentage of correct identifications for statistical significance") is the only way in which a complex model--like one that claims for the "stars" (the electromagnetic balance of the solar system) a degree of influence over the course of an individual life--can be "confirmed" or "disconfirmed."

Shane Mage

This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it

always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,

kindling in measures and going out in measures."

Herakleitos of Ephesos

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