• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    science can test the hypothesis that astrology is accurate in various ways

    This is true

    theory is able to accurately predict the world around us then it is still a good theory

    This is also true

    The moment you start making absolute statements based on the above, no matter how unanimous the evidence, you have left the realm of science and your brain begins to succumb to the rot. If we treated well supported models as gospel, we’d still be using the Newtonian gravitational model.

    The entire point of science is to admit the fundamental uncertainty of all human knowledge, and develop the tools to develop better models. Yes, every model is wrong. Some allow us to make very accurate predictions, but they are all imperfect approximations.

    No scientific model justifies absolute certainty

    • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Yet every time astrology is tested it has failed.

      Evolution is basically a scientific certainty at this point because every single test has shown it to be true, and no one has every been able to disprove it. We don;t understand every single nuance and mechanism of evolution, but the fact evolution is occurring and has occurred in the past is a certainty.

      Gravity is a certainty at this point. Again we don’t fully understand the exact causes of gravity, but the fact it exists is certain.

      And every test to try and show any validity to astrology has failed, astrology is nothing but a scam.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Again, I tested it, I found some evidence of success. You can say that that test isn’t statistically significant, you can question my methodologies, but you cannot say that every test has failed.

        This conversation isn’t about astrology, I don’t believe in astrology. This conversation is about mental hygiene, and the creeping fundamentalism that stifles scientific progress. Certainty is unscientific.

          • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            Astrology on the same hand I’m not so sure about. I’m not so sure about anything, because being so sure is brain rot at best and narcissism at worst.

            “Scientific consensus is absolute truth” is the antithesis of science. Truth is fundamentally unknowable. Science is absolutely by far the best method we have for approximating truth, but it can only ever be an approximation. An extremely consistent, useful, and accurate approximation of course, good enough to make important decisions with. But it is epistemologically ridiculous to declare absolute truth.

            Once you start letting that kind of absolutism in, you’re lost. That’s why scientific papers don’t say “we proved that X causes Y”, they say “we observed a strong correlation between the presence of X and the result Y”.