The dumbest people on Earth are also the most arrogant

Astrology and people who believe in it are unfathomably stupid

One time, my friend's wife sat me down to talk about homeopathy. It was the most offended I've ever been (and I get offended pretty easily; I once threatened my friend with a knife when he said Breaking Bad was better than The Wire [granted, I've never seen Breaking Bad beyond the very first episode and the very last episode]). Why was I so offended? With absolute conviction, this community college (hey, I went to community college too) attendee was telling me about how everything professional doctors (you know, people who have devoted years of their lives to this practice) are wrong, but I should listen to her because she did her own research. Look, there’s a lot to criticize about the actual US healthcare system, but I’m going to trust a doctor over some chick who swears by homeopathy because vibes.

People who are into homeopathy are no different than flat-Earthers, QAnon people, or any of those types. They've reached a level of pure arrogance that has them believing they know better than everyone else, but it's always in support of something overwhelmingly ridiculous and stupid. Even so, none of those people are as bad as people who believe in astrology. While the number of people who believe the Earth is flat is far too high, the percentage of people who believe in astrology is staggering.

If you believe in astrology, you aren't just an idiot but a bad person. What also baffles me about astrology is how frequently I run into university-educated, professional, for all intents and purposes, intelligent people who vehemently believe in horoscopes. What's going on?

First and foremost, beyond all the criticisms that can be lobbed at astrology, at the center of it all is just how unbelievably egocentric it all is. Some people used to think the sun orbited the Earth and Earth was the center of the universe, but astrology enjoyers take it a step further and believe they are literally the center of the universe, and all the constellations are there revolving around Oliva to determine whether she’s compatible with Kyler.

I do not know what my sign is. I'm not being purposely cheeky; I'm serious. It played no part in my upbringing and certainly plays no part in my life now. I never even bothered to look into it out of curiosity.

At its most basic, astrology is the belief that the apparent position of some astronomical objects in the sky at the time of birth influences a person’s character and can predict their future.

Western astrology is thousands of years old and is a mix of Babylonian, Hellenic, and Egyptian beliefs. These cabrones used the position of the sun and planets in relation to special constellations to make predictions, i.e., horoscopes.

I’m going to quote my boy Neil deGrasse Tyson from a video he did here. We actually went to school together, and he was a pretty mediocre student, but he grew up to be a great scientist. He owes me five dollars, and I want my money back. Neil said, "The brightest star in the night sky is called Sirius. It would rise just before the sun. 5000 years ago, it happened to do that at the time of year when the Nile flooded, enabling the ancient Egyptians to irrigate their lands and their fields. And so you say, 'There it is! This caused the rise of the Nile.' So, you can get a correspondence, a correlation, but miss the cause and effect of it. That’s how we went for thousands of years, believing that the universe actually cares about us, and cares about who you are, and your social life, and your financial life. And then we learn no, the Earth is not in the middle of it all; we orbit the sun like the other planets. And these constellations are really, sorry excuses for what they’re pretending to be. You connect the dots. Are you really drawing a crab? Really? There’s a centaur archer? Not only are you going to draw that, you’re going to put personality traits (okay, it's getting hard to transcribe here; my homie is using a lot of "uhms" and pauses, so lord knows where the punctuation goes, I’m doing my best). And, by the way, the people who came up with this are sleepless, Babylonian (racist, my mom is half Babylonian), Romans and Greeks. Alright. They're not getting any sleep. So they wake up, go 'I got a story,' they tell a story, put it in the sky, name gods after it. Now, you're going to say that the stories of these sleepless civilizations have such meaning that the stars in this night sky, which would look different from any other angle, somehow know that YOU were born and want to influence you. It's a holdover from a pre-scientific era from when we genuinely thought the Earth was in the middle of the known universe.”

Thanks, Neil, give me my money.

Stars are unbelievably far apart. Our closet star is Alpha Centauri. To reach it using our technology available, it would take humans about 150,000 years to get there. That is our CLOSEST star. Constellations only look the way they do to us due to our point of view from where we observe them. If you change that point of view, the design and meaning we, people, have assigned to them completely change and fall apart.

Now I want to talk about a person named Olivia Goldhill who wrote a piece called Skepticism of astrology isn’t particularly smart. Olivia's Epic PWNING of Skeptics

Early into her piece, she states, "But it seems rash to think that astrology, which has been practiced by humans for millennia, is complete bunk. Personally, some of my friends who enjoy astrology that are among the most intelligent people I know. Perhaps they’re seeing something that the eye-rolling skeptics have missed?”

First of all, lots of asinine things have been practiced for millennia. Something being old doesn't inherently make it wise. My neighbor Jim is in his eighties, and he's an absolute imbecile. Oh, was that anecdotal? Well, so is saying, "Some of my friends who enjoy astrology are among the most intelligent people I know." Great evidence, Olivia, you little tart.

She brings up Plato several times to sound smart and impress the philosophy undergrads. You know what else Plato believed in? He was a strong advocate for censorship. He believed the state should mandate “happy” music and “military” music and that thoughtful, introspective music should be banned. His ideas about the ideal state were based on the presumption it was actually objectively possible to determine who was wiser. Also, he was Greek. I rest my case.

Let's talk about Heraclitus; he was another pretty smart old Greek fella. He was so smart that in attempting to cure himself from dropsy, he covered himself in cow shit. Did it cure him? Of course not; he ended up immobile and was eaten by dogs.

Look, even smart people are capable of believing in stupid ass shit, just as a broken clock is still right twice a day. Olivia is being sneaky here by using Plato as evidence of astrology being smart. Look, the ancient world was full of stupidity. Who can blame them? They didn’t know what stars were made of or what black holes were or how old the universe was or what the big bang is. You know what else? They didn’t even have PlayStations back then. I'm not even talking about PS5s; they didn't even have PlayStation Ones. Plato never saw a single Star War movie. Fuck Plato.

Hey, know who else believed in astrology? THE NAZIS. Those weirdos dabbled, especially because they wanted an alternative to what they considered Jewish sciences like physics.

Olivia says, "Astrology's attribution of personal characteristics to external forces also makes it easier to honestly assess one's own qualities, both negative and positive: When the planets are credited for sins and achievements, there's less cause for self-flagellation. Meanwhile, one friend said, "as a woman who is way more comfortable interrogating my flaws," astrology's positive spin on personality traits encourages some healthy self-regard…..Astrology’s focus on external forces encourages people to be aware of their limitations (as determined by the planets), as well as how to respond to these limitations….Astrology also points to the universality of experiences. As my friend explained, it’s comforting to realize that a significant proportion of people relate to the same Zodiac profiles and so have gone through similar emotional angst.”

What are we doing here, people? I need a fucking Zodiac sign to help me relate to someone else's struggles? I can’t just use my own cognitive functions and empathy as a human being? Do I need a star sign to tell me? Attributing personal characteristics to external forces sounds a lot to me, like, "I know I'm a huge cunt with an atrocious personality that I should probably work on, but none of that is my fault. It's external forces, innit?”

Everyone who died on September 11^th clearly was of the same zodiac sign.

She finishes with, "Ultimately, whether the planets really shape our personality or experiences is entirely irrelevant. Astrology is a way to impose meaning on life.”

Imagine needing astrology to give you meaning. Imagine thinking there is meaning or that the universe is there for the benefit of our comprehension of a concept such as meaning.

Astrology predates all modern science, and that's kind of where the issue lies. It was made at a time when people didn't fucking know anything. Now, we do. The signs of the Zodiac don't mean anything. They aren’t natural shapes nor shapes made for our benefit. We played connect the dots and forced shapes out of them. If you were an alien on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, the night sky would look different to you. Point of view.

The more science developed and discoveries have been made, the more it replaced pseudoscience and mysticism. The great thing about science is that, unlike dogmatic beliefs, it is subject to change. When more information becomes available, the science updates. Astronomy is one such science that has replaced any need for astrology. Of the thousands of astronomers on our planet, people whose expertise is to study and understand the cosmos, ZERO believe in astrology. You know who does believe in astrology? Dylan, who sniffs paint, and Rebecca, who wants to be an Instagram influencer and tells you homeopathy is better for you than advice and treatment from actual doctors. It's arrogance. It's this attitude: "It's real because I vibe with it, and I can't be bothered to learn how the universe works. I like it, and I refuse to accept what is in place of what I like." Imagine being so arrogant to think that stars and planets billions of kilometers away give a fuck about what you do with your life.

Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic. Let’s give astrology the benefit of the doubt. How about some scientific experiments to test it? Many such experiments have been done. Some asked professional astrologers to match people to their respective natal charts based on their psychological profiles. The astrologers NEVER succeed in a statistically significant way. But oh, these astrologers always have an answer, don’t they? Look at their predictions, which are usually ambiguous and subject to interpretation. That’s why they are never “wrong” because confirmation bias is fueled by ambiguity. People connect to predictions that match their experiences or beliefs and ignore those that don’t. I love it when things just work out that way.

Horoscopes are purposely vague and tend to list more positive charts than negative ones. Everyone wants to believe they're simply the best! They are compassionate and empathetic and a great listener. Weaknesses tend to be things that won't upset people too much, like "you work too hard" or "You trust too much"; all these weaknesses still paint the person in a positive light.

When a person looks at this, they think, "It's right; I am too trusting; it's everyone else's fault I keep getting fired from my job, not mine! I don't have to do a single thing to better myself. It's written right here in my horoscope."

Some of you might ask, "What's the harm? Aren't you taking this all a bit too seriously? For some people, isn't it just a bit of fun?" No, I am not taking it seriously enough. It's not fun at all. It's infantilizing. How am I supposed to react when I'm having conversations about things that matter, such as the war in Ukraine, the price of medication in the United States, the trend of right-wing autocrats coming to power, disinformation being weaponized on social media, etc etc, and the person I'm having these discussions with thinks these complex issues can be boiled down to whether someone is a Sagittarius or not?

I have another friend with a wife who fucking sells astrology consultations on social media to naïve idiots. She tried to give me a consultation. I wasn’t having it, so I took out my crossbow and shot her in the heart.

“Typical Sagitarious," she said before passing away. I laughed and said, "I'm a Pisces."

I’m not a Pisces. I don’t know what I am, but I know I’m not that.