Transcription
When I'm not confused for a cosmetologist, you know, because of my lovely hair and makeup, I'm usually asked, "Oh, you're an astronomer? I'm a Virgo, you know, so what's going to happen to me?" I'm like, "I used to be." Okay, that's an astrologer, I'm not an astrologer. But now I just kind of lean into it. I'm like, "Oh, that, uh, you're going to get a letter from the IRS next week, and that lump on your ass means you're playing games with them."
So you don't believe in astrology? There's no evidence for astrology. In fact, there are many, many randomized controlled trials, double-blind studies that show not only is it, it's almost counter to the evidence. You know, like when they say that a monkey can throw a dart at a stock chart and do better than most hedge fund managers or something like that? Actually, astrologers are even worse. Like, I don't even know if a protozoa could throw a dart.
Yeah, it's almost anti-correlated with what reality is. So no, there's certainly no validity to that. I had a provocative tweet, you know, whatever, post recently, and it was about, um, there's actually, you know, we believe there are 12 zodiac signs, and that dates back to the Persians and the Babylonians and how they divided them up. They were fascinated with the number 60, so that was the base of their number system. Our number system is 10 because we have 10 fingers. For some reason, they loved base 60. I don't know why.
And so they loved things that divided evenly into it. 10 does, but anyway, you know, hashtag fail for the Babylonians. They divided it up into 12 zodiac signs, so we still use those. There's a problem, though, with the Zodiac. Do you know what this is? Do you know what determines your zodiac sign?
No? Okay, so it's determined by the position of the sun. What constellation was the sun in on the day you were born? September 26th. So, uh, when that means that the sun was in the constellation Virgo. Oh no, you were a Libra. Libra, Libra. Okay, so you do know what you are, but you don't know why you are.
So Libra means it's a constellation. There are 88 constellations that are accepted by astronomers, and one of them is Libra. The path that the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets travel is called the Zodiac. It's confined to a plane because the same proto-solar system disc from which we formed came out of a nebular cloud—a cloud of gas, dust, rocks, and so forth—that came from a pre-existing star that exploded, creating what's called a supernova.
The supernova provided the materials to make not only the Earth but the entire solar system, including the Sun. That happened about 5 billion years ago, and 4 billion years ago, the Earth formed out of that cloud. The spin of that disc— all things have a spin associated with them, like a figure skater. You know, as she's spinning around on her axis or whatever, she can have her arms out, bring them in, and she spins faster. That's called conservation of angular momentum.
Spin is a type of angular momentum. The whole disc is spinning in a plane. It's like this desk, this table that we're sitting at. If you listen, you imagine a flat table spinning—a circular disc is spinning with a certain direction. All the objects are moving in that same direction due to conservation of this term called angular momentum.
The sun moves in that, apparently moves in that position. Obviously, we're rotating around the Sun, but it looks like the sun's coming around us—the Moon is Jupiter. So on the day you were born, there's a constellation behind the Sun from our perspective that was Libra on September 26, and that was the day that you were born. That determines the fact that you're a Libra.
But there's a, in December, where we are now, the sun is actually in a different constellation—the one that doesn't exist according to the Zodiac that was created something like 5,000 years ago. It's called Ophiuchus. So there's a certain segment of people born in a 17-day stretch in December, late November to early December, that are actually Ophiuchans or whatever.
So that should obliterate astrology as any semblance of a science because they didn't even know this constellation existed, and yet something like 12% of all people share that constellation. So it's just complete nonsense. There's no validity to it. Twins that are born on the same day have radically different histories, pasts, futures, and um, there's no predictive power to it.
And that's what science is about, right? We want to make a hypothesis, test it, iterate on it, and have confirmation of it. And there's zero, in fact, for astrology. In fact, if you'll permit me a kind of silly story, when I was dating my wife, who would become my wife in the beginning, she kind of thought it was fun. Maybe we'll go see someone who can tell our fortunes, that we belong together.
So we went to an astrologer, and the astrologer asked me a bunch of questions, you know, when were you born, obviously. And, um, oh no, she asked me, "What's your sign?" So I said, "I'm a Gemini." And she said, "Okay, cool." And then she told me a bunch of things.
At the end, I said, "I just want to double-check," and I was playing. I'm kind of a, you know, a little bit of a jerk sometimes. So I said, "I just want to confirm, um, Gemini is born in September. I'm born September 9th." She said, "No, no, that's a Virgo." But the same things are going to happen to you anyway. Like, it didn't change her outcome.
In the language of the philosophy of science, Carl Popper and others, it's unfalsifiable, and you cannot be proven right. It's so flexible. You know, you're going to find challenges. The stock market is going to fluctuate. Political turmoil will reign during your... They're so flexible, they can accommodate any story.
And that's a hallmark of non-science or sometimes anti-scientific thinking.