= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
satt comments on Global warming is a better test of irrationality that theism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (112)
A common error people make when they see an old vs. young split in opinion is assuming that it must be an age effect rather than a cohort effect. Thank you for avoiding that mistake by noticing that it could be either! (Maybe I could use that as a rationality litmus test, ha ha.)
You got me curious! I pulled up a chapter from the NSE's latest Science & Engineering Indicators report; it links a spreadsheet of survey results from 1979 to 2010 on how scientific US adults think astrology is. (Strictly this isn't the same thing as believing in astrology but I'd expect it to be a fair proxy.) In the 2010 sample, people who were young, female, less educated, or knew fewer science facts were more likely to think astrology was scientific.
I should say that this doesn't automatically mean astrology is a worse rationality test than atheism. Atheism itself correlates with sex, race, age, and education level, at least in the US.
It would amuse me if there was a sizable population that thought astrology was scientific and rejected it on that basis because they don't trust science.
This is actually similar to the medieval Catholic church's position on astrology, at least if you understand "scientific" to mean "what passed for scientific during the middle ages".
This reminds me of an old priest who pointed out that people who don't believe in God tend to believe in astrology and other superstitions, and said that was because “people have to believe in something or another”. However weird that might look now, I still think that among the demographics he was familiar with (people growing up in a smallish town in Italy in the early 20th century) his observation (about the correlation, not about its cause) was likely not wrong.
I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that "What I believe is equivalent to astrology and other superstitions." Did he just think he was lucky to have slotted the truth into his belief-hole?
TheOtherDave:
Eugine_Nier:
What evidence are you aware of that the Church condemned those particular propositions for being "science" (natural philosophy), rather than for being "errors" (falsehoods)?
My point was that the church considered the evidence for the propositions suspect since it was merely "science" (natural philosophy).
I'm pretty sure I understood your point. I was asking for some reasons to think your point is true.
Actually, as for this particular issue, a cohort effect was what I used to consider obvious, and I didn't hypothesize an age effect until I looked for a long-term trend and failed to see one. (Maybe I haven't looked in the right places, though.)
Assuming by “young” they mean (say) younger than 18 rather than (say) younger than 50 (and that they're talking about age effects rather than cohort effects), and with the possible exception of gender, that does sound like a description of the groups of people who I'd expect to be less rational. Hence, that doesn't sound like as strong a reason to doubt the effectiveness of belief-in-astrology as a test for rationality as finding that people from South Examplistan are more likely to believe in astrology than people from North Examplistan.
"Young" is my own way of summarising the results for the different age subgroups; I saw no correlation with age for ages >34, but people aged 18-24 thought astrology was more scientific than people aged 25-34, who in turn thought it more scientific than people aged 35+. (The sample had no under-18s, unfortunately.) In any case, astrology seems like a good item to add to a potential list of rationality probes.