Volker.Doormann

Baidarka,

There are all over the word astrology schools, where you can learn astrology. It takes some 2 until 4 years and before you not have interpreted some 1000 charts and knowing the persons deeply, there is no great knowledge about the kernel astrology. You have your own opinion on astrology and I have no interest to change your opinion. If you go to a teacher of music, and you say to him, 'I have my own opinion about music, please answer only my questions in that order', I do not think, that the teacher will accept that. Before you are not ready to respect the rules of an dialog, I have no answers to you.

Thank you.

Volker

Jesse

Well, that single set of positive results doesn't prove that there is something to believe in astrology either--it could just be due to random luck, the test would have to be repeated a number of times before we could really rule out luck as an explanation. Also, I think that this test is an anomaly in the sense that most tests of astrology have come up negative.

But do you agree with my point that any valid test of astrology must be done "blind" to prevent the chart-reader's knowledge of the person he's coming up with a chart for from biasing his interpretation? You mentioned that you had done a bunch of studies of astrology yourself--were these blind tests, or did you know the characteristics of the people you were drawing up charts for in advance? If they weren't blind, do you plan to change your methodology in the future? Perhaps you would get different results if you did.

Also, I don't understand why you're unwilling to answer the question about how new planets are assigned astrological properties. Is it just based on the mythological significance of their name (like how Pluto is the god of death), or something else?

Volker.Doormann

I read the conditions under this test has taken place. I'm not involved in that test. I know that Edgar Wunder was long time the head and founder of the German Skeptic Magazine, and I have followed his public 'war' against astrology since 1996. He is now the head of an Institute which study 'Anomalistic' in a very scientific manner with a lot of skeptic scientist on board. AFAIK there were a lot of conditions to unselect doubtful persons, which should vote on the interpretations, which are not confidential in first talks. If you have interest, I can see for the exact conditions of that test, because the astrologer, who has suggested this test to Edgar Wunder, has published this in the usenet. Mr. Limmert is Physicist. I have no contact to Edgar Wunder, since I have said him in 1996, that his press statement of obscure astrologers predictions on death of people from politics to new year does not meet the discipline at all.

My advice to all this is, not measure significance values for great, because as you know, no significance value can change a belief, as we know from Christians. If you would start a test, if it is true, that husbands are do really love his wifes and the wifes do love her husbands, you also do not know for sure, that this is really true, also if there are great significance values in 1000 test's. The problem is ever, that each individual is different to another individual, so that never there a perfect describing is possible. It is fragmentary work and depends on the selection of single words, whether one do recognize a description for right. A second problem, as we have seen here is the truth/untruth ratio of clients. No one can know for sure, whether the client's reply is true or false.

From this my experiences, that each interest in the matter should
read some chart descriptions for his date of birth and can decide on this for his own.

I agree with your first point, and I have written to this. For the studies I have done I have read published details and have found by this correct interpretations from classic astrology and more incorrect interpretations. I have found, that some astrological symbols are very important, and other not. I have extended the more meaningful interpretations and have cut the meaningless interpretations. From all, that I got back from people, who have read my computer analysis, without that I know them personally, there is a great acknowledgment about that text. And my text is not very friendly to the reader, very direct. I have made an analysis for a client with the fate of an Tourette's syndrom, and he has said, that he never could better describe his psychic situation as this analysis. Maybe you should know, that I never have made money with analysis or astrology in general, I have written this DOS software for independent scientific research. There are only some people, who working with my program since years, and they have paid me some bugs. I have published most of my interpretations for free, and I think it is useless to argue on astrology, the fixing is hard.

There is simple no assignment on new bodies. Until today each astrologer did use slightly different interpretations for Saturn. Is there a scientifically correct interpretation on you? Some astrologers are working on the ''emotional' planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) and some astrologers are working more on the spirtual planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) I make use of the moons node and the interpretation of the Chaldeic regents for sun years as a single astrologer to my knowledge, simple because no one knows these old interpretations. BTW. There are a lot of astrological interpretations on clay tables from the State Archives of Assyria form about 700 BCE (Hermann Hunger). There are not really relations of the names of planets to the Greek gods of the planets beyond Saturn. Uranus is a symbol for technical ideas, Neptun is a symbol for immaterial ideas, an Pluto is a symbol for the transformation of ideas from power over destruction to be a new consciousness as human. All these symbols have been refined continuously until today by private individuals.

I can lecture on this .01 % of astrology some volumes of books, but why? I'm not the astrology and I'm not a paid professor of astrology on an university, paid by the community. I use astrology, as I use an xray diffractometer or a mass spectrometer. I have discovered, that there are a lot of astrology symbols in the Pentateuch, which can be easy to decoded, because it is very similar to decode the symbols of an astrological chart for a client with problems in his consciousness between body and soul. This is my intention here to discuss on.

Volker

Jesse

Volker:
My advice to all this is, not measure significance values for great, because as you know, no significance value can change a belief, as we know from Christians. If you would start a test, if it is true, that husbands are do really love his wifes and the wifes do love her husbands, you also do not know for sure, that this is really true, also if there are great significance values in 1000 test's. The problem is ever, that each individual is different to another individual, so that never there a perfect describing is possible. It is fragmentary work and depends on the selection of single words, whether one do recognize a description for right. A second problem, as we have seen here is the truth/untruth ratio of clients. No one can know for sure, whether the client's reply is true or false.

But none of this matters if you're doing a statistical test using a double-blind methodology. Suppose you give a surveys to 1000 husbands about whether they love their wives, then separate them into group A who answered yes and group B who answered no. Then you give all their birthdates to an astrologer without revealing who belongs to which group (or anything else about them besides the birthdate), and ask the astrologer to try to predict which ones will love their wives based on their charts. If the astrologer has a 90% success rate, it doesn't matter that each individual is different, or even if most of them were lying, the mere fact that the astrologer was able to do much better than chance shows that something "spooky" is going on, that there is some relationship between two elements (answering a certain way on a survey and being born at a certain time) that astrology skeptics would think should be uncorrelated. You don't need to know the causal details of what is actually causing this correlation, or whether it is a correlation between the husband's answers and their birthdates or their true feelings and their birthdates. That's both the strength and the limitation of this sort of scientific testing, that it is merely meant to establish correlations, not to say anything about what these correlations mean or how they came about.

Jesse:
But do you agree with my point that any valid test of astrology must be done "blind" to prevent the chart-reader's knowledge of the person he's coming up with a chart for from biasing his interpretation? You mentioned that you had done a bunch of studies of astrology yourself--were these blind tests, or did you know the characteristics of the people you were drawing up charts for in advance? If they weren't blind, do you plan to change your methodology in the future? Perhaps you would get different results if you did.

Volker:
I agree with your first point, and I have written to this. For the studies I have done I have read published details and have found by this correct interpretations from classic astrology and more incorrect interpretations. I have found, that some astrological symbols are very important, and other not. I have extended the more meaningful interpretations and have cut the meaningless interpretations. From all, that I got back from people, who have read my computer analysis, without that I know them personally, there is a great acknowledgment about that text.

But that's not a proper test if you're not contrasting the real analysis with a "placebo" to screen for people's tendency to see themselves in any description. Remember the test I mentioned earlier?

A test of the accuracy of readings is scientifically meaningless unless you use the proper methodology to control for this sort of human bias. One way to do this would be to have one person sort a bunch of people into two categories (like married/divorced), then give their charts to an astrologer without telling him which is which, and see how successful the astrologer is at guessing based on their charts. Another would be for an astrologer to prepare a bunch of charts for different people, then each person would be given their own reading along with the reading of some other person, and they have to decide which fits them more accurately (this was one of the tests in Edgar Wunder's study). But just giving a person a single reading and asking them how accurate it is would not be a scientifically valid test, any more than just giving a bunch of people a drug without having a separate control group who are given an identical-looking placebo.

Jesse:
Also, I don't understand why you're unwilling to answer the question about how new planets are assigned astrological properties. Is it just based on the mythological significance of their name (like how Pluto is the god of death), or something else?

Volker:
There is simple no assignment on new bodies. Until today each astrologer did use slightly different interpretations for Saturn.

But how do they decide? Different traditions? Doing different readings using both interpretations, and seeing which one more accurately describes the person?

Volker:
Is there a scientifically correct interpretation on you? Some astrologers are working on the ''emotional' planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) and some astrologers are working more on the spirtual planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)

OK, let's start with that--how was it decided that Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were planets associated with spirituality as opposed to, say, wealth? Who decided that Uranus was associated with "technical ideas" and Neptune with "immaterial ideas" instead of vice-versa?

I found one webpage which gives a little bit of an answer:

http://www.encosm.net/rethinking.htm

The author seems to say that they use some form of "research" involving comparing the position of the planets at various points in history with historical events (rather than individual personalities) to try to determine their astrological properties. Is this your understanding as well?

Volker.Doormann

I know a man called Jesse, who has argued, that "spooky" significance in one test is of no value. To me, I have no interest to prove astrology by statistics. As a dog knows his master, I am satisfied with my knowledge.
See above.
There is no reason, that prevent you the realize this.
Reason and knowledge. Saturn. p.e. is a symbol of separation. It is used as a symbol of death, but also as a symbol of limitation. It depends on the individual consciousness of the astrologer to interpret this symbol Saturn in the best and true wise. This is the art aspect of astrology, as one actor could interpret Hamlet as it is meant by Shakespeare, and the other actor is still curios. It is useless to grasp astrology by statistics, no one do use statistic to decide whether Neil Young is more significant then Madonna (BTW. I like to interpret the songs doormann.org/heyhey1.mp3 of Neil Young and I will see him on a concert on next Tuesday night in Hamburg).
It's very simple. You (maybe) can perceive a talent of a person. Poet - first internet virus programmed with an age of 9 - or told his father 'please do may homework or piss off'. These are significant values in astrology which is not to be measured by natural science. Some cross checks and you have a first result. Astrologers are not stupid.
I have taken a look on that page, but my impression is, that he is talking as a mother, but have never been pregnant.

There never was a zodiac fixed to stars. The zodiac (Hebrew: Mazzeroth) is a spiritual value around the location of a creature in time. There are three houses in the east above the horizon, and three houses on the west above the horizon.. Same beyond the horizon. On spring equinox exact on sunrise, the sun is on the horizon and runs in 24 hour's through twelve houses (of Israel, see Pentateuch) and in one year also through all this 12 houses. It is the angle from the location, which is relevant, NOT THE FIX STARS, which can be seen, on that the sun is running the 12 times 30° angles in a year. That some stupid guys have taken some fix stars to mark some of that 12 houses as 'signs' was indeed stupid, because of the precession of the earth of 1° in 72 years. But never, never have had this fix stars a meaning in astrology. It was ever only the angle from a view point of a location on the earth. All this zodiac talking is absolute nonsense if one related tha to the material stars an heaven. It is only the 2 Pi cycle of the ecliptic and the wondering planets with time, which is of any relevance.

There is a bad but helpful explanation of this. If one looks to the wind from the 4 or 8 directions of the sky, you can always say mostly independent of the location, that north wind is ever cold, south wind is ever warm, west wind is mostly wet, or east wind is ever dry. South east wind is dry and warm, south west is wet and warm a.s.o.

It is only an effect of an angle, that makes the quality of that wind. Similar to this it is of a meaning, on which angle in relation to the horizon a planet is placed while birth. This 'field' is frozen in the brain starting structures of connections or not. I do not know what the physics is of this, but it is for sure. No one knows why we are conscious, but no one is asking for the reason. It is. There is no mysterious function, it's simple nature.

Good Night from Germany

Volker

Jesse

Volker:
I know a man called Jesse, who has argued, that "spooky" significance in one test is of no value.

No I didn't. I just said that one test is not definitive, especially when so many other tests have failed to support astrology. The same would be true of a new medicine--if one study found that people who took the medicine did significantly better than those who took a placebo, but most other studies did not find that it did any better than the placebo, then that would not be a reason to immediately conclude the medicine works. That doesn't mean the test was of no value though.

Volker:
To me, I have no interest to prove astrology by statistics. As a dog knows his master, I am satisfied with my knowledge.

Well, put it this way--do you think there is anything that would convince you you were wrong, or is your belief in astrology "unfalsifiable"? If I took a bunch of your old chart readings and gave them to new people with different birthdates, telling them they were personalized readings, and these people endorsed the readings just as enthusiastically as the people who the charts actually belonged to, would that lead you to have second thoughts about the usefulness of astrology?

Jesse:
A test of the accuracy of readings is scientifically meaningless unless you use the proper methodology to control for this sort of human bias. One way to do this would be to have one person sort a bunch of people into two categories (like married/divorced), then give their charts to an astrologer without telling him which is which, and see how successful the astrologer is at guessing based on their charts. Another would be for an astrologer to prepare a bunch of charts for different people, then each person would be given their own reading along with the reading of some other person, and they have to decide which fits them more accurately (this was one of the tests in Edgar Wunder's study). But just giving a person a single reading and asking them how accurate it is would not be a scientifically valid test, any more than just giving a bunch of people a drug without having a separate control group who are given an identical-looking placebo.

Volker:
There is no reason, that prevent you the realize this.

Prevent me from realizing what?

Jesse:
But how do they decide? Different traditions? Doing different readings using both interpretations, and seeing which one more accurately describes the person?

Volker:
Reason and knowledge. Saturn. p.e. is a symbol of separation. It is used as a symbol of death, but also as a symbol of limitation.

But how did it come to be a symbol for these things, historically? What is the origin of these symbolic meanings? That's the only question I'm asking.

Suppose scientists discover a new planet tomorrow and the World Astrological Commision asks you to research this planet's astrological significance and prepare a report on its possible symbolic meaning. Where would you begin?

Jesse:
OK, let's start with that--how was it decided that Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were planets associated with spirituality as opposed to, say, wealth? Who decided that Uranus was associated with "technical ideas" and Neptune with "immaterial ideas" instead of vice-versa?

Volker:
It's very simple. You (maybe) can perceive a talent of a person. Poet - first internet virus programmed with an age of 9 - or told his father 'please do may homework or piss off'. These are significant values in astrology which is not to be measured by natural science. Some cross checks and you have a first result. Astrologers are not stupid.

I don't understand exactly what you mean--are you saying you'd look at a bunch of people born with this planet in a certain position and try to figure out what personality traits they have in common?

Volker.Doormann

Jesse, if you say that 'but other studies than 'one study', is needed, than you say, that without other studies the 'one study' is of no value. If it would be of a (significant) value, (p.e. p = 0.01), and you do not trust significant values, then you practice a fundamental religion of skepticism, but not science. From this, some hundred times argued ignorance I have listened to, I have concluded, that it is senseless to serve significant statistical values. It's a stupid game. One is the Master and kick the stick, and the other is the dog and do support until infinitum.
You miss the point. Do you think there is anything that would convince you you were wrong, or is your belief in French "unfalsifiable"? The subject is not the personally belief, the subject is the language french, resp. the astrology. If you avoid to perceive recognizable nonmaterial order, like a language, logic, or astrology, it's your ignorance. If you are not ready to learn French, because you belief, it is of no significance in your English world, than this is your fault in your scientific method, more, it is in no means a scientific method, it is still ignorance of the reality, and with this equal to a fundamentalism as we know it from the religions.
You suggest, that the subject is only one bit, that can be handled by educated scientists. How many known bits has a human's character in total inclusive all hidden character properties? If you believe, that it is of any scientific value, if one is enthusiastic, it is not. You can do falsification on dead one bit theories, but you can not do falsification on war on music or a living dynamic human, that tomorrow is maybe dead. It is worthless. Your tool of Popper is good, but it is limited to dead well defined theory claims. Can I do a falsification on you ? If you are not to be falsificate, than does this means, that you are a hoax? It is not the tool of Popper, or Occam, it is the adequate selection of tools.
That may be right, but as long science is stupid on spiritual order, that doesn't matter. The recognition of a bondage from a social education and the own individaul consciousness to release from that bondage and is free from this, is also scientifically meaningless, because recognition of the own social bondage is not a result of a method. It is a result of the recognition about that bondage. But this, the own recognition as a spiritual quality of freedom is only of a meaning, not to process stupid Popper science.

Thousands of scientists are bondaged by external methods thaught by science Gurus as religious believers are bondaged by their social Gurus. A Freedom from this social bondage needs to recognize that a human remote controlled by scientific external methods is never free. Beyond the world of physical forces it is not the external, which has to be understand or controlled, it is the own inner self, which is the only real reference, we have. No one other as the own self can recognize the truth of immaterial order, because there is absolute no_thing to show or to prove.
Realize your ideas on verificate and falsificate astrology.
The origin? What is an origin? The imagination of an origin is coupled to an understanding, that there was nothing, and then there was this origin.
What is the origin of numbers? Of math? Of logic? No. Nature is , but nature has no origin. If there would not be eternal natural laws there would not be a dynamic nature of energy and mass. What is the origin of natural laws?

I don't no historically. There were menstrual calendar in China developed some 3k years ago by woman's. These first calendars using 28 days in a month are related to the moon cycle. Different phases of the moon, were correlated with different states also of the emotional feeling of the woman's (If you don't know, ask a woman). There were a lot of astrological science work India documented in the Vedas. Most all Semitic traditions on moon (p.e. Passover) is from the Vedas.

From each myth you can discover the symbolic meaning of the described figures. All figures in the myths - mistaken as gods or minor gods - were symbols of the spiritual meaning of planets. Melchizedek in the bible is Jupiter and has the symbol 'Righteous' and the Hebrew meaning is King of Righteous' as Jupiter has until today for most astrologers. All the Sumerian and Semitic figures were symbols of the spiritual meaning of planets. Inanna is Venus, Astarte is Venus, Ashera is Venus, Sin is Moon.
There is a new planet running 288 years around the sun called Quaoar. His ephemerides you can see on http://www.astro.com/swisseph/quaoar.htm

I would list all planetary aspects of known planets to the newcomer of charts of known individuals and their known mentality. If there are similar mental properties to discover and similar aspects, this gives first hints to follow, because the known aspect angles have recognizable symbols with all planets. Then I would list all house positions of the 12 astrological houses in that the newcomer is placed and would process as above.
Yes. P.e. I have found, that people, who have Saturn on some east of midheaven (10. House) while birth, will make a carrier, but will crash sometime (no grant):

Catherine de Medici
Napoleon I
Zar Nikolaus II
Adolf Hitler
Rasputin
Nehru
John Mitchell (Watergate)
Herman Göring
Richard Nixon
J.F.Kennedy
Bill Clinton
Himmler
Rosenberg
Jeanne d'Arc
Oscar Wilde
Helmut Kohl
Michael Gorbatschow
Rajivc Ghandi

Volker

Baidarka

Volker

V - There are all over the word astrology schools, where you can learn astrology.”
B – There are schools for Homeopathic Medicine, Chiropractic Medicine, Rolfing, Scientology, Tarot Card reading, Reflexology, Parapsychology, and Theology. So what?
V - It takes some 2 until 4 years and before you not have interpreted some 1000 charts and knowing the persons deeply,”
B – That’s a damn shame.
V - there is no great knowledge about the kernel astrology.
B- By “kernel astrology” do you mean the origins of astrology? Are you saying that the foundation of astrology is shrouded in mystery? Are you saying that it works but that there is no knowledge as to why?
V - You have your own opinion on astrology and I have no interest to change your opinion.
B – I have been up front from the beginning about my lack of belief in astrology. I have attempted to ask simple questions which could give you an opportunity to support your belief. So far you have not answered any of my questions.
V - If you go to a teacher of music, and you say to him, 'I have my own opinion about music, please answer only my questions in that order', I do not think, that the teacher will accept that.
B – I have not asked you to be my teacher. I have attempted to show you that you have a naïve belief. I have simply asked you to answer a few basic questions about astrology and you have beat around the bush. You have not answered my questions. You have thrown in the provocative red herring of rape and child molestation which has only served as an ugly distraction.
V - Before you are not ready to respect the rules of an dialog, I have no answers to you.

B – We are not having a dialog. I have been asking questions and you have been responding with monologs which have been totally unrelated to the questions that I have asked.
This has been a fruitless and frustrating experience. I can only conclude that you have avoided my questions because you are unable to answer them because astrology is a totally bogus system without any relationship to the real world. I am sorry that you have invested so much time and energy in this pseudo science.
There is an anecdote about Wittgenstein. After investing several years of hard work formulating a theory of language another philosopher asked him a pointed question which destroyed his theory. Ludwig thought long and hard and then said that he would have to scrap his theory and start over again. Think hard about this before you continue trying to wring meaning from the void.

Baidarka

Volker.Doormann

Thank you.

Volker

Jesse

Jesse:I just said that one test is not definitive, especially when so many other tests have failed to support astrology.

The same would be true of a new medicine--if one study found that people who took the medicine did significantly better than those who took a placebo, but most other studies did not find that it did any better than the placebo, then that would not be a reason to immediately conclude the medicine works. That doesn't mean the test was of no value though.

Volker:
Jesse, if you say that 'but other studies than 'one study', is needed, than you say, that without other studies the 'one study' is of no value.

No I'm not. One study has some value, it's just that it has very little value, especially in light of many other studies that gave negative results. More successful studies = more value. I'm applying exactly the same standards that scientists would apply to studies of a new medicine.

Volker:
If it would be of a (significant) value, (p.e. p = 0.01), and you do not trust significant values, then you practice a fundamental religion of skepticism, but not science.

No, I just recognize that even events of 1% probability do happen by chance once in a while, so such a test is not definitive. Do you really think that a scientist studying a medicine would immediately conclude a medicine worked if a single study indicated it did with significance p = 0.01, even when many other studies had shown it did no better than a placebo?

Volker:
From this, some hundred times argued ignorance I have listened to, I have concluded, that it is senseless to serve significant statistical values. It's a stupid game. One is the Master and kick the stick, and the other is the dog and do support until infinitum.

It's not senseless. I genuinely do consider such results interesting, and would be even more interested if similar tests continued to yield such positive, unlikely-seeming results. If they did, I would have to admit a strong possibility that something was going on there, whether it was genuine evidence of astrology or more like evidence of some kind of psychic abilities on the part of the astrologers.

Jesse:
.. do you think there is anything that would convince you you were wrong, or is your belief in astrology "unfalsifiable"?

Volker:
You miss the point. Do you think there is anything that would convince you you were wrong, or is your belief in French "unfalsifiable"? The subject is not the personally belief, the subject is the language french, resp. the astrology. If you avoid to perceive recognizable nonmaterial order, like a language, logic, or astrology, it's your ignorance.

This defence won't work. You already agreed that astrology, unlike language or moral claims or such things, actually makes empirical claims of the sort that are potentially testable by science. The mere fact that you point to studies like Wunder's in support of astrology shows you believe this. Therefore, if you would not consider studies similar to Wunder's which yielded negative results as possible evidence against astrology, you have a double standard (although of course you might need just as many studies with negative results to have a strong chance of changing your mind as I would need studies with positive results...still, if no amount of studies could change your mind, it seems like your belief really is unfalsifiable).

Jesse:
If I took a bunch of your old chart readings and gave them to new people with different birthdates, telling them they were personalized readings, and these people endorsed the readings just as enthusiastically as the people who the charts actually belonged to, would that lead you to have second thoughts about the usefulness of astrology?

Volker:
You suggest, that the subject is only one bit, that can be handled by educated scientists. How many known bits has a human's character in total inclusive all hidden character properties? If you believe, that it is of any scientific value, if one is enthusiastic, it is not. You can do falsification on dead one bit theories, but you can not do falsification on war on music or a living dynamic human, that tomorrow is maybe dead. It is worthless. Your tool of Popper is good, but it is limited to dead well defined theory claims. Can I do a falsification on you ? If you are not to be falsificate, than does this means, that you are a hoax? It is not the tool of Popper, or Occam, it is the adequate selection of tools.

You never answered my original question about whether you would start to doubt astrology if it turned out that people were just as enthusiastic about readings based on the wrong birthday as they are about readings based on the correct birthday. Look Volker, you yourself pointed to the fact that people endorsed your readings as evidence for astrology, but if such a result as I describe would not plant at least a seed of doubt in your mind, then you have a double standard about what counts as "evidence".

Jesse:
A test of the accuracy of readings is scientifically meaningless unless you use the proper methodology to control for this sort of human bias.

Volker:
That may be right, but as long science is stupid on spiritual order, that doesn't matter. The recognition of a bondage from a social education and the own individaul consciousness to release from that bondage and is free from this, is also scientifically meaningless, because recognition of the own social bondage is not a result of a method. It is a result of the recognition about that bondage. But this, the own recognition as a spiritual quality of freedom is only of a meaning, not to process stupid Popper science.

Again, double standard. You don't seem to consider studies which show astrologers doing significantly better than chance on certain tests to be "stupid".

By the way, do you believe in Tarot reading? Palmistry? Phrenology? If there is any method of reading people's characters or futures which you don't believe, how would you respond to an advocate of these methods who was making exactly the same kind of arguments that you are making to me? Would you agree with them if they said there was no possible test that could provide evidence against their belief?

Jesse:
But how did it come to be a symbol for these things, historically? What is the origin of these symbolic meanings? That's the only question I'm asking.

Volker:
The origin? What is an origin? The imagination of an origin is coupled to an understanding, that there was nothing, and then there was this origin.
What is the origin of numbers? Of math? Of logic? No. Nature is , but nature has no origin. If there would not be eternal natural laws there would not be a dynamic nature of energy and mass. What is the origin of natural laws?

Yes, but with both laws of math and laws of nature, the laws themselves may have been eternal, but human's knowledge of them is not. Humans had to go through some process to discover the laws. For example, it was study of the orbits of planets that allowed Newton to decide that the gravitational force is proportional to the inverse square of the distance, rather than the inverse cube. What kind of process led astrologers to decide Uranus was associated with "technical understanding" rather than, say, "artistic talent"?

Jesse:
Suppose scientists discover a new planet tomorrow and the World Astrological Commision asks you to research this planet's astrological significance and prepare a report on its possible symbolic meaning. Where would you begin?

Volker:
There is a new planet running 288 years around the sun called Quaoar. His ephemerides you can see on http://www.astro.com/swisseph/quaoar.htm

I would list all planetary aspects of known planets to the newcomer of charts of known individuals and their known mentality. If there are similar mental properties to discover and similar aspects, this gives first hints to follow, because the known aspect angles have recognizable symbols with all planets. Then I would list all house positions of the 12 astrological houses in that the newcomer is placed and would process as above.

OK, thanks, this basically answers my question. Are astrologers currently doing this kind of thing to determine the astrological properties of "Quaoar"?

I have heard it said, by the way, that neither Pluto nor Quaoar should really be classified as planets, that they are just two large members of a huge class of similar Kuiper belt objects beyond the orbit of Neptune, similar to the asteroid belt. If this were true, and it turned out that Pluto was just a larger member of a class which included thousands of others, like how Ceres is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, do you think astrologers would drop Pluto (and Quaoar, maybe) from their charts?