I get so annoyed when certain people, especially science folks, think they got the last laugh when they try to disprove astrology with the Barnum effect.

Here's the definition of the Barnum effect from Google: the tendency to accept certain information as true, such as character assessments or horoscopes, even when the information is so vague as to be worthless.

When someone tries to argue that astrology isn't true because of the Barnum effect, there is the assumption that all of our phrases are made out of thin air, with no grounded basis to back it up. However, anybody who has studied astrology knows that there IS a system.

Astrologers are AWARE that the horoscopes that they make apply to a GENERAL audience. We know that when we put that daily horoscope out there, it DOES apply to multiple people.

I just don't understand why science folks are evaluating public, general horoscopes on the basis where it should perfectly apply to one person only. Just to be clear, we CAN do personalized horoscopes for a single person. You're just not gonna find it in a magazine.

I mean... I wouldn't want to find my own, personalized, private horoscope created by an astrologer in a public publication like a magazine, so why are astrologers being judged like they are?

Personally, I would not define astrology as a science, but more so as a subject closer to the humanities. In the humanities, students understand that there's no singular, exclusively "right" interpretation to any of the works they read.

The same applies to astrology. There's no singular, exclusively "right" interpretation to an individual, and astrology seeks to celebrate that. Can you imagine what terrible world we would live in, assuming that there's one, truly "right" interpretation to each individual?

Also, it’s not like anything astrologers establish are cold, hard facts, since our work is interpretations. We’re really trying not to be intellectual authorities over here. We’re just trying to interpret human experience.

But anyways, end rant. Tired of people trying to use science, a truly cool subject, to wrongly feel a sense of authority. If you have to use ANYTHING, INCLUDING astrology to feel a sense of authority, you don’t have any authority at all.