Diary: Discrimination

[degringolade]

 

 

Beijing in the long ago (≅2001) in my days of Yangjing Beer and hutongs

 

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We drove that car as far as we could

Abandoned it out west

Tangled Up in Blue. From Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”

 

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As I have been whining about of late, instead of just dismissing the discipline of astrology out of hand as most folks of my ilk tend to do, I am trying to figure out what is the technical process so that I can evaluate its output.  It is rough sledding.  I think sometimes that folks who write about it: 

a.)  Don’t bother explaining the basic nuts and bolts in plain and understandable language.

b.)  Assume that the way that they use terms has no relationship to common cultural usage.

c.)  Assume that everyone who reads it is a true-believer.

d.)  Deliberately obfuscate the reasoning behind the processes.

Now, as you all know, I am one of those awkward fanboys of JMG that think that he does a much better job than most at explaining the aspects of the non-technical worldview in a manner that even us technical boys (Gibson Reference, not 4chan) can understand.  I do routinely give him money over at his Mundane Astrology Patreon Page due to my ongoing interest in that section of the astrology discipline.  But since I am actively trying to figure out the nuts and bolts, I now read his pronouncements in a different light.  His latest post there got me to thinking about disciplines and predictions and one’s attempts to guess the future 

Now, this is not to say I disagree with his prognostications, they seem to make sense when inserted into the mental model of the world that I carry around with me.  But now that I am plowing through the discipline and am beginning to understand that maybe one’s abiding mental model colors the necessary interpretation of the data generated by use of the technical aspects of the discipline?

Like any prediction of an unknown future, you are attempting to project how to respond to something that hasn’t happened yet by guessing the future.  Most of the time, this is most easily and accurately done by a linear projection from the shape and slope of a curve defined by the past leading up to the current state of affairs.  When a means of predicting the future produces something that matches your model, you tend to lend it more authority (regardless of the degree of acceptance by those outside of your immediate circle).

But that is a mistake.  I tend to think that there exist non-physical, non-measurable inputs to “reality” that we haven’t neither acknowledge nor understand.  These, at their best, can lend some clarity to the attempts to forecast the future, but at very best they can only suggest tendencies, not future realities.

Use with care and know your limitations and your fallibility.