Blogs / Bad Astronomy

So I’ve got this astronomer friend named Aaron who works for the American Association of Variable Star Observers, and one day he says to me, “Have you ever heard of podcasting?”.

My immediate response was to back away slowly and see if anyone could help me restrain him. Come to think, that’s my normal reaction to anything he says.

Anyway, podcasting is pretty cool. It’s like an on-demand web broadcast. People record a show of some kind (topics range from — you guessed it — sex to food to just random silliness) and put it on a server. You can then subscribe to their show on your PC or iPod and it will automatically download a new show when it comes online.

This idea may revolutionize the web, and radio. It’s an audio blog!

Aaron and me during the podcast, showing my lame self-timer camera abilities

There are a few astronomy-related podcasts. One of the first (maybe the first) is the one my friend Aaron does with his friends Pamela and Travis (also astronomers). They call it Slacker Astronomy, with the tagline "Because if you aren’t going to care about something, you may as well not care about astronomy."

Pamela and me, showing that I can learn how to frame things better if I try.

It’s a fun podcast, full of real astronomy and really cheesy jokes. So naturally they asked me to be on, knowing my propensity for fromage. We got together at a meeting of the AAVSO in Las Cruces New Mexico, and rambled on for an hour or more about the badness of astronomy. They condensed this down to about 13 minutes, which does not speak well of my conciseness. But it’s a pretty good 13 minutes. The whole hour-long ball of wax is also available from their site as well.

My friend Fraser Cain who runs the great website Universe Today is also starting a podcast, and has some interviews with astronomers up on his podcast page.

So the obvious question is, why don’t I do a podcast? Well, for one, it would take effort. More than blathering into a blog, say. And second, yet another friend of mine who podcasts, NASA Janet, told me how much it would cost (in $$$ and time) to do one. Personally, I think she doesn’t want the competition. Either way, her stratagem worked. I’ll stick with blogging, though I might appear on the random podcast or two as time permits. I’ll mention it here when I do.

I’m reading a book right now called “How We Know What Isn’t So” by Thomas Gilovich. It’s about how we think, and where thought processes go wrong. When that happens, we either believe things that are not true (like astrology), or don’t believe in things that are (like the Moon landings).

Gilovich has lots of interesting stuff to say, and so much of it is relevant to science and critical thinking! I have long said that it’s okay to dismiss some notions because they are so wrong they don’t deserve to be entertained. A lot of people say I am dogmatic when I do that, but really, when someone tells me that an invisible giant planet will destroy the Earth next week, I think it’s okay to dismiss that. Gilovich has this to say about this idea:

“People are inclined to see what they expect to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude… At first blush, such uneven treatment of new information strikes most people as completely unjustified and potentially pernicious… it brings to mind… groups blindly adhering to outmoded dogma. .. [but] it is also inappropriate and misguided to go through life weighing all facts equally and reconsidering one’s beliefs anew each time an antagonistic fact is encountered.”

In other words, some things really shouldn’t bear equal treatment.

He uses the word “fact” there in the last sentence. I think he should have used another word, maybe “idea”, or “piece of evidence”, because if a fact comes along that does contradict your belief, you do indeed need to rethink your belief. Even if evidence comes along, you need to weigh it. But not all evidence has equal weight either. Evidence that is repeated and independent is pretty heavy, while an anecdote bears little or no weight.

Then he says something I find pretty funny:

“In evaluating more clear-cut information, our perceptions are rarely so distorted that information that completely contradicts our expectations is seen as supportive.”

In other words, he’s saying that given great evidence against us, we rarely use that evidence to support our beliefs. To that I say, “Ha!”

He’s never met Bart Sibrel, James McCanney, or Richard Hoagland. These guys constantly use evidence that directly contradicts what they are saying, yet claim it supports them. Whether it’s the Moon Hoax, a physically impossible model of the solar system, or the face on Mars, direct evidence blowing these ideas away is used by those men as triumphs of their theories. It boggles the mind to think they actually believe what they say. Of course, if they don’t believe in what they say, then maybe Gilovich is correct anyway. I don’t know if they believe in what they say or not, but it doesn’t matter. Either way, what they are saying is wrong.

A final word: Gilovich goes on to say:

“We humans seem to be extremely good at generating ideas, theories and explanations that have the ring of plausibility. We may be relatively deficient, however, in evaluating and testing our ideas once they are formed.”

To that he is exactly right. We can always come up with an explanation ( “It was astrology! Planet X! Sunspots! Telekinesis! Homeopathy!” ) for some event, but as humans we’re pretty poor, maybe even lazy, about explaining our explanations to ourselves.

This blog entry isn’t about astronomy. But I’m getting pretty tired of watching critical thinking going down the tubes in this world, and unfortunately it’s happening everywhere I look. I’ve held back making political and social statements for many reasons, but I find these reasons getting thinner and paler as time goes on. If I don’t say something now, then when? Tomorrow? Next week? A year from now?

No. Now.

Today as I write this there is a protest going on in my home town. Northern California is known for protests, of course, but this one threw me: it’s against homosexuality.

Against gays? In northern California?

These narrow-minded twinkies are driving around in trucks with billboards and signs on them sporting the usual tired arguments against what they ironically think is deviant behavior. At one point a guy in one of these trucks was right behind me, and I considered saying something, but I was too angry. Probably that’s a good thing. Later I spotted a couple on the road well behind me, and they were driving too slowly for me to let them catch up. I was thinking of communicating my feelings to them through some “sign” language of my own. Perhaps it’s best they were too far back.

On my bulletin board I have a rule that trolls (people who say outrageous things just to see what kind of argument they can start) should be ignored. They are looking for attention, so the best thing to do is starve them. I was thinking of that as I watched the two small-minded drivers a hundred meters behind me. I realize now that these guys are not really trolls: they are not trying to just get a reaction, they are trying to mold the world into their own twisted version of reality.

Maybe I should have said something. But like most people who have some irrational view of things, they will never change their mind because of something I say. But if we sit idly by others may be swayed. It’s our silence that makes us weak.

So I’m saying something here, where thousands of people can read it. Yes, this isn’t astronomy-related (though this certainly falls under the category of critical thinking, or the lack thereof), but I am not only an astronomer. I’m a human being. As such, it’s my right — and my duty — to protest the protesters.

One of the reasons I started a blog was so I could have a place where I can cut loose a little bit, and say what I mean a bit more directly.

So: I am always amazed at the myriad ways people are willing to throw their money (and their minds) away, and astrology is one of the biggest black holes there is. It’s a one-way ticket for your cash and your consciousness. It has no evidence supporting it (none, folks, nada, zip, zilch, goose egg, zero), tons of evidence against it, and no meaningful causation. It does no better than chance in making predictions, and relies on a host of human fallabilities to survive. Astrology irritates me greatly, because it distorts and perverts the natural wonder and beauty of the Universe.

See what I mean about being direct?

I could go on and on, but I don’t have to because I have a new web page debunking astrology! I wrote an article about astrology for a magazine, and I wanted to follow up with more information on my site. So without any more sturm und drang on my part…

Here is my page debunking astrology.

The essay is long, but it can be summed up rather succinctly: Astrology is wrong, pure and simple. I’m afraid I can’t make it any more clear than that.