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Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 5:46 pm
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote: Benski, C., et al. The Mars Effect. 1996, Prometheus Books.
Rebutted at The Mars Effect is Genuine

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:29 pm
by Interbane
Rebutted at The Mars Effect is Genuine
I'm sure it is, I haven't had the time to read it. You never answered my question about why professional hockey players are found to be born just after the winter solstice. Could this be a Solstice Effect? I believe this effect to be true.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:21 pm
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:You never answered my question about why professional hockey players are found to be born just after the winter solstice. Could this be a Solstice Effect? I believe this effect to be true.
My understanding is that in junior grades, older children within the year group have an advantage due to age, and so are statistically more likely to pursue a sporting career. It has nothing to do with astrology.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:52 pm
by Interbane
My understanding is that in junior grades, older children within the year group have an advantage due to age, and so are statistically more likely to pursue a sporting career. It has nothing to do with astrology.
That's my understanding also. There's a reason astrology isn't taken seriously, even if a test seems to have no alternative explanation such as the Mars Effect. There is no physical link between a planet's movement and life on Earth strong enough to cause an effect. The moon causes the tide and messes with Earth's magnetic field, so is only barely strong enough by extension of it's secondary effects. There are nearly unlimited factors 'stronger' than planetary gravity which would influence birth rates. That's even excluding parents who might lie about when their child was born.

An overarching examination of all tests having to do with astrological influence on life would show many positive correlations. This doesn't mean the positions of heavenly bodies caused these correlations. The gravity isn't strong enough. Well, let me add a disclaimer here. It is possible that celestial gravity may have some obscure effect on life. It's also possible that there's an invisible purple flying dragon in my garage.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 9:03 pm
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:..even if a test seems to have no alternative explanation such as the Mars Effect. There is no physical link between a planet's movement and life on Earth strong enough to cause an effect.
You do appreciate, Interbane, that your quoted statement here is a contradiction in terms?

You are saying that all other causes are ruled out, but you rule out the only possible cause only because you don't like it, or in the Dawkins/Darwin cautionary statement of the opening post, because you find it impossible to believe. I sympathise for your tender feelings Interbane, but you should be more intellectually robust.

This is why Gauquelin's work is a momentous paradigm-shifting finding, and why scientific bigots resort to fraud, censorship and lies to deflect his work. It requires that people change their minds.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:13 pm
by geo
Robert Tulip wrote: This is why Gauquelin's work is a momentous paradigm-shifting finding, and why scientific bigots resort to fraud, censorship and lies to deflect his work. It requires that people change their minds.
I think you might be getting ahead of yourself here, Robert. From what I've read of the Mars Effect, I don't see that correlation is yet firmly established. If the data showed an obvious correlation there wouldn't be a controversy. And even if a correlation existed, it's far from clear as to what would be causing it. Right? It could be statistical anomaly such as the hockey players born in January. So until someone comes up with a plausible hypothesis about this mechanism behind the so-called Mars Effect—how the position of Mars can possibly affect a person's sports ability—you really have nothing more than speculation at this point.

While Dawkins may acknowledge certain "slow and relentless" forces that when all added up cause the cork to eventually move across the ocean, I don't think such small forces have been quantified or can be measured in any meaningful way. So that's all speculation too. It seems more likely that the gravitational tug of distant stars would be so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I don't see a correlation being firmly established yet much less a hypothesis that would explain it. And so even if we grant you that these forces might exist, it just might be premature to call Gauquelin the next Galileo.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:43 pm
by Interbane
You are saying that all other causes are ruled out
Actually, that's not what I'm saying. That's what you're assuming, that all other causes are ruled out. This is like saying you have no clue how your keys ended up locked inside your car, therefore it must be an invisible purple dragon that also resides in your garage. It is not at all impossible to believe that gravity from mars may lead to people becoming super athletes. :lol: It's a laughable notion, but not impossible to believe. It is not my resistance to this idea that is faulty, it's your ulterior motive in believing it to be true.

All this is summed up rather eloquently by saying correlation does not equal causation. Repeat that like a mantra.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 1:33 am
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:There is no helical structure to time. You're mistaking a visual 2d model for something physical.
My model is an accurate four dimensional physical model of the solar system through time. I know that may sound complicated, but in fact it is quite straightforward and simple to understand. The sun orbits the galaxy at 220 kilometres per second, dragging the planets with it. The sun stays within one solar diameter of the centre of mass, the point that describes an exact mathematical arc around the galaxy. The planets form helical paths around the centre of mass. In my model, the Z axis, the path of the centre of mass, is severely truncated to squash the helix for ease of depiction. The XY axes, marked by the orbit of Neptune, are about nine billion kilometres across. The sun travels 7 billion kilometres per year around the galaxy, so the Z axis of my model would need to be a few hundred times longer to model the solar system helix over 179 years with accurate proportions between the axes. The fourth dimension, time, is shown in this model as the positions of the gas giants at any chosen date. Remember, this 179 year model is true virtually for ever, permanently repeating for the duration of the orbital stability of the solar system.
considering the impossible possible, the species would then have to be concerned with this infinitesimal background gravitational fluctuation that started 100 generations or more ago… It is cancelled out by local noise.
I get the impression you didn’t understand Dawkins’ point about the statistical averages of a slow wind. The solar system is the ultimate background climate for the earth. Everything in a climatic system responds to its initial conditions through emergent complexity.
You're also jumping between the helical structure of DNA, and an organism's phenotype. Which one are you referring to?
The 3D helical structure of DNA just coincidentally has similar morphology as the 4D helical structure of the solar system. My point is that initial conditions provide boundary limits for phenotypic variation, so the regular conditions of the 4D helix of the solar system are a foundation for the variation of life.
What would the phenotypic effect be without the 'initial conditions' that you're proposing? Can you hypothesize the difference? Would famous people stop dying every 2148 years seperate from other important events? Would we have developed a third eye?
Disregarding your last flippant points, it is entirely meaningless to speak of life without its initial conditions. Earth could not exist except in the solar system. The helical structure I describe has been stable for four billion years.
With regards to the DNA, the helix is a general response to the stacking up of single monomer units into a polymer, which means DNA can’t help being a helix. So the chain of causality must by necessity include an explanation for how infinitesimal gravitational variations dictated that life be composed of monomers and polymers. Not only this, but those infinitesimal gravitational variations would do this 'intelligently!', since they would want DNA to resemble the orbits their parent planets go through (not really, only in a reduced dimensional analogy) over the course of 179 years.
By stacking up chunks of time around the axis of the SSB path we get a helix. Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune reach a point 13/12 around the circle every 179 years. Stacking 144 of these models describes the ‘DNA’ of the Great Year.
Eh? What is the challenge to scientific orthodoxy? You're lining up ducks. No one would refute that there are patterns here. Well, maybe they would if you were wrong. But this is inconsequential. These patterns are meaningless. You are putting meaning into them.
I’m not putting the meaning in, I am finding it as an objective fact described in the Bible. My claim that the Bible is in essence scientific is a challenge to scientific orthodoxy.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 1:59 am
by Robert Tulip
geo wrote:From what I've read of the Mars Effect, I don't see that correlation is yet firmly established. If the data showed an obvious correlation there wouldn't be a controversy. And even if a correlation existed, it's far from clear as to what would be causing it. Right? It could be statistical anomaly such as the hockey players born in January. So until someone comes up with a plausible hypothesis about this mechanism behind the so-called Mars Effect—how the position of Mars can possibly affect a person's sports ability—you really have nothing more than speculation at this point.
Thanks Geo. If you read Ertel’s paper refuting the critics of the Mars Effect, you will see he found it with p value 0.005 in one of the Skeptics ‘massaged’ samples, and challenged the skeptics to respond to perceptions that CSICOP tampered with the data. As far as I know they have not responded, and appear caught red-handed, reliant only on ad hominem and bluster. One of Gauquelin’s three samples has p value 0.00004, a result grossly improbable except by a real planetary effect.

What could this effect be? My view is that, like oysters which adjust to the position of the moon by gravity alone, human genes could well have ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth. A set of genes for athletic eminence could well include ability to optimise time of birth, although of course why Mars would correlate with athletic eminence is a pure mystery. It just does, as Saturn equally correlates with medical eminence, Jupiter with political eminence, and the Moon with writing eminence. The weakness of the effect is shown by the observation that it is only detectable among eminent individuals who had a natural birth at known time, and as Ertel notes, decreases statistically with decline of eminence in the study group.
While Dawkins may acknowledge certain "slow and relentless" forces that when all added up cause the cork to eventually move across the ocean, I don't think such small forces have been quantified or can be measured in any meaningful way. So that's all speculation too. It seems more likely that the gravitational tug of distant stars would be so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I don't see a correlation being firmly established yet much less a hypothesis that would explain it. And so even if we grant you that these forces might exist, it just might be premature to call Gauquelin the next Galileo.
Please, I am not talking about distant stars but about our solar system. As I commented earlier, these effects have nothing to do with the stars except as markers for local cycles. I regard Gauquelin as the equal of Galileo because the shift to a precessional paradigm, for which Gauquelin provides indispensible groundwork, is equally mind-bending as the shift from geocentric to heliocentric cosmology.

Re: Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:12 am
by geo
Robert Tulip wrote:
What could this effect be? My view is that, like oysters which adjust to the position of the moon by gravity alone, human genes could well have ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth. A set of genes for athletic eminence could well include ability to optimise time of birth, although of course why Mars would correlate with athletic eminence is a pure mystery. It just does, as Saturn equally correlates with medical eminence, Jupiter with political eminence, and the Moon with writing eminence. The weakness of the effect is shown by the observation that it is only detectable among eminent individuals who had a natural birth at known time, and as Ertel notes, decreases statistically with decline of eminence in the study group.
I'm not going to start studying Gauquelin's work because I just don't see that there's a lot there. I also don't have a background in statistics so I can't really comment on the data. However, on the face of it there seem to be a lot of problems, although there very well might be some kind of anomaly that is worth further study.

A few comments however. Gauquelin started from the position of trying to find meaning in astrology. I find this highly suspect. I say be wary of those who come from a biased position especially in the field of statistics where data can be tweaked in subconscious and conscious ways.

Wiki: Although he was highly critical of certain areas of the art, Gauquelin showed an interest in astrology from an early age; it is said that he could calculate a birth chart at the age of ten and earned the nickname of Nostradamus at school because of his astrological readings. After studying psychology and statistics at the Sorbonne, he devoted his life to the attempt to demonstrate the validity of certain fundamentals of astrology. However, he did not define himself as an astrologer and opposed the practice of astrology.

Your view that human genes could have the ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth is very interesting, however, this is nothing more than a grand mind experiment at this point. Are these claims for athletic, medical, and political eminence backed up by reliable scientific data? Or does this proof rely entirely on a few small select and questionable studies? You might be satisfied with Gauquelin's work, but apparently most scientists aren't. You can't simply blame the lack of acceptance to bias in the scientific community. If this effect was real it could and should be verified by bigger, better studies. So where are they? CSICOP's blunderings, if true, are in the past and irrelevant. Also if CSICOP can tweak the data as alleged then so can Gauquelin. In fact, this has been suggested.

Wiki: However, correlation does not imply causation. The issue remains contentious and the debate is inconclusive. A more detailed study by Ertel (1988) appeared to show that there is an effect. Still, the explanation for this effect remains uncertain. A paper by de Jager (1990) suggested that humans may have an optimal reproduction period and that the orbit of Mars currently happens to coincide with this interval. Longer periods of observation are needed to settle the issue.[3] Another possibility is that the data may have been skewed by incorrect reporting of birth dates during the last half century.

Examples of data-mining can be found in various studies related to acupuncture. Those who are biased in favor of acupuncture have either set up faulty studies, or have tweaked the data, or have simply denied the reality that acupuncture is no better than placebo. Several well-designed studies have completely debunked the efficacy of acupuncture, but its adherents continue to promote it. As such they are like members of the Intelligent Design community who simply deny scientific fact when it conflicts with their fixed ideological beliefs.

Equating Gauquelin with Galileo still bothers me. Galieo had actual scientific data that conflicted with the geocentric model. AND he had a plausible heliocentric theory to explain the phenomenon. As far as I can tell Gauquelin simply does not provide an explanation for what could very well be statistical anomalies. You can't have a paradigm shift without reliable data and certainly not without a working hypothesis.

I say wait for better studies to come along and then start formulating hypotheses. Until then you are putting the cart before the horse. You are jumping to conclusions.