• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    10 months ago

    That’s like saying Huckleberry Finn doesn’t exist. Just because it’s made-up doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It exists as a concept which billions of people understand.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      15·
      10 months ago

      I think it is pretty clear in the context of the joke that they weren’t saying the concept doesn’t exist they were saying the attributes of the concept doesn’t exist.

    • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
      9·
      10 months ago

      The Sun’s position on the ecliptic at the vernal equinox is not a “concept”, it’s a physical reality, recognised by the International Astronomical Union.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        And the astrology signs exist as a concept as recognized by thousands of years of human history dating back to Babylonia 2 BCE. Yes we understand that they’re likely completely bogus, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

        • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
          5·
          10 months ago

          This thread is so dumb. The signs, and the Sun’s progression through them, are as real as anything else in the sky.

      • Danitos@reddthat.com
        3·
        10 months ago

        Disagree on the semantics. Physical realities are concepts as well. “Energy”, despite being an extremely useful physical measurement, is an abstract concept. “Physical realities” and “concepts” are not mutually exclusive nor antonymous words.

        In this case, the Aries/vernal point is a concept used to define coordinate systems using physical measures from Earth.

    • BluJay320English
      1·
      10 months ago

      Except Huckleberry Finn doesn’t exist… Fictional things aren’t suddenly real just because people came up with them.

  • cuerdo@lemmy.world
    34·
    10 months ago

    I would argue that the zodiac is the proto-science of psychology.

    This is people trying to find behavioral patterns

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
          12·
          10 months ago

          So not at all based in science? Interesting as a historical curiosity but nothing more?

          • maynarkh@feddit.nl
            12·
            10 months ago

            Interesting because of the psychological insights into not how all people are, but how people make up theories in general. Same way religion has scientific significance in an anthropological sense.

          • beardown@lemm.ee
            8·
            10 months ago

            “I turned 5 pounds of lead into gold this morning using this one weird trick that chemists HATE! Subscribe to my premium substack to learn more!”

      • cuerdo@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        The problem is that we still don’t have a proper pattern recognition. We could discard all the soft sciences such as Economics, Sociology or Psychology.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      3·
      10 months ago

      I just did a quick search and the difference between seeing astrology talk about fate vs personality is at least 1200 years apart.

    • starman@programming.devEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      Actually it was not removed. It just wasn’t on the ecliptic plane before standardisation in 1930.

      Constellations on sky change from time to time thanks to axial precession.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      That’s the secret sign that gives you the power of chakra energy transmutation. Richie Blackmore of Deep Purple used this power to become a space trucker.

  • zxqwas@lemmy.world
    24·
    10 months ago

    Turns out you can make up any arbitrary distinctions and they just start existing. The question is if they severe any useful purpose.

    I can make zodiac 2.0 exist by adding shoe size to distinguish between regular aquarius and aquarius without platypus (above EU 42 is with). So now the Zodiac 2.0 exists with the same predictive power as 1.0.

  • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
    17·
    10 months ago

    Considering how the universe is full of stuff circling around stuff circling around stuff circling around… the zodiac signs have moved over the last couple of millenias.

  • pseudo@jlai.luFrançais
    14·
    10 months ago

    Actually they do. The zodiac sign constellation of a day correspond to the constellation over which the sun while be at noon. So you do have a zodiac sign constellation associated to your day of bird. But depending on how your culture group stars in constellations you might be from a different zodiac. If you want to follow a classical westerner map of the sky, they will be 13 of them.

    Also, note that the zodiac signs won’t cut the year in equal parts. Some constellations are just bigger than other and the sun path across the sky changes more or less quickly from a day to another depending on the time of the year.

    Edit : typo

    • Farid@startrek.website
      3·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, I also didn’t like the wording of the meme. It’s like saying “Santa Claus doesn’t exist”. He does exist, he’s just not a real person, but he exists as a concept and influences millions of people.

        • Farid@startrek.website
          3·
          10 months ago

          I’m aware that he’s the basis of the modern Santa Claus (I’ve actually been to Demre), but I would argue that the modern Claus is a separate entity/concept at this point.

      • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        I would go even further : Santa Claus is presented as a actual person that we all know does not exist even though the concept exists. But noone ever pretended that Zodiac are a physical thing, it’s a concept and concepts can’t get more real that being conceptualized.

      • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        Check out wikipedia. There is two pages each time one for the zodiac sign and one for the constellation.
        And if you go to the french version, the dates at which the sun cross the constellation are each time in the introduction. It’s the date of the first paragraph. The ones the second paragraph is the dates is in astrology, for disambiguation. The comparaison are harder with the english articles.

    • joranvar@feddit.nl
      18·
      10 months ago

      In Dutch we don’t use the Latin names for zodiac signs (and we call them “sterrenbeelden”, which means “star images” or maybe “star statues”). Aquarius is “waterman”, which I guess would translate to (surprise) “water man”.

      Why? Not sure, but it might be because of Simon Stevin who insisted we use Dutch words for mathematical concepts, and thought up some words like “evenwijdig” (“same distancey”) for “parallel” and “wiskunde” (“certainty knowledge”) for mathematics.

      • rbhfd@lemmy.world
        10·
        10 months ago

        Literally, “water man” is correct. But I would translate it a bit more loosely as “water bearer”.

        Most, if not all, names of zodiac signs in Dutchare are literal translations from Latin. But while most people understand that Leo means Lion, how many know Cancer is Latin for crab?

        • joranvar@feddit.nl
          2·
          10 months ago

          Water bearer makes much more sense, thanks! I did notice the images where a guy carries a jug, but as a kid, I always imagined the water man to be some kind of elemental, and I never consciously challenged that idea. Haha.

        • joranvar@feddit.nl
          4·
          10 months ago

          I agree, and I love how it has these younger words with a vivid etymology, how it shares so many common roots with English, German, the Scandinavian languages, and a serving of French, but also sprinkles of many other languages from its seafaring and otherwise trading history. And I love the grammar rules that allow one to be precise and concise in many things (but there we must definitely bow to German).

      • psud@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 months ago

        Aquarius in English is normally called “the water bearer” so a person carrying water (probably back from the well)

    • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      Gemini, Virgo, Libra and Sagittarius also are not animals. Almost half of them isn’t. But you’re technically correct that ‘most’ is. Which is the best kind of correct.

    • Perfide@reddthat.com
      6·
      10 months ago

      Only half of the Zodiacs are inspired from real animals. Gemini is two humans, Virgo is a virgin woman, Libra is a Weighing Scale, Sagittarius is a Centaur with a bow, Capricorn is a Sea Goat, and Aquarius is… a cup of water, I guess?

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    10 months ago

    Zodiac signs are literally constellations… Which are quite real.

    Astrology is also real, in the fact that it’s a uselessly real thing. Women love it though. Same with tarot. All you do is make plausible sounding shit up and then they placebo themselves into happiness or nocebo into a sour mood.

    • deft@lemmy.wtf
      2·
      10 months ago

      Which lowkey is magic.

      Placebo effect, confidence, trust.

      They’re not really things. Intangible and hard to understand. With them in your corner somehow you just have more, you’re empowered.

      Magic dude wtf

    • deft@lemmy.wtf
      4·
      10 months ago

      Ancient star magic that picks up babes is real and look how boys treat it

  • Swallowtail@beehaw.org
    8·
    10 months ago

    The actual signs exist (get yourself a planisphere or a stargazing app, find some dark skies, and discover them for yourself!), it’s just all the magic personality nonsense associated with them is bullshit.

        • beardown@lemm.ee
          3·
          10 months ago

          It’s one thing to say that constellations of stars don’t exist. It’s another thing to say that the constellation “Leo” doesn’t exist because it isn’t a lion and our perception of the spatial relationship of those stars has nothing to do with lions, or with mystical astrological significance.

          Those stars are present in space in a certain way. And we can perceive them in our sky in a certain way. But whether those stars are “connected” in any meaningful way, or whether they contain any inherent Lion relevance is purely a creation of human imagination derived from real observable objective phenomena. We could just as easily have said that Leo was Orion, and Orion was Leo, and have been equally correct. It’s subjective. Which doesn’t mean it’s meaningless for us, otherwise art would be meaningless. But it does mean that it isn’t “real” in the same way that gravity or the sun are real. Anything whose continued existence is conditioned on belief isn’t “real” in an objective sense.

          Belief can certainly will unreal things into meaningful reality though. But, absent that belief, those things will not exist.

          Really this is a discussion centered around the inadequacy of the English word “real.” Perhaps other languages have specific words that would more clearly demonstrate this distinction. Because clearly gravity and Pisces are not both “real” in the same way. The former is objectively real and the latter is subjectively real. And we’re talking past each other by not simply having seperate words that distinguish between those concepts

          • ZephrC@lemm.ee
            1·
            10 months ago

            Except there really isn’t anything more “objective” about all the stars in a direction vs all the hydrogen lumped together in a hot spot. I agree that the dense place fusion is happening is far more interesting and important than a direction of sky that got named after a pretty picture someone imagined a long time ago. That’s a purely subjective distinction though. That direction from Earth, and everything in it, exists without us just as much as a star does. Words just describe the groupings we think are interesting enough to want to communicate about regularly. Sometimes other people like to talk about things we think are silly. That doesn’t make us more “objective” though.

          • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            2·
            10 months ago

            It makes me feel really dumb when I watch this stuff. The entire time I try to be open minded. I’m left being impressed with the individuals ability to research and articulate an obviously very thoroughly studied topic. They are obviously intelligent, I guess more so than I can relate, because all I am left with from the content is how pointless of a topic it is. No kidding words that we created are a method of communicating within the environment we exist. It’s like the stupid boat example, most generally when referring to the boat people are referring to the one registered, just as he said in the video. The others made from the scraps are boats made from the removed components of that registered vessel. None of this stuff seems complicated to me. He and others even seem aware of the pointless ridiculousness of it when he discusses the eyelash in the fridge example. So I’m left feeling that I’m obviously too stupid to understand the value, or objective, in such a pointless pursuit where everyone already recognizes conditions to words apply to communication while somehow finding value in beating the horse to death and picking it to death, for what I imagine is some goal I just can’t understand.

      • ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃@pawb.social
        1·
        10 months ago

        Smiley faces don’t exist, they’re just a random collection of polygons (that are interpreted by the human brain as being analogous to a specific thing and thus have meaning through comparison…)

        • beardown@lemm.ee
          4·
          10 months ago

          No it’s like saying a person-shaped cloud doesn’t exist.

          To describe it as person-shaped is subjective and another viewer may describe the same cloud as butterfly-shaped. Because it’s a subjective interpretation of a static objective object. Like abstract art.

          People/animals exist and are “real” in that all of us have agency and a sense of self that is not conditionally dependent on the identical perception of others.

          A person-shaped cloud is only “person-shaped” if viewers claim it is. An arrangement of viewable disparate stars is only “Orion” because the Greeks, and now us, decided it was. But I am me and you are you regardless of what anyone else thinks, and always will be.

          We aren’t a collection of particles, we are more than the sum of our parts. We have agency and a mind and self-identity. A cloud or a star constellation has none of those things. They are inanimate unfeeling objects that only gain meaning, (astrological, imaginative, or otherwise) when humans/sentient beings ascribe that meaning to them. Human beings, and all living things, have inherent meaning because of their sentience and inherent uniqueness. Which is why genocide is a greater loss than the destruction of a rock - it’s the permanent death of unique living beings.