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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, only ambiguous bones that could be anything and are interpreted to be dinosaurs by old earth creationists making you believe the earth is older than a millennium. Most bones are actually from giants, unicorns and centaurs depending on the color.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...)
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.
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.
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.
What hard sciences could replace economics and sociology? They're not very rigorous, but they seem to be useful. Psychology also takes some load off psychiatrists
Pfffft if none of them exist then how did the Rat play a flute while standing on the head of the Ox to impress the Jade Emperor and become the first zodiac sign?
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.
Not that I believe in astrology, but just because the constellations moved doesn't mean that humans weren't able to track them. They still form a ring around Earth and the precession of the Zodiacs still occurs.
I believe the point is not that the zodiacs don't occur at all, it's that the time you are born is no longer the same time the original zodiac occured.
The fact humans are able to track them is how we know the zodiacs are no longer accurate. According to astrology if you were born on Dec. 1 for example, you're considered a Sagittarius... except you're ACTUALLY a Scorpio, due to the constellations shifting.
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.
