• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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    9 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
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      9 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
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      9 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.world
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        9 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
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          9 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
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        9 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.

  • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

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

    This is people trying to find behavioral patterns

    • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Faulty pattern recognition isn’t something we should be holding on to.

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

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

          • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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            9 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
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            9 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!”

          • explodicle@local106.com
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            9 months ago

            They told us the history of alchemy in chemistry class, it’s good to know the context.

            • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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              9 months ago

              Yes, but no one credible still uses it. Which was the point I was making.

      • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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        9 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.

    • Mango@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Fuck those people who wanna categorize me so they can ignore who I actually am and just put a handle on me.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          No they don’t. They want to put me in a neat little box for easy handling.

        • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Then they should talk to me, rather than rely on generalizations that were created a couple of thousand years ago and revived by new age mystics.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      9 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.

  • zxqwas@lemmy.world
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    9 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.

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    I usually say “Ophiuchus

    Which is the official 13th zodiac sign that was removed because 13 is a “bad” number

    • starman@programming.dev
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      9 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.world
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      9 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.

  • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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    9 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.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • shoop@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        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.

      • Perfide@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        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.

    • deft@lemmy.wtf
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      9 months ago

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

    • joranvar@feddit.nl
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      9 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
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        9 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
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          9 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
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          9 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
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        9 months ago

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

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      9 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
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      9 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?

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
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    9 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
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      9 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
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          9 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.lu
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        9 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.lu
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        9 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.

      • pseudo@jlai.lu
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        9 months ago

        That is not because something is made up that it does not exist. I made up this message hence it exists.
        Cultures group stars together in what is called constellations, hence constellations exist.

  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    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?

    Checkmate, atheist.