Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

218 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
When people read their horoscopes, they tend to report an
uncanny number of “hits” or correct guesses. How many of us
have read a horoscope and been amazed at how well it described
our day?
As an experiment, I put my own birth date into a web-based
horoscope generator. It reported several things that do indeed describe
me: I like to avoid conflicts (despite the tone of this and
other sections of this book), I seek a partner who is my intellectual
equal, and I prefer to be with other people over being alone. All
true. But it also read: “You are a gentle, sensitive person with a
deep understanding of people and a very tolerant, accepting, nonjudgmental
approach toward life.” My wife (who is at least my
intellectual equal) nearly split her side laughing when she read that.
But let’s take a look at those apparent hits. The description
above sounds like a lot of people I know and not just me. The
wording is vague enough to apply to just about anybody. This is
the basic methodology of the astrologer: wording that applies to
everyone. People will pick and choose the parts they want to
remember, and that is what reinforces the belief in astrology.
The well-known skeptic and rational thinker James Randi (better
known as The Amazing Randi) once performed an experiment
in a schoolroom. The teacher told the class that Randi was a
famous astrologer with an incredible record of accuracy. In advance
the teacher had the students write down their birth dates and place
each in a separate envelope. Randi cast a horoscope for each person
in the room, placing them in the corresponding envelopes,
which were then handed back to the students.
After the students read their horoscopes, Randi polled them
about accuracy. The majority of the students thought the horoscopes
cast for them were accurate, and very few said they were
inaccurate.
But then Randi did an Amazing thing: he asked the students to
hand their horoscope to the person sitting behind them (the students
in the last row brought theirs up to the front row), and then
read their neighbor’s horoscope.
The results were priceless. Surprise! Randi had put the exact
same horoscope in each envelope. You can imagine the expressions