Astrology: Should we stake our lives on it?

The other day I was watching a video on YouTube in which Dhruv Rathee (a popular YouTuber) attempts to explain what exactly transpires when some of our ubiquitous godmen claim to be able to read our minds. In this video, he is accompanied by the magician Karan Singh who demonstrates that rather than reading any one's mind these so-called godmen actually lead people up the garden path and the whole thing is actually trickery.

Karan demonstrates how with the help of subtle psychological suggestions, the so-called godmen make their followers think just what they want them to think. Following this, the godmen pretend to read the subject's mind and the more credulous ones among us fall for the trick. Similarly, when it comes to palmistry Rathee and Karan Singh suggest that when palmists ply their trade they just make general suggestions which would be at least partially true for most people.

Astrology is also debunked in a similar way. For those of you who are interested in watching this video here is the link.

Truth behind Astrology & Mind Reading | Explained by Dhruv Rathee ft. Karan Singh Magic

Being a techie I have most often looked down upon subjects like astrology, mind-reading and palmistry. Even now when I find my octogenarian parents watching astrological programs on television it irks me no end and the only thing that stops me from giving them a piece of my mind is their age and the respect I have for them. My father has always been a reader of BV Raman's astrological magazine and during my childhood days, I remember having several heated arguments about the veracity of astrology with my father.

But I have always strived to have an open mind and recently I looked up several articles on astrology and palmistry and tried to really understand how it is meant to work. When I read the basics of astrology and palmistry I do find that there are some laws that are properly codified. I was also convinced that astrologers and palmists do follow these rules when they do readings. I was convinced that astrology and palmistry are actually genuine subjects and the practitioners do not tell out and out lies.

The question I asked myself was how far can we trust the veracity of these rules. In my personal experience, I have always found that any time an astrologer or palmist comes up with predictions they are generic in nature and most often there would always be some part of it that would ring true for a person. I approached my father and we had a discussion. He told me that these rules have been formulated after thousands of years of observation of the planetary positions and the effect of those on human lives.

Immediately my mind jumped to what Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan had to say about astrology. He maintains that the similarity in planetary positions is nothing but patterns that repeat themselves and nothing more than that. In this context, I remember something I had studied in computer science, where I was taught that it is almost impossible to produce truly random patterns. No matter how many variables one uses if the number of trials is large enough a pattern would always emerge.

Let us juxtapose this to human lives. No matter how many people are there on this planet there will always be a certain group of people whose lives are similar in nature. If astrology were a genuine science, the positions of the stars at the time of birth of all the people belonging to a group has to be similar. But there again, the size of the group also matters. You can imagine how difficult all this makes validating astrology scientifically. 

I have always trusted the scientific method where it should be possible to prove an observation by experimentation. The argument made by most astrologers is that astrology is a science of observation and does not lend itself to scientific validation. In conclusion, I would like to say this: though astrology and astrologers are not telling stories and do seem to be going by carefully formulated ground rules, the validity of these rules cannot be scientifically proven.

And that is something which is simply not acceptable if we are to make decisions based on astrology. And if we want to live a good life it is important that we believe our actions will definitely have a certain effect on the outcome and things are not as pre-destined as astrology seems to indicate. Keeping this in mind I think we are better off staying away from astrology to interfere in our lives.