You’ll face unexpected setbacks today

At age 21 I became the unofficial astrology editor of JS the youth magazine I worked for Every week the mail would bring in a syndicated weekly astrology forecast from King Features in LondonIn sweeping strokes they would doom all Arians to unexpected setbacks at work Virgos would be put on high alert for a surprise meeting with an attractive stranger who might or might not completely change their life Capricorns would be told to wear blue for luck except on Thursday when just staying home was highly recommendedI thought astrology was a crock of ordure so I amused myself by switching forecasts around Arians would be assigned the colour blue Capricorns would get the attractive stranger and unexpected setbacks at work would go to VirgosIn five years of toying with readersrsquo lives I have received not even one letter of complaint So you might be surprised to learn that I believe and not even all that secretly that there is something to astrology Maybe this is why I donrsquot get invited to parties any moreLetrsquos break it down shall we Astrology claims to tell you your future and it insists that really far away stars and planets somehow affect your temperament behaviour relationships and fortunesOutrageous How could the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus 65 light years away from earth decide that I am to be a patient plodding loyal and bullheaded human being or that I might get a raise todayFirst about predicting the future By any chance do you find anything odd about someone trying to predict the weather Therersquos a giant global industry built around it and people take weather forecasts quite seriously But therersquos nothing even slightly exact about meteorology Category 5 cyclones routinely whimper out and monsoons routinely arrive too early or too late taking everyone by surprise Meteorology deals with probabilities not facts Hmmm So does astrologyThe insurance industrymdashtherersquos another occult science for you They fix your premium by predicting how long yoursquoll live Just like palmists do But theyrsquore right about as often as theyrsquore wrong You canrsquot predict being run over by a busWhat about DNA mapping Enough people are willing to put good money into having their unborn babyrsquos genes mapped to predict future diseases I meanwhile look at the stars in the sky above and predict minor cuts and wounds for you this week because Mars is retrogradeThen therersquos predicting the movement of stocks and shares I know some who have lost their lifersquos savings based on someonersquos hunch about where gold was goingHow about distant objects affecting things on earth Thatrsquos easymdashtwice a day a really distant object called the moon makes the sea rise and fall sloshing like water in a bucket An even more distant object called the sun somehow changes the skin colour of bikiniclad Americans lying on some beach in FloridaFor the last 50 years people have believed that a saturated fats diet will cause heart disease though no one has yet proven that one causes the other Why is this more scientific than famous statistician Michel Gauquelin claiming that eminent athletes all had Mars low on the horizon when they were bornHumans are survivors because over thousands of years wersquove become rather good at making predictions based on sketchy patchy imperfect dataAstrology is at least older than meteorology Show some respectAs ex officio astrology editor I would ask readers whenever I met one what they thought of the magazinersquos weekly astrology forecasts The replies were always unfailingly effusive Back then no one said OMG so Irsquod hear things like ldquoBy gum theyrsquore so accurate And the personality descriptions mdash they talk to me Theyrsquore so detailed and preciserdquoAfter Irsquod heard enough people sing their praises of astrology I started digging Why did people invariably find forecasts accurate even knowing that they were generic Turns out therersquos a term that describes this little act of selfdeceptionmdashthe Forer Effect Itrsquos named after the psychologist Bertram Forer who figured out that people readily agreed with vague descriptions about themselvesmdashldquoSometimes you are a little too selfcriticalrdquo or ldquoYou are a people person but sometimes you like a little me timerdquoTo test his theory Forer distributed a random personality description to his psychology students Everyone got the exact same descriptionmdashand everyone thought it was remarkably accurate The Forer Effect works especially well with positive statements since people like to think well of themselvesHerersquos my forecast for you todaymdashyou will find yourself questioning things yoursquove taken for granted all your life Something you read might get you all worked up You might get into an argument with close friendsFinally yoursquoll go down to Matunga and have some hot filter coffeeHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper