The Truth About Astrology & Zodiac Signs | Dr. Brian Keating & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | When I'm not confused for a cosmetologist, you know, because of my lovely hair and makeup,

00:00:06.700 | I'm usually asked, you know, "Oh, you're an astronomer, I'm a Virgo, you know, so what's

00:00:11.320 | going to happen to me?"

00:00:12.320 | I'm like, I used to be, "Oh, okay, that's an astrologer, I'm not an astrologer," but

00:00:16.600 | now I just, I kind of lean into it.

00:00:17.960 | I'm like, "Ooh, you're going to get a letter from the IRS next week," and that lump on

00:00:22.040 | your ass, that's...

00:00:23.040 | You mean you're playing games with them?

00:00:24.800 | Yeah.

00:00:25.800 | So you don't believe in astrology?

00:00:26.800 | There's no evidence for astrology.

00:00:28.680 | In fact, there's, you know, many, many random controlled trials, double-bund study that

00:00:33.440 | showed not only is it, it's almost counter to the evidence, you know, like when they

00:00:37.760 | say that a monkey can throw a dart at a stock chart and get, you know, do better than most

00:00:42.520 | hedge fund managers or something like that, actually astrologers are even worse.

00:00:46.240 | Like I don't even know a protozoa could throw a dart, yeah.

00:00:50.200 | It's almost anti-correlated, you know, with what reality is.

00:00:53.800 | So no, there's certainly no validity to that.

00:00:57.020 | And I had a provocative tweet, you know, whatever, post recently, and it was about, there's actually,

00:01:04.160 | you know, we believe there are 12 zodiac signs and that dates back to the Persians and the

00:01:08.520 | Babylonians and how they divided up them.

00:01:10.840 | And it almost divides, you know, they were fascinated with the number 60.

00:01:13.920 | So that was the base of their number system.

00:01:16.000 | Our number system is 10 because we have 10 figures.

00:01:17.720 | For some reason they love base 60, I don't know why.

00:01:20.960 | And so they love things that divided evenly into it, 10 does, but anyway, you know, #fail

00:01:26.840 | for the Babylonians, but they divided it up into 12 zodiac signs.

00:01:31.800 | So we still use those.

00:01:32.800 | There was a problem though.

00:01:34.480 | The zodiac that you're, do you know what this is?

00:01:36.880 | Do you know what determines your zodiac sign?

00:01:39.040 | No.

00:01:40.040 | Oh, okay.

00:01:41.040 | So it's determined by the position of the sun, what constellation was the sun in on

00:01:46.000 | the day you were born, September 26th.

00:01:49.080 | So when the, that means that the sun was in the constellation Virgo, oh no, you were a

00:01:54.000 | Libra?

00:01:55.000 | Libra.

00:01:56.000 | I don't know if you are, but you don't know why you are.

00:01:57.740 | So Libra means it's a constellation, there's 88 constellations that are accepted by astronomers.

00:02:03.560 | And the, one of them is Libra and the path that the sun and the moon and all the planets

00:02:08.040 | travel in is called the zodiac.

00:02:09.860 | It's confined to a plane because the same proto-solar system disk from which we formed

00:02:16.780 | out of, all the planets came out of a nebular cloud, a cloud of gas, dust, rocks, and so

00:02:22.320 | forth that came from a preexisting star that exploded, creating what's called a supernova.

00:02:28.800 | The supernova provided the materials to make not only the earth, but the entire solar system,

00:02:33.400 | including the sun.

00:02:34.400 | That happened about 5 billion years ago.

00:02:36.760 | And 4 billion years ago, the earth formed out of that cloud.

00:02:40.480 | The spin of that disk, all things have a spin associated with them, like a figure skater,

00:02:45.800 | you know, she's spinning around on her axis or whatever, she can have her arms out, brings

00:02:49.660 | them in, she spins faster.

00:02:51.020 | That's called conservation of angular momentum.

00:02:53.220 | Spin is a type of angular momentum.

00:02:54.880 | The whole disk is spinning in a plane.

00:02:56.700 | It's like this desk, this table that we're sitting at, if you're listening, you imagine

00:03:00.420 | a flat table.

00:03:01.420 | It's spinning, a circular disk is spinning with a certain direction.

00:03:05.100 | All the objects are moving in that same direction due to conservation of this term called angular

00:03:09.500 | momentum.

00:03:10.980 | The sun moves in that, apparently moves in that position.

00:03:13.500 | Obviously we're rotating around the sun, but it looks like the sun's coming around us.

00:03:16.960 | The moon is, Jupiter.

00:03:18.500 | So on the day you were born, there's a constellation behind the sun from our perspective that was

00:03:23.140 | Libra on September 26.

00:03:25.700 | And that was the day that you were born.

00:03:27.500 | That determines the fact that you're a Libra.

00:03:29.340 | But there's a problem.

00:03:30.780 | In December where we are now, the sun is actually in a different constellation, the one that

00:03:35.100 | doesn't exist according to the zodiac that was created something like 6,000, 5,000 years

00:03:40.020 | ago.

00:03:41.020 | It's called Ophiuchus.

00:03:42.020 | So there's a certain segment of people born in a 17-day stretch in December, late November

00:03:47.100 | to early December, that are actually Ophiuchans or Ophiuchuses or whatever.

00:03:52.740 | So that should obliterate astrology as any semblance of a science, because they didn't

00:03:58.100 | even know this constellation existed, and yet something like 12% of all people share

00:04:02.780 | that constellation.

00:04:04.220 | So it's just complete nonsense.

00:04:05.820 | There's no validity to it.

00:04:07.180 | Twins that are born on the same day have radically different histories, past, futures, and there's

00:04:12.620 | no predictive power to it.

00:04:14.060 | And that's what science is about, right?

00:04:15.300 | You want to make a hypothesis, test it, iterate on it, and have confirmation of it.

00:04:19.180 | And there's zero, in fact, for astrology.

00:04:21.260 | In fact, if you'll permit me, a kind of silly story.

00:04:24.540 | When I was dating my wife, who had become my wife in the beginning, she kind of thought

00:04:29.900 | it's fun.

00:04:30.900 | Maybe we'll go see someone who can tell our fortunes, if we belong together.

00:04:36.740 | So we went to an astrologer.

00:04:38.900 | And the astrologer asked me a bunch of questions, "When were you born, obviously?"

00:04:42.900 | And, oh, no, she asked me, "What's your sign?"

00:04:45.060 | So I said, "I'm a Gemini."

00:04:46.960 | And she said, "Okay, cool."

00:04:47.960 | And then she told me a bunch of things.

00:04:48.960 | And at the end, I said, "I just want to double-check," and I was playing kind of a little bit of

00:04:53.420 | a jerk sometimes.

00:04:54.420 | So I said, "I just want to confirm.

00:04:56.420 | Gemini is born in September.

00:04:57.700 | I'm born September 9th."

00:04:59.140 | She said, "Oh, no, no, that's a Virgo.

00:05:01.480 | But the same things are going to happen to you anyway."

00:05:02.980 | Like, it didn't change her outcome.

00:05:05.480 | And so in the language of the philosophy of science, Karl Popper, others, it's unfalsifiable,

00:05:11.900 | and you cannot be proven right.

00:05:13.140 | It's so flexible.

00:05:14.140 | You know, you're going to find challenges.

00:05:16.180 | The stock market is going to fluctuate.

00:05:18.780 | Political turmoil will reign.

00:05:20.580 | They're so flexible, it can accommodate any story.

00:05:23.380 | And that's a hallmark of non-science or sometimes anti-scientific thinking.

00:05:26.900 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

The Truth About Astrology & Zodiac Signs | Dr. Brian Keating & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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