Black Swans, uncertainty, and astrology

(there’s a course announcement at the end. Feel free to ignore it, but now you can’t say no one told you).

What is randomness? What do we mean when we say a thing is unpredictable?

Nassim Taleb, the best-selling author of the Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and other stuff, has written extensively on it, and on how it impacts.

I’m not going to summarize his thoughts here; please check his books. They are wonderful, and he’s a nice writer. I’m not saying he’s always right — his view of art is frankly silly, for example.

And, of course, he has no nice words for this art of ours. He would probably hate this post.

But I’ll do it anyway.

Taleb insists many times in his books that we are wired to neglect randomness and “Black Swans” (improbable but very consequential events). We are biologically fit to be citizens of a country called “Mediocristan” (the province of averages, of normal distributions, narratives, and predictability), but we live most of our lives in “Extremistan” (the Empire of unpredictability, and Black Swans).

I want to talk a bit about that. There are many interesting aspects of his work that have astrological importance, and I may write about them someday, but now we’re going to deal with prediction and biases.

We astrologers have a priviliged sneak view into the “causes” of things. No, we do not see the future, but astrology and its symbolic analogies do make us see glimpses of the structural order beneath the mundane chaos.

So, Black Swans are merely ducklings for us, right?

Nah.

How many events were talked about by astrologers for months, all the testimonies that could make one predict it discussed (all those nasty transits)… only after they havd occurred, while no one had predicted it before?

I’m not saying no one ever predicts unusual events.

Robert Zoller famously predicted 9/11. The Puertorican astrologer Dave Hernandez used to tell when hurricanes would strike. And there are other examples.

But, while the outcome of expected events (election results; if someone will recover from a disease; how a trial will end; the weather) are reasonably common, these outliers are quite rare.

We’re in the business of telling people what will happen. So why, when someone actually does tell people that, it amazes everyone else?

Because, as I mentioned before, we’re wired to ignore the unusual.

Astrology allows us to look farther, or rather deeper, into things. But it cannot tell us where to look.

See, once there were royal astrologers — craftsmen (and maybe women) who advised princes, kings, emperors, dictators.

They would investigate their patrons’ charts — and charts of countries, cities, etc — looking for a bunch of things, which included death and wars.

So, an invasion was in their “radar”. Once you’re looking for it, a skilled astrologer could find it.

But, if a country was ever attacked by aliens in the Middle Ages, not a single astrologer would have predicted it. Angry insect-like warriors from outer space would not be in any artist’s mental picture of the possibilities.

The same thing happens with natural disasters. I’m not saying it’s easy, but if someone pays you to study. and then investigate and predict, earthquakes, tornados, tsunamies, etc, it’s entirely possible that you’ll eventually learn to do it.

But you won’t find the unlikely; what you’re not looking for. You might be looking for floods, and might even spot an unusually strong one… but you’ll not spot the seas turning into Coca-Cola by a cabal of evil scientists. If you’re investigation fires in a certain area, you’re sure not to tell your clients that the fire will come from the sky or from an angry Greek god.

Let’s take Zoller’s prediction, for example.

He said something along the lines of “an increased likelihood of terrorist attacks on the East Coast of the US on the second semester of 2011”. It’s accurate enough, it deserves all the praise in the world, and it could have been useful if someone in the American government paid attention to astrologers.

But he never said “planes will be hijacked and hit the World Trade Center”. It’s not technically impossible — we know it, because we saw it happen —, it’s less interesting than my fictional examples above, but no one would have thought of that before.

There’s another example. The Bulgarian astrologer, Boris Cristoff, is said to have predicted the COVID pandemic.

I don’t doubt it, although I have not read/heard it firsthand. But I doubt he said it would have come from China, and I could bet my money on him not saying anything about eating bats or laboratory manufactures.

We can, and will say things about the future — that’s our job. But only based on what we know from the past, and on who we are: humans.

And this is not, to be honest, bad. It teaches us humility, all the while emphasizing the value of what we are actually capable of doing.

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There’s a lot more interesting ideas from Taleb that may be useful for astrologers. I’ll probably write more about them soon.

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I’m planning a natal astrology course.

It will repeat the format of the one I did in Portuguese, a while ago.

Live classes once a week, or twice a month (so people can watch the recordings, think about it, have doubts, and sometimes do some exercises); every class will have some theory and some examples.

There will be three modules: delineation (assessing the natal chart in itself); comparison between charts (what people usually call “synastry”, but I don’t like the term because it seems to be used only for romantic couples); and prediction (using diferent techniques to try and predict events and the quality of times from people’s nativities).

It will not be, in any way, a comprehensive theoretical explanation of techniques (nor, God forbid, sources!).

This stems from what I have learned from my teacher, John Frawley, from what I have read over the years, and from my practice. This is a natal course based on how I, Marcos Monteiro, a real practicing astrologer, proceed when I’m judging a client’s chart.

That is:

At the end of it you’ll have seen, understood, and hopefully learnt a working method of practicing natal astrology; one that I have tested many times, based on the teachings of my teacher and what I could get from other authors that had some practical value.

You will not in any way learn to talk about every different technique available, and you’re not going to become better at quote fights; in fact, if I’m successful, you will become less good at (and less willing to) engage in the favorite sport of pseudoastrologers and astrology lecturers.

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Nice to be back. I hope you missed me again. See you soon, I hope.