 Hi everyone, it's MJ the fellow actuary and welcome to the second philosophy vlog for the year of 2023 we're gonna try and do one of these per month and It's an interesting format because when I try write Philosophically that sounds such a such a pretentious thing to say But when I do try and write it, I find that I'm always Re-reading what I've just said and being like oh is that right? You know could I've put it in a better way where I find that if I just talk and you know go off on it It gives a little bit more more freedom. Of course it means it's not as structured and Hopefully that is actually beneficial comes across more conversational rather than you know some heavy Philosophical writing that you have to like read think about and slowly digest this can hopefully be a more free-flowing format In the last video we spoke about Rizzo and and Augustine and how they both wrote a book called confession Augustine's view was that people are bad and society improves them where Rizzo had the Exact opposite people are born good and society corrupts them And if you're interested in hearing more about that then I'd recommend going in checking out the first vlog Which we released at the end of of January But y'all what I want to talk about I guess in this vlog is Well, I guess y'all the one thing that's that I've just found very curious my my whole life is this idea of astrology and Astronomy and sometimes I've been in some awkward situations because I sometimes get the two terms confused like someone will be like I'm into astrology and then I'm thinking they're talking about astronomy and I'm like, yeah me too You know, oh, what's this was and then I hear that they're like talking about something completely different and I'm like, oh I'm into the the scientific one and and I always found that very interesting, you know, like how Astronomy from my own personal perspective was always seen as Superior to astrology if anything I grew up being taught that, you know astrology was a pseudo science at best that astrology is Is wrong, you know, just to put out that blanket blanket statement, that's that's the world that I kind of grew up in And just for those, I mean, hopefully we all don't make the same mistake as me with confusing the terms Astronomy is the study of of the cosmos Whereas astrology is trying to divine or I guess determine the future by looking at At the stars and all the other celestial objects and saying, okay, Jupiter's over there therefore you can have a have a good day kind of kind of vibe and Why I find it interesting is because I also self-identify as a very Religious person as a man of faith, you know in the sense that I believe that Jesus died and rose again and that all the miracles of the Bible are true and and that kind of thing and it's it's interesting holding that position when one looks at both astronomy and Astrology because I am well aware that your astronomers or your scientists Look at religion and like come on, you know, that's all wrong or it's just stories it's just make-believe and they they see religion as being inferior and It's it's interesting because that's almost the same mindset that I'm having with astrology You know, I'm looking at it and being like, oh come on guys, it's all make-believe. It's wrong. You know, it's it's inferior and I guess that's what I want to talk about in in this video is is understanding how these things give us various frameworks and I Guess your frameworks is the nice way to use that help us to structure the reality that we find ourselves in and I think this is why religion is is very powerful In my own life, it just gives me, you know a sense of stability It it really really is in my opinion psychologically healthy to believe in an afterlife Because it's kind of like it dampens the fear of death Of course, I'm still scared of death and you know what what awaits But there isn't that dread that goes with it because there is this hope that, you know Life continues just in another realm. Whereas I cannot imagine You know the the anxiety that someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife must must have when they are confronted with the whole concept of death and Being an actuary and doing all the mathematics around mortality Death is kind of like in our face and it's interesting that while I was at university Quite a lot of the students were leaning towards atheism rather than then, you know a religious thing I wouldn't say all of them. I would say gosh never did a you know a survey probably should have but it was probably like around 50 50 But the atheists being a lot louder in their I guess their convictions It's yeah Carl you mentioned something interesting about atheists He says you know atheists have to keep saying that there is no God There is no God as if their words will magically make him him disappear and he's got some interesting Insights into into atheists and saying, you know, you're still a theist in a sense that you can't you know You're still, you know acknowledging that something has a possibility of existence and anyway We're not gonna we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole. I guess for for today's vlog Although atheism Could maybe be a vlog of the of the future. I definitely need to to better prepare for for that But just coming back to this whole This whole thing with you know frameworks of of reality And I guess this coincides with say another thing that we said in actuarial science Enterprise risk management where we create a risk framework on which all decisions need to be made through an organization and having that Framework can help an organization survive catastrophes navigate difficult situations And I guess for me Religion does that, you know, very very well It gives me an origin story. It gives me what's going to happen. It gives me a life purpose You know, it's just it fills life with meaning. There's this grad narrative that I can participate in and for me religion like I say is psychologically very very healthy and that's why I I Want to consider astrology as I guess an alternative framework for reality and I guess For for a lot of people it can provide them with that same stability And I guess, you know, we're gonna be bringing in a lot of actuarial and statistical terms to this discussion And I think that's what makes astrology or I think it was one of the things that that upset me And I see some of my friends that also upset is When people meet us and they say oh what year or what month are you born in or what? You know your date of birth and you say oh, you know 15th of December and they're like, oh, you're a Sagittarius Therefore you're this this this this and that and remember I get you know And I maybe I'm not alone in this like I said, I've had a few friends You've also been a little bit irritated by guess the personalities linking up with the star signs Because it's like don't define me by a single data point Okay, a single data point that I personally had no influence over I didn't determine my my date of birth You know, so please don't base my personality or your entire understanding of me on that piece of information Which I had no control over, you know if you ask me something like oh Michael What's your favorite color and I say blue and then you say oh, okay based on blue you're a happy person You're a smart person. You're at this person. I can then be like well, okay, cool At least I chose the color blue. It's still a single data point which still makes me uncomfortable That's so much information is being inferred from it However, at least I had some agency in determining what that information was whereas when it's simply a date of birth I feel as if you know, I'm just kind of It's it's almost the opposite of of you know, like the religious story Which places so much agency on the individual, you know, the whole idea is that we got kicked out of of paradise Because we have free will and we have you know The divine spark of God and we're able to do so much and you know Every decision is either good or bad and there's all this meaning attached to it And then you come away from religion outside and you've got viewpoints of you know Nihilism that there is no such thing as meaning or there is no such thing as good and bad and moralities You know, it's it's all relative based on culture And you know, it's it's such a stark Contrast and like I say it's almost nauseating to even just imagine yourself in that type of Of structure because it feels so flimsy Whereas religion you know tends to give you quite a a rigid structure, especially, you know a religion like Like Christianity that has you know, it can trace this way all the way through from Judaism And it's you know being around for for quite a quite a long time now There's been a lot of writing and a lot of philosophy That's gone into to strengthen, you know, its foundations and apologetics that have gone into You know provide reasons where at times it feels like it can be very much a a paradox But coming back to to astrology Like I say it was it was very very Uncomfortable from my perspective that so much was being determined based on a single data point But then I thought well, hold on. Let me think of it from the other person's point of view And I think this is what makes astrology So attractive is that hey as an individual Look how much information I can know about people based on a single piece of information Which not many people are going to try and hide if anything It's quite public knowledge like on on your Facebook profile You've got your name. You've got your date of birth and your relationship says like those like the three things People go in and and used to look at back in the day. So it was very widely Available information and with a single piece of information. I now at least know something about a person Now whether that information is right or wrong, you know, we can defer that judgment to a later stage It just gives me a lot of comfort if straight away. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm dealing with the Sagittarius. Okay You know, I've eliminated a lot of the unknown because let's admit doubt is irritating not knowing is frustrating So if I can take a single piece of data And create, you know a whole picture of who this person is Like I say whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant in the sense of the comfort that it's giving me As that doubt is being removed. Like I say that might be removed and you could be wrong And this is what I think the scientists are like, you know, this is a pseudoscience This stuff doesn't hold any hold any weight. But on the other hand, again, it is psychologically Very calming for someone to use astrology in determining the personalities of people Based purely on their their date of birth It's like they can instantly have this framework on where to place people And also the thing with astrology is you've got all these different star signs They're giving you all these different personality traits. You can learn quite a bit about a bit about humans You can be like, oh humans are sometimes this humans are sometimes this humans are sometimes that And I think the interesting thing about astrology is that I mean if you were to pick up a different horoscope And read the personality of a different horoscope You will identify with a lot of those those things because I think a lot of them are Are common or they're vaguely written enough or they're very attractive things that we want to see ourselves have So it is possible. I remember picking up mine for for scorpio and being like, okay, cool I actually can identify with a bunch of these things Um, and like I said, I'm not yet to you know to knock Astrology, I think other people have have done that Better than than what I potentially could be But like I said on the other hand, there is there is some You know, I like to take things Seriously, especially things that maybe other people are very quick to to dismiss And let's say we we look at something like, uh, astrology You know, I asked myself and I'm like, well, is there any truth like does the date of your birth influence your Your personality And I guess if you look at when you're born When you're born determines what season you're born in And you know, you could have a winter baby a spring baby an autumn baby, you know or a summer baby And I wonder if Being born in a different temperature Might have different Psychological impacts. For instance, maybe if you're born in the winter Your mother holds you more for for warmth. Okay now I don't want to get too much into Into that kind of stuff because you know, I do have a lot of ignorance In childbearing and and I guess the impact that seasons would have on it But it could be, you know, the season could influence Um The child and I guess a way to maybe test this with astrology is to see Let's say i'm say geteris and the the two star signs on either side, you know, do I feel You know, are there are there more similarities between those two than the one, you know on the on the opposite side? um Or like let's say six six months apart then But I guess yeah, then this this raises the interesting question is Wouldn't there be different star signs for southern hemisphere babies and northern hemisphere because not only I guess are we seeing different stars because you know When we're looking This way the other one we're looking we're looking that way Um, but also, you know, the seasons are are also then, you know reversed So and I think a lot of astrology Is based on northern hemisphere um You know kind of like I know the europeans and china and and all of these kind of places had it whereas I don't think Yeah, in the southern hemisphere we had that much. I mean, I think we you know, all cultures have had some sort of astrological, you know linkage to their mythology and even like to say in christianity You know the stars and celestial objects play an important role Um in in the grand narrative, but I think yeah, it's the zodiac You know that kind of is is dominant as the astrology, you know, when we refer to it in in today's kind of kind of culture So I wonder if the the south and the northern hemispheres should actually flip in which case me being sagittarius I'm born in the summer in south africa where it's, you know, winter and In the northern hemisphere and I'm gonna see if my my flipped Zodiac sign would be it or maybe the southern hemisphere should just have his own set because like I say we're looking at at a whole different set of Set of stars. I mean that was always one thing I guess this is a very like south african thought Is you know, south africa were put at like the bottom of the world And I always thought like why are we at the bottom of the world like this whole orientation of north and south is is a man-made construct and you know if Like it's not wrong to draw the world upside down because like I say, I don't think there is an orientation in in the cosmos um You know, if you were to launch a rocket from south africa and look down on the earth It would appear upside upside down I don't know like I say very a very south african southern hemisphere Thought where we like why are we at the bottom of the Why are we at the bottom of the world? Why aren't we why aren't we at the at the top? um But the interesting thing is with I guess with astrology and say dates of births Is that I guess they do play quite an important role in our society today. So one thing It's and it's weird. It's it's now it's now acting in my favor for those of you who've seen my karting vlog You'll know what i'm talking about but when I was growing up it acted against me So, you know born 15th of december and in south africa our school year started in in january and I remember my mom loves telling the story about how they were thinking about holding me back One year instead of me going into the class of 1991 You know, they were thinking, okay, maybe you should go in the class of 1992 because you know being a december baby Uh You're you're not as old as kids and you know age at that at that time is You know being up by six months can be like 10 of your your life or something like that so I remember she she loves telling the story because they went um, and I did a whole bunch of tests and Apparently at age of six I was operating at the intellectual level of a of a nine-year-old So they were like, okay cool. He can go into to class and you know, my mother loves telling this the story The problem though with the story or by doing this is that it really ruined me for for sport You know, not only was I probably late to the whole puberty game But being a december baby meant that physically I didn't have as much time to develop as say the the other children and you know, there were circumstances where Let's say, you know having six months on someone at such an early age can give you enough of a physical advantage I mean, this is why schools, you know The grade eights don't play with the grade nines and the the 10 year olds Don't play with the the 14 year olds because age does have quite a big impact on your your sporting performance But what tends to happen and especially since I stayed at the whole You know, I was at one school my entire life is that you kind of get box So let's say in grade one or the first year Then I'm at a school the coaches are like, okay Michael didn't make the first team. He's a second team player. So when the second third fourth, you know, all these grades go forward That kind of starts accumulating like, okay No, that's a second year player and that prior knowledge is kind of imprinted because you can imagine as a coach You don't have the time or maybe you don't just care enough to reassess every single student You know for for the new year if anything you want to be like, okay, who was in the first team last year Okay, we're going to look and observe these players who was in the second team last year You know, they're going to start off in the in the second year and that can have a little bit of a of a compounding You know result and I think I think I read this somewhere in freakonomics where they showed that Yeah, the dates of birth of a lot of you know NBA players was clustered towards the beginning of the the start of the year because of course that gave them that physical advantage Early on which then got them the attention and then it became anchored to their personality that hey these guys are You know the the champions and and they kind of got that further further attention and that divide started to to help Of course now with karting we've got a an opposite thing happening where if you're born in the year 1991 Basically you have to be 32 you can then compete in dd2 masters and me being born in december Means i'm going to be the youngest for karting And in karting it's a weird sport where the younger you are the quicker you actually are So I I now have that that flip and that advantage back into my place So if you're keen to follow my karting journey the vlogs will will also be out there But yeah, it's interesting how I guess that date of birth There actually is a lot of information that can be drawn From it regarding your sporting career, but whether it's your your personality Maybe you know that can then impact it in in some regards But I still think it's based more on how cultures and societies are structured rather than You know on just the the cos the cosmos um And this maybe like talk a little bit about about astronomy for the for the next nine minutes because try and keep these vlogs to You know 30 30 minutes at at a time So coming to to astronomy. It's interesting that it's called the cosmos. Okay the cosmos It's the greek word for for order whereas the greek word for disorder is chaos So they didn't look up at the stars and say ah it's chaos They looked up at the stars and they said ah it's cosmos You know it's it's ordered and they believe that the universe followed a set You know amount of rules and structures and and that kind of stuff and of course it does But you know with later discoveries and later technology we've discovered It's not as simple as we as we thought and of course one of the big changes That we made from the western world point of view was when we went from a geocentric worldview to a heliocentric worldview And psychologically, I think that was a big impact for our collective consciousness because suddenly we went from going We're the center of the universe. Okay, which makes sense from a christian Idea point of view, you know god made us god sent his son to die for us Therefore it makes sense that we are the center And you know, we had this whole structure that played into the christian worldview Suddenly with the heliocentric worldview It kind of supported the whole nihilistic worldview where it's like well We're just a little blue speck and you know, our sun isn't even the center You know, there's this huge solar system this huge Galaxy this huge universe and you know, we're so tiny and insignificant and like I say the current world or the current cosmological view does lean more towards nihilism And I bring up the whole religious thing because people love to make this claim that oh religion religion held back science and they give the whole story of Galileo With the whole heliocentric geocentric worldview But what many people fail to realize is that the church back then especially the catholic church They were a political institution a scientific institution and a religious institution I mean they still are today, but today they primarily just a religious institution with a little bit of politics and a little A little bit of science But back then they were almost like the main political force and like I say the main really scientific force as as well very quickly with with the politics is That what would happen is this is after The dark ages we had charlemagne where charlemagne kind of makes an agreement with the pope that they would have this kind of lines Where the pope would say, okay, this is the king. This is the king who has the divine right So why should we all obey the king because god appointed the king and who is the representative of god? It was you know the pope or the whole catholic church so the whole idea was that if you didn't believe in You know catholism Then you became a bit of a political rebel and the king was like I only want religious subjects because if you're not religious it means you don't you know approve of my authority So kings would kind of be very very harsh on people who weren't religious Because it had a political potential fall out for them So we see that catholism has a very important role to play in in politics But of course with a lot of political power they become a you know They become corrupt in various areas and you have this guy called martin luther who comes in with the reformation And martin luther though he was a catholic monk himself He was backed by a lot of the northern european Princes who were like, you know what? We don't want to be under catholic control If martin luther can come here and show that the catholic church themselves aren't religious Then we can undermine their authority to appoint world leaders and therefore the leaders That they've appointed, you know can be disposed of new leaders can put in and we don't have to answer to the catholic church So luther gets backed by by an army by a lot of political might And this is where this reformation starts to come in and they start having a bit of a smear campaign And one of the things that luther does Is he sees that it was a catholic monk called nicolas caponius who had written about the heliocentric world view Okay This heliocentric world view book had been published by the catholic church And for like the first 60 years No one cared no one really cared about this book It was only when luther starts coming in and saying ha look at the catholics They've created the scientific literature that goes against and it was luther who put forward this whole idea of you know I think this is verse in joshua where god says and the sun stood still and luther's like see God said the sun will stand still not the earth will stand still and you know He uses this as his basis of attack to say that hey look at the catholics. They're not biblical This is another example of them deviating from the faith and therefore we should follow me Um and the reformation rather than being catholic and with the printing press luther has got a wide wide audience and can reach all of europe And so this becomes a huge huge political problem for the catholics because it's like oh my gosh How do we explain to the masses to the peasants this entire heliocentric world because the heliocentric world view Made a lot of sense and that was mainly because of this one planet called mars Mars was doing this thing called retrograde motion where sometimes it would move in the sky And then it would move the opposite direction and sometimes it would be bright and sometimes it would be dim And caponius showed that the heliocentric world view, which he didn't create he even says You know the ancient greeks had this whole idea and Aristotle told them Oh, you know that's it's wrong and Aristotle pushed for the geocentric world view, but back in you know around 300 bc Around that time the heliocentric world view was put forward because of course people could see this retrograde motion of mars And how else do you explain it and it was very important that you knew the position of mars From an astrological point of view because you know if you could say mars was over here It means we were going to win the battle or if mars was over there Your love life was going to blossom and astronomy and astrology were very very closely tied So it was very important that you could predict where mars was going to be But with the geocentric world view it was very difficult to determine where mars is going to be A heliocentric world view could very easily explain mathematically Where mars was going to be and nickas caponius put forward this idea and like I say The catholic church it's not like oh my gosh, they published it and everybody started to freak out It was like no, they were like okay cool. This is a cool scientific theory um Of course caponius hadn't explained one very very important thing and it's like well if the earth is moving around the sun Why don't all the stars move and that would be saying known as the stellar parallax Which would only kind of be like figured out hundreds of years later with new technology for people to determine Actually, the stars do move. It's just they seem so because they're so far away It seems like they don't and therefore, you know, we don't have um, it doesn't appear like the stars are are moving where actually they they are Now I'm coming to the last minute But I think let me let me let me borrow a little bit more time and just I guess finish up the whole the whole story Because I guess this is where good old galileo kind of kind of comes in So this is the scene, okay The catholic church they've got the ottomans, you know invading italy coming in from uh, You know, they've taken over constantanople. They're pushing up I mean they almost made their way up to to venice during this whole kind of time So the ottomans are right on the catholics, okay? So the whole of christendom is being threatened. You've got martin luther Who's coming in and he's literally splitting christianity in half once again Because remember this had happened 500 years ago with the great schism with the whole orthodox kind of You know separate from from the catholic. So the catholics don't want to have another breakup But luther's coming in Not only is he saying a whole bunch of stuff against their religious practices But he's also showing their scientific things to be anti biblical from his perspective So the catholic church is dealing with this propaganda attack And that's when galileo kind of enters the scene and galileo what he did is he created a super cool telescope So the telescope had someone had submitted a patent for the telescope like a year before I think like 1608 And galileo kind of makes his cool one in 1609, which was a lot stronger a lot more powerful He observes the rings around satin the moons going around jupiter He's like well the fact that moons are going around jupiter It means not everything revolves around the earth and therefore if not everything revolves around the earth Maybe the earth isn't at the center and he's like if we look at caponius who shame by this time had been dead for like the past 70 years He's like well, maybe maybe that whole model has got some weight towards it But of course the catholic church comes in and they say galileo listen here like One this is super awkward because if you keep pushing this scientific view The masses are going to think that we're not biblical And we can't really justify to them say that this actually is the correct worldview Because they're all going to come back to us and say why don't the stars move? You know, it's it's like trying to convince everybody You know back in the day like how do you we can all see the stars at night We can all see the stars at night and they're not moving So how do you explain that and galileo couldn't he couldn't and instead what he does Is he starts attacking the pope personally and again? This is not what the papacy needed at the time They already were trying to deal with you know luther coming and saying that they weren't Religious enough now they've got galileo coming in and saying that they're not scientific enough And there's like, you know the Ottomans that are threatening their their political situation So the catholic church was in the situation where they said, you know galileo You do not have enough scientific evidence to change the fundamental theory and therefore, you know We're going to shut you down. Of course, we want to be seen in the good eyes of the people So we're going to also throw in the the whole biblical argument in there as well But the main reason was the stellar parallax rather than because like I say It's very very loose bible verses that you can try and try and take to support a geocentric worldview So, I mean you can even take bible verses and try to push forward a flat earth You know the bible especially when it talks about the world and all these things There is a lot of creative language and all these type of things and You know theologians can can kind of twist it to to mean what they wanted to mean So what they came in is they said listen here You don't have enough scientific proof and you know, they placed the bible argument for for the masses But of course the whole of science going forward I mean and we see this there was even this other guy called bruno who got burnt at the stake for denying You know the the trinity jesus being god he supported like what's saying known as the aria and heresy Which was the reason for his very unfortunate You know so much for free speech back in the day back then it was very dangerous to have novel ideas Um, but you know, he was kind of put to death for for those things not for his cosmology because bruno also supported The coponious idea And he was running around at the same time as as galileo and people left to point towards him and say listen See they killed bruno because of his scientific worldview. They killed galileo because of his scientific worldview You know, the church has held back You know scientific progress Whereas like interesting when you kind of figure out the whole story and you see that that's not necessarily You know the case But we have gone past my My 30 minute marker. So let me know if you guys enjoyed this. We can always have have a part two But what I love about astronomy is not only, you know, because I guess after this whole Scenario we get, you know newton and hayley, which I have made videos on Where they contributed so much to astronomy and to actuarial science because the mathematics that is needed for both schools Um, you know, it's it's the pure math and it was actually the reason why we needed math Was because there was so much money in determining Where these various celestial objects were going to be placed Because people, you know, believe that their personalities and their Futures and their fortunes depended on it. So I guess to conclude this whole big long vlog it's that astrology funnily enough financed astronomy and religion Defended the scientific method of we only change something once we have complete proof Rather than being, you know, just a a hurdle or or a blocker in in innovation But it's so crazy how the the narrative of today, you know, when you read scientific articles and all of that If they love to push forward this notion that, you know, ooh Astrology is just pseudoscience and religion has just, you know Being a been a blocker and holds us back Whereas when you look at the history You realize that these three things are a lot more intertwined and a lot more complicated and a lot more interesting Than one could could ever imagine. Anyway, we're five minutes over time. So I'm gonna wrap this up Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you guys next month for another vlog on philosophy