S3 E31 —Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things

Yesterday was all about me — what and why my Holiday Tau fit me the most. Today is filled with a disappointing gaggle of Holiday Taus for Steves.

“2” Steve Zahn, 51: “It’s happened before that you got what you wanted and then were somehow vaguely unsatisfied. This time, you’ll question your wants and get to the bottom of why you want it, which helps your chances of a fortifying outcome.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 30 in Season 3 of “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 18th day of April in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!; S3 E29 — Why 83.3% of the Time I Swiped Your Tau; S3 E28 — Why I Stole Your Daily Horoscope for a Year

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly; S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t?; S2 E29 — Three Months That Changed the World; S2 E28 — Hosting Norwegian Zooms While Trump Eliminated the Virus in April

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E29 — Day 29 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E28 — Day 28 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

I’d been working on the Findings Section of the report describing how for a year I lived life like an art form in a natural experiment.

The “Conclusions Section” grabbed my attention because the Holiday Tau for Zahnny, the Fonze, Emma the Baroness and me illustrates what critics level against astrology, palm reading, fortune telling and taking horoscopes too seriously.

How could you not follow Nancy’s lead? Not “Do It,” or, “Just Say No.”

But first, here’s a quick and dirty 30-day summary, “Why I Stole Your Sign and the Mysteries of Your Life”. Treat it like a pawn ticket to sketchy things I’ve learned from stealing your sign without doing the time. I feel so guilty about it that I’m willing to sell it back to you.

When Ronald Regan sat in the oval office, his First Lady consulted with an astrologer for scheduling his important meetings. Was this time optimum for the President? Or was tomorrow better?

“Mrs. Reagan’s spokesperson said of the astrologer, ‘Air Force One didn’t take off without permission. [Nancy] set the time for summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev, presidential debates with Carter and Mondale…the timing of all the President’s trips abroad, of his press conferences, his State of the Union addresses.’”

I can only assume it included leading up to his speech, “Mr. Gorbachev, take down that wall.”

After all, they were both in the acting business as celebrities before he became California’s governor and later President.

Let’s not forget what a fellow Californian and Los Angeles Lakers legend wrote:

“Intelligent imagination is vital to this sort of deduction! However improbable a hypothesis, it cannot be discarded”

— “Mycroft and Sherlock” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

However comma in the Conclusions Section is the time to confirm or deny your hypothesis. Can I get an “Amen”?

The reason why astrology may seem like it works is because our brains are wired to look for patterns, even when none exists. For me as a writer I found it easy to conduct “discussions” with Steves about their horoscope.

And, that made it easy for me to bring small parts of what I’m actually thinking about, working through, or experiencing in the world like they are.

I embarked on this experiment, and I make no apologies for it, hoping I’d find a significant inspiration or insight to solve a vexing problem, master a complicated first time challenge or just make how my day flowed a little easier.

But you can’t ignore the role of bias conspiring against reliable results: selection bias on the front end and confirmation bias on the back end.

Self-selection bias boils down to the very human tendency to look for interpretations or confirmations for what we already hope to be true.

To mitigate undue bias effects, I summarized what was happening behind the scenes first and then “scored” the Holiday Tau curated for that day.

Since the brain is not looking for exact matches, it can pick up some characteristics of a match and assume it fits. Astrology is no more than a test of chance and it is not a reliable way to predict personality, scientists and critics say.

Another phenomenon I noticed over the year is one astrologer’s prediction for a horoscope is typically and completely unrelated to the prediction of another astrologer for the identical horoscope.

Oops.

So for purposes of this natural experiment I chose consistency and stuck with Holiday Mathis throughout the year. Your mileage may vary.

But, I had to ask and am left with, how similar is my long-term attraction to trends and predictions I research to better decide a significant course of action with the appeal of the shorter-term astrological forecasts?

I’m attracted for entertainment purposes, yes, but, as for guidance, not much at all. To which you can rightly point out you’ve continued this obsession into your third year!

Guilty as charged. On top of stealing your birthday more often than not.

And, that takes us to an example of what a Wikipedia “expert” had to say about how some people become truer believers than others:

“However, many people still believe their horoscope perfectly aligns with the events in their lives. There are some possible explanations for this. Horoscopes have vague wording and are based on typical everyday activities.”

Evidence

Cases in point.

“2” Steve Zahn, 51: “It’s happened before that you got what you wanted and then were somehow vaguely unsatisfied. This time, you’ll question your wants and get to the bottom of why you want it, which helps your chances of a fortifying outcome.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

And for some reason the rest of the Holiday Tau doesn’t get much better!

“3” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “When they come to you with questions you can answer, it feels good to be able to help. When they come to you with questions you can’t answer, it gives you ideas about what to learn next.” Virgo

“3” Steve Kerr, 54: “You’re just following your curiosity and doing your job, but you end up growing your expertise in the process, and your influence naturally expands. With increasing power comes increasing responsibility.” Libra

“4” Steve Aoki, 41: “Intentionally focus on what there is to be happy about. To appreciate and enjoy where you’re at is more than just a good practice; it’s a tool that keeps you connected to the best parts of your humanity.” Sagittarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

- @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 7981 to 8003 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

- “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge” by E.O. Wilson, an entomologist who studied colonies of ants for their insights. But didn’t stop there, according to The Wall Street Journal, “A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them.”
- “True Believers,” the novel by Kurt Andersen (which seems to precede Fantasyland)? I like how he goes back and forth from now to the ‘60s in which the main character is writing a memoir, but needs “Okays” from her friends who had been hiding a secret for 40+ years that could ruin their careers? Like, what’s my equivalent
- “Disappearing Through the Skylight” by O.B. Hardison, Jr. which proceeded “Consilience” by a decade. Hardison’s been described as a polymathic renaissance man who wrote, “… Nature has slipped, perhaps finally beyond our field of vision.” What does it mean for “… science, history, art and architecture, music, language, ultimately, for humanity”? This one provides missing chunks of understanding where we came from and where we’re going.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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