Yes, it really does seem to work. That confused me for a long time, and I thought it was valid. Many people make horoscopes believing that they're doing something serious. This illusion makes astrology one of the most popular pseudosciences you can find.
Where does it come from? What is it that works?
The answer is that intuition plays a fundamental role. What "works" is the astrologer. Someone very intuitive and empathic can "catch" things from the person in his/her presence and can give quite an accurate answer to this person.
Besides, the basic wishes of people are few and pretty predictable. Almost everybody wants money, health and love, or some variation of it. So it is very easy to perform "cold reading" and in a short time discover what worries the person.
The Fohrer Effect also plays a role, people tend to remember the anaysis that was correct and forget the rest. And there is also the danger that people might make a prediction come true, behaving in such a way that they make it happen.
Well, then, what made me stop? It took me a long time, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to sustain a coherent argumentation with a skeptic. That made me think and conclude that it really had no validity.
People in general are in desperate need of answers, of someone who listens to them, some kind of security. The illusion that we can somehow predict the future, or know ourselves better, discovering "hidden" aspects of our personality, gives us a false sense of control over our lives.
We don't need this. The fact that we can talk openly to someone and speak out is already very conforting. And somebody who isn't involved in the problem can many times give us a more objective view about the problems we are facing.
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