As a simple test: ask N self-proclaimed astrology experts to guess your sign, and perhaps the signs of some others around you. Run a Chi-squared on the results. Come to your own conclusions.
Alternatively, plot some user data against birth month. Observe dependence.
If you ask me, nothing could be more "complete bunk" than some "scientist" claiming they've somehow blinded someone to their own birthday.
You don't blind people to their own birthdays, you mix real astrological predictions and readings with randomized ones, and see if the results fared better than random chance. I'm very skeptical of astrology (to be completely honest, I completely reject it), but I am trying to take part in a real conversation here. I believe that astrology is complete bunk, wall to wall, but I'm open to reading more on it and talking to you about it. I don't want to attack anybody for their beliefs.
I originally was like you and thought the answer was "no, my birthday says nearly nothing about me". However, over the past few years I've made a point to ask all new strangers I meet ("met at a bar" type folks who I had 0 prior connection to, so excluding friends of friends/etc.) who display an interest in astrology to guess my sign and state their astrological confidence. Roughly 85% folks who are "very confident" in their knowledge of astrology correctly guess it first try, often with little to no hesitation (N = ~8). The folks who are not as confident vary: some will also get it first try, some will take a couple, some give up after like 6.
For that experiment to be fair, you'd have to interact with them, and then they would have to write their guess and confidence down without you knowing what they're writing, and then afterward you'd have to collate the information.
This is the common thread that I've always seen, as someone who used to be very interested in the paranormal and supernatural. When you actually start measuring things properly and controlling for biases, the supernatural mysteriously disappears. It's only there when it can't be proven. Human imagination is extremely powerful. Remember the story of Clever Hans. Everybody, including the trainer, believed the horse could do math: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
This story comes into my head whenever I see psychics and readers of anything like this. Nobody is lying. Everybody believes it, even when it's not real. You can read body language and pick up on things without even understanding how. It's interesting, because you seem to be the opposite of me. I started out open to much of what I now consider hoodoo, and became a naturalist and a skeptic through my experiences. You had the reverse path. I suspect the answer may lay closer to the middle than either side, but I'll keep with what can be objectively shown in well-controlled tests.
There's really nothing not "fair" about it, but folks like you are so perverse to the idea of anything that doesn't fit your perception of the "scientific consensus" that you'll make up hoops in the name of "bias" to throw out every experimental result that doesn't agree with your preconceived notions up until the point all you have left are those experiments that you didn't see fit to invent hoops for because they already matched what you think you know. It's honestly terribly ironic, when you take the time to examine it.
I really do hope you can take the time to try this yourself and see for yourself what your own personal results are, there's no use at all for me to waste my time debating my own personal experience with someone so hell-bent on discrediting it on the basis of "actually I once read a paper that said..." and "well actually I know X Y Z errors with your experimental setup that you've told me next to nothing about and I never was able to even observe..."
If I try it myself, it'll be done right, and I won't keep the stats in my head. I know how fallible my own perception is, and as somebody with an anxiety disorder, I know how easy it is to read patterns out of thin air. For some people, reading patterns that don't exist seems mystical or illuminating, for me, it's a sense of constant unease and fear. I can't be universally open to just accepting things, or reading patterns with my intuition, because my intuition is that everything is potentially poisonous and I'm definitely going to die in less than a week.
Edit: You could have mentioned that you have a mental condition characterized by an irrational fear of pattern recognition in your diatribe about biases. I'd have known not to waste my time.
That's rude.
How about your data? Like I said before, I'd be happy to see the data. You've thrown some numbers off the top of your head, but I'd rather see the raw gathered data.
> I didn't say "seeing things that aren't there" either. I said reading more into things than are there and seeing patterns where they don't exist.
Ha.
And it's not an ad hominum when the trait is something directly related to the topic at hand.
IIUC, the idea behind Feng Shui (traditional Chinese interior design) is that if your furniture is arranged in a logical way, it has a positive mental impact and is therefore conducive to allowing you to thrive. On the other hand, if your furniture is incoherently arranged, it can lead to frustration and clutter, which have a negative mental impact.
I don’t think there are any studies on this, but at least intuitively, it seems to make sense to me.
Example: if you put your desk directly in front of your door, it’s in the way and therefore will be an (unconscious) source of frustration every time you enter the room (because you have to walk around it all the time). In Feng Shui this is described as the desk blocking the ‘energy’ of the door; I find it useful to think of ‘energy’ as a synonym for ‘traffic flow’ in this context.
If you want to know more about this, check out the excellent YouTube/TikTok channel ‘Dear Modern’, especially his short-form videos. (no affiliation)
That’s an incomplete description. Traditional Feng Shui says if your furniture is incoherently arranged, it disrupts the flow of Qi, and causes spirits to grant you ill fortune. Which sounds less plausible
I really recommend watching the following video, which introduces Feng Shui principles in a non-superstitious way:
“Feng Shui does make sense! The basis of how to plan your home for comfort and practicality” (runtime 6 min 34 sec) — https://youtube.com/watch?v=YsBPqO3pv_Y
The only saving grace of this simulation that I can see is how absolutely hilarious it is, it's like living in one of those old British sitcoms.