yrgirlkv
@yrgirlkv

If you believe you have astrological skill, you can also put yourself to the test by taking the same challenge that we used in the study! We're making this challenge permanently available so that anyone can test their own abilities at any time. At the same link, we also offer a practice test (based on matching celebrities and events to an appropriate chart), which is less scientifically rigorous but can be used to practice before taking the official test. Additionally, we've released the anonymized data from our study, so that anyone who wishes to can analyze the data for themselves.

so some folks did a study to test out the idea that astrology works if you use the whole chart instead of just sun signs or whatever. based on their data it very much does not, & also i'm obsesssed with the cheerfulness with which they say "try it yourself bitch!"


yrgirlkv
@yrgirlkv

"what, like they won't hire you if you're a virgo?" well it turns out that in china, the answer is yes:

Some Chinese job postings state that Virgo candidates are not wanted, and some Chinese people avoid Virgos on dating apps.

and i've heard that similar stories have taken place in india. the US doesn't have hard data, and i doubt it's as frequent here as abroad, but astrology itself has only been getting more popular in the last decade, and i do not think that is a good thing! i know there can be a tendency to shrug this stuff off as "harmless fun," but i cannot help but feel that it's getting less harmless the longer it goes unchallenged.


shel
@shel

A lot of people find housing through Facebook groups like "queer housing philly" where people search for roommates to fill in open rooms on a group lease, and it is extremely common for these ads to ask for or make explicit exclusions based on astrological sign, or to self-identify astrological sign as part of defining what makes a possible compatible roommate. Americans definitely are making housing decisions based on astrological sign. I think the main thing lacking here is that there isn't really a universally reviled astrological sign so much as people are deciding that because they are X they can't live with Y


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in reply to @yrgirlkv's post:

I want like, any mostly non-professional field like this to answer this question though. I feel like a lot of fields are overperformed by "experienced amateurs". And who is going to say "world class expert" that hasn't already gotten to where they are by sheer bluster?

But either way even the difference between the best and worst performers is less than one correct question lmao, and neatly clustered around the random chance line, so who cares.

the difference between an experienced amateur and a professional is the amateur who keeps coming back has some kind of intrinsic motivation definitionally

but also depth and breadth sort of balance each other when they intersect at a specific narrow topic. (outside of like, medicine, which is a clown show in both directions more often than not........)

in reply to @yrgirlkv's post:

in reply to @shel's post:

When there isn’t even a universally reviled sign, you can’t even game the system and lie, pretending you’re the extremely nice and compatible uhh… libra, because these people might go “ah sorry, we are already two air signs, we need someone to ground us, you would just make our ADHD worse”.

In another sense I always wonder: let’s say you convinced everyone that astrology doesn’t work. Okay now you haven’t made them all critical thinkers. These people still don’t know how to second layer think or apprehend reality. They’ll just grab the next problem and in five years we’re back here with a new thing.

wait hold on what the fuck?

people take astrology seriously?

in this year? This is absolutely news to me, though I've been embedded in STEM circles for the better part of two decades so I guess I'm not routinely exposed to the kind of person who might believe in astrology.

But my understanding is that astrology has been the butt of jokes for as long as I can remember- kinda as a shorthand for 'gullible hippie', along with (back in the early days) veganism and infrequent/ineffective bathing/grooming practices.

like there's a sitcom trope where the Main Dude is trying to pick up a Hot Girl and the Hot Girl asks what his star/sunsign is, and this is treated as an indication that the Hot Girl is some kind of vapid bimbo character and thus can be safely objectified.

ngl- the idea that there are many real human beings in the US making real life decisions based on astrology is an earth shattering revelation to me