[LegibleCrimson]

This is a 2.4 million year cycle, not something that can lend any credence to the idea that the arrangement of the planets at birth has any effect on a person. The arrangement of your house or neighborhood has a stronger gravitational effect on you at a young age than the planets. Feng shui would be a better predictor of people's personalities than astrology.

[explaininjs]

Astronomical signs (in the west) are entirely related to the time of year when you were born and not at all related to the "arrangement of the planets", besides of course the position of the earth relative to the sun. The idea that some voodoo around the position of your bed relative to your chair relative to your door has more impact on your life than your spawning phase shift in the (second?) most significant cycle of our existence is pure absurdity.

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.

[Tijdreiziger]

> the position of your bed relative to your chair relative to your door

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)

[Ekaros]

Also, consider which direction windows of various rooms you have face. Rooms are used differently during the day so for example morning sun in the bed room might be helpful if you need to wake up when sun rises. Also before modern houses things like air circulation and so on could have real effect of livability.

[openasocket]

> 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.

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

[Tijdreiziger]

Sure, but you can change one description into the other, while keeping the practical application the same.

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

[LegibleCrimson]

You could also provide some evidence instead of telling me to gather my own. I'd happily read some more double blind studies on the effectiveness of astrology, most of what I've read points to it all being complete bunk.

[explaininjs]

Science is observation, not consumption. I ran the experiments, I got the data I needed to inform my opinion. You're more than welcome to do the same. But if all you will listen to is what scientific journals want to publish, you've already made up your mind, and there's little use pretending otherwise.

If you ask me, nothing could be more "complete bunk" than some "scientist" claiming they've somehow blinded someone to their own birthday.

[LegibleCrimson]

Science is specifically a process of cooperative knowledge building, using testable explanations and minimizing human biases. I would like to hear about your experiments, though. I don't have full faith in scientific journals, and they've had loads of problems in regards to reproducibility and legitimacy of data, but the process is the best we have for determining truth.

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.

[explaininjs]

I'm not particularly interested in what constitutes a "real astronomical prediction", I'm more interested in the crux of the topic: Are there common traits shared amongst people with similar birthdates that experienced astrologists can identify and use to correctly place an individual into one of 12 buckets based on a short interaction?

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.

[LegibleCrimson]

That's an experiment that is extremely susceptible to biases and unintentional information sharing, including things like expressions on either party's face. Not to mention your very subjective determination of whether or not the predictor is confident, or the fallibility of human memory and experience.

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.

[mistermann]

Fair criticism, but then look how many Scientific Materialist fundamentalists in this and other threads would have you believe they are omniscient Oracles, but then cry foul if one dares to critique or have a bit of a laugh at their hallucinations.

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.