Astrology is one of those things that makes no sense to literate people. The position of stars a billion light-years away determined your personality, but if you are in the eastern world that personality could be completely different than if you were born 2000 miles west? See: I was a Virgo this morning, now I am a Leo! I totally feel different.

At least in Asia, some people swear by it. In the US, it is mostly only embraced by those who also believe that psychics are real, PFAS in water has been killing us for 12,000 years, and organic food has no pesticides. Basically, about 25 percent of the population, 50 percent of whom likely live on the California coast.


And read the New York Times, which also routinely lauds acupuncture and ghosts.

It's silly to think the stars determined your personality but what about the knowledge of expert astrologers? Can they determine anything about you? A new study sought to test whether or not they were any better than random chance. 

They were not.
 

What is strange, though, is that even though they were wrong they often agreed with each other. The  152 astrologers couldn't match people to their astrological charts any better than you or I could.  Yet they are happy to tell you everything going wrong in your life is based on stuff they don't get right anyway.



Yet they matched each other in being wrong really well. Expert knowledge about nonsense spreads.



Think you can do better than an astrologer? You probably can, as long as you don't actually believe in astrology and just use common sense. Either way, you can try it yourself here.