3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

I just finished my Australia Live Tour - 5000 people across 3 cities in 4 days.

Absolutely surreal. Still processing everything, thank you all.

Next up: London XL show - Thursday November 28th https://chriswilliamson.live/london

Question. Does astrology work?

Spencer Greenberg (Modern Wisdom guest) tested the ability of 152 astrologers to see if they could demonstrate genuine astrological skill.

Back in January, a study was run trying to predict 37 facts about people's lives using their astrological sun signs (whether they are Pisces, Aries, etc) and I covered it on this newsletter.

While personality tests were able to predict these facts decently well, sun signs couldn't predict even a single one of them...

Some astrologers criticised the original study for this, saying that sun signs/zodiac signs are just tabloid astrology - real astrologers use a person's entire astrological chart.

Taking into account this criticism, Spencer got the help of 6 astrologers to design a new study:

- In each round, each astrologer gets LOTS of information about a real person (answers to 43 questions) along with 5 full astrological charts
- They then predict which is the person's real natal chart (the other 4 are decoys).

Why this study design?

One of the most fundamental claims of astrology is that a person's natal chart contains information about that person's life and character.

If true, astrologers should be able to correctly choose a person's chart at a rate well above random guessing.

The study results are based on 152 astrologer participants with prior astrological experience who predicted they would do better than random guessing at the task.

Each astrologer tries to match people to their correct chart 12 times.

If they're guessing completely at random (e.g., they have no skill because astrology doesn't actually work), then they'll get about 20% of questions right, or about 2.4 questions right (on average) out of 12.

Neat aspects of this study design are that (1) if astrology doesn't work, it's impossible for astrologers to do better than random guessing at this task, while (2) for the study to come out in support of astrology, astrologers only need to do slightly better than random guessing.

These astrologers were quite confident in their ability to match people to charts.

Those with the least experience believed (after they had completed participation) that they'd gotten 5 out of 12 right, and those with the most experience thought they'd gotten 10 out of 12 right.

So, how did astrologers do overall?

If they'd gotten even 23% of questions right (slightly above the 20% of random guessing), the study would have come out in favor of astrology.

But astrologers as a group performed indistinguishable from random guessing, getting < 21% right.

But perhaps the less experienced astrologers were just dragging down the performance of the group?

The researchers looked at how performance varied based on astrological experience.

More experienced astrologers did not do better than less experienced ones despite being far more confident.

Even if most astrologers have no skill, there's another way astrology could prove itself.

If even 1 of the 152 astrologers performed exceptionally well, that could provide meaningful evidence for astrology.

The researchers offered a $1000 prize for anyone getting at least 11 out of 12.

Unfortunately, despite more than half of the astrologers believing that they had gotten 6 or more questions right (after completing the task), in actual fact, not a single astrologer got more than 5 right.

Okay, so despite them believing they could do this task, astrologers seemed to have no ability to match people to their astrological charts.

But, even if they aren't getting the answers right, do they at least agree with each other on what the right answers are?

No.

Astrologers had very low agreement with each other on the chart for each person.

If astrologers picked charts at random, they would agree with each other 20% of the time.

In the study, even the most experienced astrologers only agreed 28% of the time.

In conclusion, despite believing they could do it, the 152 astrologers seemed to lack any ability to match people to their astrological charts. — h/t Spencer Greenberg

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Matthew McConaughey - Hollywood & Texas legend on how to reinvent yourself, lessons in overcoming tough times, how to make a marriage work and much more. Shot in a beautiful Texan barn - with the video episode available on Spotify.

Thursday.
Donald Robertson - one of my favourite psychologists and philosophy historians with an amazing breakdown of the life and teachings of Socrates. So so good.

Saturday.
Matthew Syed - one of the best writers in the world on elite performance unpacks the psychology and mindset traits of world class talent.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
Hot women get bullied.

“More physically attractive women are disproportionately targets of aggression from other women.

In one study on adolescent females and males, attractiveness increased females’ odds of incurring same-sex aggression by 35% and decreased males’ by 25%.” — Rob Henderson

2.
Was Trump’s election a referendum on women’s rights?

53% of white women voted for Donald Trump, while 45% supported Kamala Harris.

46% of women overall voted for Trump.

3.
Being mean doesn’t change people’s minds.

“The problem is that so many people spend so much time online that they fail to remember that people are all human at the end of the day, and treating someone else with a modicum of respect is actually a far better way to get them to see your position than flinging at them with fire and vitriol.” — Carl Benjamin