The Inverse Astrology Test
You done? My results you ask? Well, okay (I can't get the table to work here for some reason, but):
Your Inverse Astrology Results from Isocrat.org:
Aries - 47.8%
Taurus - 63.5%
Gemini - 49.1%
Cancer - 55.9%
Leo - 48.6%
Virgo - 76.3%
Libra - 50.5%
Scorpio - 52.7%
Sagittarius - 40.2%
Capricorn - 63.4%
Aquarius - 46.6%
Pisces - 43.1%
You claim to be an Aquarius but we predicted Virgo. Please consult a parent or guardian as to your actual date of birth.Turns out my parents are liars, and I was born a Virgo (I guess, then, my real birthday is coming up, if you want to get me anything... Just say'n).
So why do such a "test"?
Among the many reasons I wanted to have something like Isocrat.org was that I missed having a place to just put random stuff that interested me. That's why we have individual author hubs, just for random stuff that has nothing to do with GLBT concerns. There were about 5 years in our life when being gay wasn't a noticeable issue. But, in that time, I was still a guy up for questioning various faiths, long before our parenthood made it a practical priority.
One day a pregnant friend told me that she was sure she and her child will not get along, because that child was going to be born with a certain sun sign, one that she believed conflicted with her own. It shocked me, and I kept thinking about it. She got the idea from reading astrology books that describe a person's personality by their sun sign. Like many people who have faith in astrology, she had read the descriptions, picked out adjectives that she thought described her, ignored the rest, and, there you have it, proof in astrology. People do this all the time with all sorts of faiths; they remember the hits and forget or excuse the misses.
So I thought about how one could demonstrate this was a wrong way to come to a belief, and I came up with my inverse astrology test. A detailed explanation of the test is here, methods here, and the averaged results of all who've taken the test here. So far Astrology is batting zero.
Anyway, just a little diversion, but I hope it's somewhat illustrative and I'd love to know what some of you end up with (and if there are any bugs to be found in the test).
(I'm sorry if I've offended a reader's belief in this bit of the supernatural with this post. Sometimes I fear I get too used to being innately offensive to most people's ideas of the supernatural, and may not know when I've gone too far. Nevertheless, once people start making real world choices and judgments for their various faiths, particularly stuff like entering parenthood with prejudice against your child, it kind of puts it up for grabs, right? If that's not how you use astrology, I've no argument with you.)
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6 comments:
FWIW: A number of items are misalphabetized, which someone like me then goes on to question why they have been moved out of their appropriate place.
You predicted Aries (73.2%), whereas I'm a Taurus, which came in second at 71.6%, so I think mine is actually pretty close. And if I had shown up on time, I would have been an Aries, so . . .
Your face is misalphabetised!
Sorry, all day my co-workers have been saying "your face..." and "your mom..." insults to each other. The less sense it makes the funnier, I think.
Anyways, mine showed up as Aquarius (two whole months too late), though the percentage for Sagittarius (my *real* sign) was very high. I inquired of the Wikipedia Gods, and they informed me that my personality is much closer to the Aquarius type than sagittarius, so my parents must indeed have lied to me.
Edgy "A number of items are misalphabetized, which someone like me then goes on to question why they have been moved out of their appropriate place."
Aw, long, very interesting story ;-). This test has had a significant past life. At first it was all alphabetized, nice and neat, but then I got some complaints from professional astrologists on some of the adjectives. They thought either I was using too complicated of words and that was biasing results, in which case I just changed to a suggested synonym, or I had included a group of adjectives that should be separated (such as "visionary/technophile") in which case I either moved one or deleted the less common of them in the astrology guides. In the end,I'm just lazy and didn't want to fix the list along with the score matrix.
You don't want to make me work, do you?
"And if I had shown up on time, I would have been an Aries, so . . ."
Conception date astrology :-). Eventually I'll have enough data to plot the near misses too.
If I had shown up on time I'd have been a Capricorn, but I was almost a month late. Sorry mom.
Craig, don't feel bad, a lot of parents lie about this for no good reason.
It thinks I'm a Libra!
I would have been disappointed if it had guessed my real sign: Virgo. Even though those things are written to be so vague as to apply to anyone, those stupid Virgo horoscopes have been consistently wrong for me every time I've bothered to read them for my whole life.
Maybe my parents really did lie to me... ;^)
"hose things are written to be so vague as to apply to anyone"
So true, c.l.; If you look at the scoring matrix, it's easy to see how each sign has at least a couple characteristics associated with it that most all people would claim.
Either I have been lied to about my birth date, or this little test thingie is wrong. I claim to be Aquarius but Pisces is what my results indicate. I was actually born on the cusp with Capricorn.
This goes far in verifying my long held belief that astrology is so much foolishness. But it was lots of fun! Thanks, Scot!
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