Being linked to your birthday has absolutely nothing to do with being prescriptive. Perhaps horoscopes are only prescriptive, but astrology as a whole is much broader than that.

I don't put faith in or know much about astrology, but I do know there are many different types and areas of astrology and not all of them have to do with telling you how to pick your lotto numbers tomorrow.

A lot of people talk about signs and astrology in terms of being able to read people and determine personality traits of others.

It has everything to do with it, and it doesn't matter how or what a lot of people talk about astrology in terms of, it's absolute horseshit regardless of how they try and justify it. The stars, planets, etc have no relationship to your personality in any way.

> don't put faith in or know much about astrology

You're right, you don't, so perhaps don't sit here and defend this pseudo-scientific nonsense that you know nothing about.

Myers-Briggs has a type label then assigns traits based on that label.

It's not clear to me how that's different.

Sure, you can choose your type by responding differently to the questions, or finding a "practitioner" who assigns a type you prefer, but the same applies to astrology: shop around until you hear what you want to here.

> Myers-Briggs has a type label then assigns traits based on that label.

False. It's exactly the opposite, the label doesn't assign the traits, rather the traits create the label; if your traits change so does the label, it's nothing more than a description of who you are now according to your own answers to those traits questions. And it aids greatly in think about yourself and others and how people differ and exactly in what ways they can differ.

> It's not clear to me how that's different.

Then learn more.