6 ms·

I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related

I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms. I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does the treatment also depend on the presentation, e.g. in the form of a scientific publication vs. a brain hacking tips or cheatsheet. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643978

bordercases 10y ago
There is a favor towards Kahneman's work, either out of interest or approval. It hits all the HN high notes (oriented around decision-making, thinking, personal effectiveness, reason) while additionally being backed by Kahneman's more-than-typically-rigorous models.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
taeric 10y ago
I actually get the impression that most of the articles that are "liked" by HN are somewhat grass roots. Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held. It is somewhat ironic, to me, that I am basically accusing us of having an anti-intellectual bend. However, it is not unique to psychology. There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science.
- kybernetikos 10y ago
  I think the same is true with philosophy too. Hackers often seem to have an anti authority preference and are more likely to respect the plucky diy-er than the member of the establishment that has paid their dues. Other fields are by default assumed to be obfuscationary rather than hard or deep.
- throw_away_777 10y ago
  There is a difference between anti-intellectual and anti-academic.
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held. Funny, the other day there was a thread about Cialdini and his books (including Influence). He has a chapter on this phenomenon (I think he called it Social Proof). We are more receptive to ideas if it comes from "one of us".
  - taeric 10y ago
    Amusingly, I skipped out based on the headline of "Pre-suasion." Just sounded stupid. Will have to relook at it, now.
- a_plastic_bag 10y ago
  Sounds like we have a serious case of in-group favouritism and with a hint of bandwagon effect
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science. As someone who went to college for CompSci, I see good reason for a slant against computer science. The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software development! What we do is not science, it's engineering. Much of the time spent teaching us the science aspect is wasted, at least compared to the opportunity to use the time on engineering topics like modeling and design, documentation, etc.
  - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
    I completely agree. I love computer science. I love software development. But those two things are radically different things. What I'm finding it difficult to find, these days, is actual mature-age accredited uni courses in computer science. Instead, you get a plethora of development courses which, as you say, are akin to engineering, not science.
  - leshow 10y ago
    I went to school for Software Engineering, in the engineering faculty. My school also had Computer Science. The difference was somewhat ironically that the CS degree had more practical, hands on coding, and engineering was more theoretical, plus we had to take all the physics/chemistry/math courses to meet the requirements of the Engineering board.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    > What we do is not science, it's engineering. You could argue that for many of us it is Software Carpentry. I am a B.Sc. in something something computers. I have worked on some serious stuff (real distributed sensor systems across huge geographical areas and another time working on fringes of a soft-realtime image-recognition system). Much of the time however I feel I'm much more of a software carpenter. I actually quite enjoyed some of the stuff from "Software carpentry" online course even though I already was an engineer.
  - groovy2shoes 10y ago
    > The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software development! For somebody building the next CRUD app, perhaps. In my line of work (EDA software), I routinely apply concepts from my computation science education on the job and in my code. Algorithms, data structures, discrete mathematics, graph theory, set theory, type theory, universal algebra, tractability theory, automata theory — these are all topics where knowledge has come in handy in my professional experience at various jobs. Of course, concepts from other fields — biology, linguistics, and physics, for example — have also come in handy on occasion. I almost feel like there's no such thing as a "wrong topic for somebody who does software development", though some topics are certainly more relevant/useful than others.
hairy_man674 10y ago
On replication, this same criticism has recently been directed at physics, chemistry and biology, among others. [1] Psychology, with view to its practical (non-research) use has not helped me, but at least three people I know say they benefitted from cognitive behavioural therapy. Perhaps in the future, medicine and science will subordinate it to the same role of philosophy to better explain human behaviour and thinking as the latter did in less techical approaches for centuries. [2] And yes, I am somewhat skeptical of said blog posts that cite some "new study" claiming to explain something only to be refuted or contradicted months later. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-... [2] Wittgenstein conceded that philosophy in the 20th century would only be useful in itsapproaches to linguistics and language
- wyager 10y ago
  The psychology replication crisis is much worse than any other field. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/05/if-you-cant-make-predictions-youre-still-in-a-crisis/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/05/if-you-cant-make-predic...
  - BeetleB 10y ago
    >The psychology replication crisis is much worse than any other field. The article doesn't get into this. Coming from a physics background, I will not say there's a crisis, but: 1. Few research is replicated. 2. We who did physics research were very unconcerned about whether our results could be replicated. Our journal papers were very concise, and it was common practice not to give all the details needed to replicate, partially due to paper size concerns, but very often also to keep the "secret recipe" to ourselves as a means to prevent others from conducting future research that we want to conduct (need less competition for grant money). 3. Pick any researcher in any field of physics, and ask them: "Can you list a few papers published in the last 15 years that are highly cited that you think are completely wrong?" Everyone will have a list like that. Everyone.
    - 10y ago
kerbalspacepro 10y ago
Psychology as a field has many problems, but subfields within psychology are backed by a fair amount of evidence.
triangleman 10y ago
Notice how this particular article is devoted to skepticism generally, rather than promoting a particular hypothesis. It should be heartening that most science topics here are treated with this kind of Feynmanian attitude, always willing to accept contradictory evidence, always reluctant to draw strong conclusions.
hathawsh 10y ago
As someone who is probably guilty of ignoring most psychology articles due to doubts about psychology research, I think this article is an interesting step forward for popular psychology. This categorization of biases is something I can use both for myself and when I try to help others. This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Incidentally, I noticed these cognitive biases probably apply equally well to strong AI (artificial intelligence). No matter how powerful an AI is, it's always going to lack some information, it will take time to calculate things, it will lack experience, and it will not have enough memory capacity to remember every detail. Strong AI will probably have to learn to use cognitive biases.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Huh? The article is entirely opinion. Every single thing that's in bold text is a testable hypothesis presented as pure fact. Even the selection of "problems" is pure and problematic conjecture (are these actually the most important problems? Are these actually problems at all? Would addressing these problems improve our decision making?). There'll be no debate about research methods because there's no scientific research here. What's presented in this article might be based on observation, but it's definitely not based on scientific testing (or, to the extent it is, that evidence isn't presented). There's nothing wrong with an article like this, per se. But shrugging off psychology research (much of which explores and attempts to rigorously test the conjectures made in this article), while also accepting this article's statements at face value, is a bit ridiculous. It amounts to "philosophy I agree with is not problematic, but science I agree with should be harshly critiqued"
  - hathawsh 10y ago
    I can see your viewpoint. I see the article as a suggested categorization of a complex subject, where that suggested categorization is an opinion of what's useful. You're right, that's an opinion. I've read many textbooks that were also opinion in the same sense.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
It's possible to be interested in a field's subject matter while being critical of the methods. For example, US space research at NASA may be awash in politics, crippled by a lack of long-term vision, and overly focused on military applications, but space is still cool. The workings of the mind and the results of cognitive biases are fascinating, but that doesn't excuse poor statistics and a lack of rigor.
oldmanjay 10y ago
> I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Yes and no. Yes, we are all different people. No, there is not much sense to grouping us based on a single dimension. That is an excellent example of what Vonnegut called a granfalloon.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? yes
colordrops 10y ago
> I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Yes. This isn't a monolithic hive mind or fundamentalist religion. There are people from all walks of life with different ideas here. You will find trends, but no unanimity.
icantdrive55 10y ago
"I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing." Yes--there has been constructive critism. 1. Most people on hn have at least a bachelor's degree. 2. Many have seen a Psychologist. 3. Sone have seen a Psychiatrist. 4. Many have taken drugs that were suspose to help them. 5. Many have spent a lot of money on Psychology, with a lot of crying, side effects, and no result in the end. 6. Out of all scientific disciplines, I can't think of one that needs more critism than Psychology, and its more regulated brother--Psychiatry. 7. So yes, our anuses twitch, when any Psychology is brought up. Any MFCC, or Dr, "Oh golly gee--maybe he's a latent homosexual. He used a peculiar word in 7?" Where's that 18 something book? No--let's put him on drugs. Oh, they didn't work. How much does he owe me? Let's try CB therapy? How much have I made off him? Well he thinks he's a little bit better, but he's still self medicating with alcohol, and isn't working, and Still complaining. Let's tell him he needs to go to rehab! That will get him out of my hair? Well--my profession is definetly better than construction? I wish my patients respected me more? Maybe I will start a 501C3--they make a killing off people's heart strings? I wonder why they don't respect what I do? I spent all those years in school, but still have a hard time with statistics? But then again--it's an Art too. Yea! (Hand rub together) My next victim is attractive, and has great insurance. Come on in Mary. We have 50 minutes. Did you bring your insurance card?"

bordercases 10y ago

There is a favor towards Kahneman's work, either out of interest or approval. It hits all the HN high notes (oriented around decision-making, thinking, personal effectiveness, reason) while additionally being backed by Kahneman's more-than-typically-rigorous models.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

taeric 10y ago

I actually get the impression that most of the articles that are "liked" by HN are somewhat grass roots. Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held. It is somewhat ironic, to me, that I am basically accusing us of having an anti-intellectual bend. However, it is not unique to psychology. There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science.

kybernetikos 10y ago
I think the same is true with philosophy too. Hackers often seem to have an anti authority preference and are more likely to respect the plucky diy-er than the member of the establishment that has paid their dues. Other fields are by default assumed to be obfuscationary rather than hard or deep.
throw_away_777 10y ago
There is a difference between anti-intellectual and anti-academic.
BeetleB 10y ago
>Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held. Funny, the other day there was a thread about Cialdini and his books (including Influence). He has a chapter on this phenomenon (I think he called it Social Proof). We are more receptive to ideas if it comes from "one of us".
- taeric 10y ago
  Amusingly, I skipped out based on the headline of "Pre-suasion." Just sounded stupid. Will have to relook at it, now.
a_plastic_bag 10y ago
Sounds like we have a serious case of in-group favouritism and with a hint of bandwagon effect
CWuestefeld 10y ago
There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science. As someone who went to college for CompSci, I see good reason for a slant against computer science. The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software development! What we do is not science, it's engineering. Much of the time spent teaching us the science aspect is wasted, at least compared to the opportunity to use the time on engineering topics like modeling and design, documentation, etc.
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  I completely agree. I love computer science. I love software development. But those two things are radically different things. What I'm finding it difficult to find, these days, is actual mature-age accredited uni courses in computer science. Instead, you get a plethora of development courses which, as you say, are akin to engineering, not science.
- leshow 10y ago
  I went to school for Software Engineering, in the engineering faculty. My school also had Computer Science. The difference was somewhat ironically that the CS degree had more practical, hands on coding, and engineering was more theoretical, plus we had to take all the physics/chemistry/math courses to meet the requirements of the Engineering board.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  > What we do is not science, it's engineering. You could argue that for many of us it is Software Carpentry. I am a B.Sc. in something something computers. I have worked on some serious stuff (real distributed sensor systems across huge geographical areas and another time working on fringes of a soft-realtime image-recognition system). Much of the time however I feel I'm much more of a software carpenter. I actually quite enjoyed some of the stuff from "Software carpentry" online course even though I already was an engineer.
- groovy2shoes 10y ago
  > The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software development! For somebody building the next CRUD app, perhaps. In my line of work (EDA software), I routinely apply concepts from my computation science education on the job and in my code. Algorithms, data structures, discrete mathematics, graph theory, set theory, type theory, universal algebra, tractability theory, automata theory — these are all topics where knowledge has come in handy in my professional experience at various jobs. Of course, concepts from other fields — biology, linguistics, and physics, for example — have also come in handy on occasion. I almost feel like there's no such thing as a "wrong topic for somebody who does software development", though some topics are certainly more relevant/useful than others.

hairy_man674 10y ago

On replication, this same criticism has recently been directed at physics, chemistry and biology, among others. [1] Psychology, with view to its practical (non-research) use has not helped me, but at least three people I know say they benefitted from cognitive behavioural therapy. Perhaps in the future, medicine and science will subordinate it to the same role of philosophy to better explain human behaviour and thinking as the latter did in less techical approaches for centuries. [2] And yes, I am somewhat skeptical of said blog posts that cite some "new study" claiming to explain something only to be refuted or contradicted months later. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-... [2] Wittgenstein conceded that philosophy in the 20th century would only be useful in itsapproaches to linguistics and language

wyager 10y ago
The psychology replication crisis is much worse than any other field. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/05/if-you-cant-make-predictions-youre-still-in-a-crisis/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/05/if-you-cant-make-predic...
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >The psychology replication crisis is much worse than any other field. The article doesn't get into this. Coming from a physics background, I will not say there's a crisis, but: 1. Few research is replicated. 2. We who did physics research were very unconcerned about whether our results could be replicated. Our journal papers were very concise, and it was common practice not to give all the details needed to replicate, partially due to paper size concerns, but very often also to keep the "secret recipe" to ourselves as a means to prevent others from conducting future research that we want to conduct (need less competition for grant money). 3. Pick any researcher in any field of physics, and ask them: "Can you list a few papers published in the last 15 years that are highly cited that you think are completely wrong?" Everyone will have a list like that. Everyone.
  - 10y ago

kerbalspacepro 10y ago

Psychology as a field has many problems, but subfields within psychology are backed by a fair amount of evidence.

triangleman 10y ago

Notice how this particular article is devoted to skepticism generally, rather than promoting a particular hypothesis. It should be heartening that most science topics here are treated with this kind of Feynmanian attitude, always willing to accept contradictory evidence, always reluctant to draw strong conclusions.

hathawsh 10y ago

As someone who is probably guilty of ignoring most psychology articles due to doubts about psychology research, I think this article is an interesting step forward for popular psychology. This categorization of biases is something I can use both for myself and when I try to help others. This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Incidentally, I noticed these cognitive biases probably apply equally well to strong AI (artificial intelligence). No matter how powerful an AI is, it's always going to lack some information, it will take time to calculate things, it will lack experience, and it will not have enough memory capacity to remember every detail. Strong AI will probably have to learn to use cognitive biases.

throwaway729 10y ago
> This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Huh? The article is entirely opinion. Every single thing that's in bold text is a testable hypothesis presented as pure fact. Even the selection of "problems" is pure and problematic conjecture (are these actually the most important problems? Are these actually problems at all? Would addressing these problems improve our decision making?). There'll be no debate about research methods because there's no scientific research here. What's presented in this article might be based on observation, but it's definitely not based on scientific testing (or, to the extent it is, that evidence isn't presented). There's nothing wrong with an article like this, per se. But shrugging off psychology research (much of which explores and attempts to rigorously test the conjectures made in this article), while also accepting this article's statements at face value, is a bit ridiculous. It amounts to "philosophy I agree with is not problematic, but science I agree with should be harshly critiqued"
- hathawsh 10y ago
  I can see your viewpoint. I see the article as a suggested categorization of a complex subject, where that suggested categorization is an opinion of what's useful. You're right, that's an opinion. I've read many textbooks that were also opinion in the same sense.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

It's possible to be interested in a field's subject matter while being critical of the methods. For example, US space research at NASA may be awash in politics, crippled by a lack of long-term vision, and overly focused on military applications, but space is still cool. The workings of the mind and the results of cognitive biases are fascinating, but that doesn't excuse poor statistics and a lack of rigor.

oldmanjay 10y ago

> I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Yes and no. Yes, we are all different people. No, there is not much sense to grouping us based on a single dimension. That is an excellent example of what Vonnegut called a granfalloon.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? yes

colordrops 10y ago

> I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Yes. This isn't a monolithic hive mind or fundamentalist religion. There are people from all walks of life with different ideas here. You will find trends, but no unanimity.

icantdrive55 10y ago

"I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing." Yes--there has been constructive critism. 1. Most people on hn have at least a bachelor's degree. 2. Many have seen a Psychologist. 3. Sone have seen a Psychiatrist. 4. Many have taken drugs that were suspose to help them. 5. Many have spent a lot of money on Psychology, with a lot of crying, side effects, and no result in the end. 6. Out of all scientific disciplines, I can't think of one that needs more critism than Psychology, and its more regulated brother--Psychiatry. 7. So yes, our anuses twitch, when any Psychology is brought up. Any MFCC, or Dr, "Oh golly gee--maybe he's a latent homosexual. He used a peculiar word in 7?" Where's that 18 something book? No--let's put him on drugs. Oh, they didn't work. How much does he owe me? Let's try CB therapy? How much have I made off him? Well he thinks he's a little bit better, but he's still self medicating with alcohol, and isn't working, and Still complaining. Let's tell him he needs to go to rehab! That will get him out of my hair? Well--my profession is definetly better than construction? I wish my patients respected me more? Maybe I will start a 501C3--they make a killing off people's heart strings? I wonder why they don't respect what I do? I spent all those years in school, but still have a hard time with statistics? But then again--it's an Art too. Yea! (Hand rub together) My next victim is attractive, and has great insurance. Come on in Mary. We have 50 minutes. Did you bring your insurance card?"