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Because "self-evident" doesn't hold up to analysis. Just because you see a pattern, and you decide that it's obvious and common sense and everyone would recogni

Because "self-evident" doesn't hold up to analysis. Just because you see a pattern, and you decide that it's obvious and common sense and everyone would recognise it, doesn't mean you're right in any of those assertions. Without formulating hypotheses and then proving (i.e. testing) those hypotheses, your assertions are opinions; good for the pub, questionable-at-best for basing arguments on. Especially when dealing with "common sense": don't believe yourself. The moment you go "but it's obvious that", actually prove it to yourself. And if you can't (and very often, we can't) then by all means keep thinking it _might_ be true, but that you have no true basis to believe that and you can't use it to back up arguments.

rjf72 8y ago
You surely appreciate that I absolutely could formulate various toy experiments to prove this hypothesis. And I'd of course also concede that you could similarly form toy experiments to disprove it. This is ultimately the problem with social science. You can prove, or disprove, whatever you want with anything short of non-toy experiments. But non-toy experiments tend to be either impossible or unethical to execute. And even if we set ethics aside, there are so many confounding variables that even these unethical experiments don't necessarily resolve the question. E.g. - would isolated individuals completely separated from humanity since birth behave differently in a favorable climate, unfavorable climate, in areas with rich natural resources, or with minimal resources, etc. And then you even get into genetic questions on top of it. Ultimately, you're not really going to be able to prove anything in these fields. Consider that > 60% of psychology studies in well regarded journals cannot be successfully replicated. And psychology is more of a 'personal' science. Introduce a social scale to these studies and it's all just a grand demonstration of pseudo-scientific bias confirmation.

rjf72 8y ago

You surely appreciate that I absolutely could formulate various toy experiments to prove this hypothesis. And I'd of course also concede that you could similarly form toy experiments to disprove it. This is ultimately the problem with social science. You can prove, or disprove, whatever you want with anything short of non-toy experiments. But non-toy experiments tend to be either impossible or unethical to execute. And even if we set ethics aside, there are so many confounding variables that even these unethical experiments don't necessarily resolve the question. E.g. - would isolated individuals completely separated from humanity since birth behave differently in a favorable climate, unfavorable climate, in areas with rich natural resources, or with minimal resources, etc. And then you even get into genetic questions on top of it. Ultimately, you're not really going to be able to prove anything in these fields. Consider that > 60% of psychology studies in well regarded journals cannot be successfully replicated. And psychology is more of a 'personal' science. Introduce a social scale to these studies and it's all just a grand demonstration of pseudo-scientific bias confirmation.