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Sure fire way to make it to the top of psychology / sociology academia: 1) Go to Ivy school, get your phd, make all the key connections 2) Find something that

Sure fire way to make it to the top of psychology / sociology academia: 1) Go to Ivy school, get your phd, make all the key connections 2) Find something that makes intuitive sense to a highly educated person, and create a test that you claim measures it. Even better if it’s really fuzzy, like “ego depletion”. For example, call it “mood enhancement”. This is if your mood is elevated. The test would ask 20 questions about your current mood, like “Do I feel happy” and “I feel above-normal positive emotions”. These 20 questions will use 1 to 5 scale and provide a 100 point outcome. 3) Use your connections to get people in the academic industry to start promoting it and using it. Publish a paper showing what baseline is. 4) Now is your time to strike. Start making experiments that you anticipate would modify someone’s mood, like giving them a glass of wine before the test, or having them call their mother. Do control and experimental and see the boost to “mood enhancement”. 5) Publish paper after paper on your amazing discoveries of how to boost “mood enhancement”. Get others to cite your publications and make a cottage industry of “mood enhancement” research experts. More people, more papers, more funding - and you started it all with the key genesis “mood enhancement” paper! 6) Write books, go on NPR as a guest speaker, give speeches. You have quantified mood and determined how to boost it. “My research shows that a 7.2 percent increase in mood occurs when you call your mother before a big company presentation. It’s science!” You are now a public figure and can get tenure and big corporate speech bucks. The world has been forever changed by your mood enhancing research!

dang 7y ago
Despite its length, this comment is a shallow dismissal in the sense that the site guidelines ask you not to post here: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Elongating an extra cynical rant does not count as teaching us something, so please don't post like this to HN. If what you're writing is based on knowledge or experience, please share your knowledge or experience directly. If it isn't, please post elsewhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- seibelj 7y ago
  I am indeed throwing stones at the entire academic discipline of psychology and sociology. I see your point but I am curious in the counterpoints in replies, given the massive edifice that has been constructed on taxpayer dollars and has been shown to have absolutely no basis in reality with further pre-registered studies. I can link to many articles about this crisis if you are unaware
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    I’m happy to not reply to your provocation.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    It's impossible to make a counterpoint, because you don't actually make a clear point other than "its all rubbish"
    - russh 7y ago
      Truly a tone deaf reply. I understood the point they were making.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      "It's all rubbish" is a very clear point, and it might very well be true.
- dangIsAPhaget 7y ago
  Jesus fucking christ, dang. You are such a fucking faggot. You've completely ruined this fucking community. From the day tou started, all you do is stifle any fucking vibrance. Every move that you've made on this fucking site only serves to grind all conversations to a meaningless exchange of hushed platitudes. People used to talk to each other around here. Funny things used to entertain and surprise. Now, nothing is suprising anymore. Another fucking grey thread filled with the stale words of people who are dead inside. It's clear by now what your job is. Just make sure the forum doesn't make your overlord look bad, by any means available to you. I can look back at threads from 2013, before your changes, and detect the obvious difference in tone. Soon after, the trend in hellbans and ranking shifted the tone. Volume changed the site, and continued to snowball, and no matter what, there are more users, but the conversations and submitted stories are worse. New accounts serve no purpose as throwaways, since all new accounts default to invisible. What a fucking joke. You've managed to elevate sickly, boring personalities to new heights, while failing to attract anybody interesting. The nobodies chat away, and they prattle on about the things no one is interested in listening to. Right here, we have someone with something interesting to say. They poke holes at soft science with this comment, and point to a cult of personality, where students must ingratiate themselves to faculty with feel good bullshit artistry. Not real science. But cynicism has no place here. Snark provokes fear beneath the spectre of suicides of Aaron Swartz and Ilya Zhitomirskiy. Once bitten, twice shy. Oh well. Nothing interesting will ever happen on HN again.
im3w1l 7y ago
It's clear that "this mood enhancement research" has some value. So what is the problem? That we should aim higher? What could be done better to compared to the story you describe?
- coldtea 7y ago
  >It's clear that "this mood enhancement research" has some value. Only in the same sense that the fad diet industry has "some value". It makes people careers and money. Actual value in the field would be to discover truths about people's psychology.

dang 7y ago

Despite its length, this comment is a shallow dismissal in the sense that the site guidelines ask you not to post here: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Elongating an extra cynical rant does not count as teaching us something, so please don't post like this to HN. If what you're writing is based on knowledge or experience, please share your knowledge or experience directly. If it isn't, please post elsewhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

seibelj 7y ago
I am indeed throwing stones at the entire academic discipline of psychology and sociology. I see your point but I am curious in the counterpoints in replies, given the massive edifice that has been constructed on taxpayer dollars and has been shown to have absolutely no basis in reality with further pre-registered studies. I can link to many articles about this crisis if you are unaware
- greglindahl 7y ago
  I’m happy to not reply to your provocation.
- Angostura 7y ago
  It's impossible to make a counterpoint, because you don't actually make a clear point other than "its all rubbish"
  - russh 7y ago
    Truly a tone deaf reply. I understood the point they were making.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    "It's all rubbish" is a very clear point, and it might very well be true.
dangIsAPhaget 7y ago
Jesus fucking christ, dang. You are such a fucking faggot. You've completely ruined this fucking community. From the day tou started, all you do is stifle any fucking vibrance. Every move that you've made on this fucking site only serves to grind all conversations to a meaningless exchange of hushed platitudes. People used to talk to each other around here. Funny things used to entertain and surprise. Now, nothing is suprising anymore. Another fucking grey thread filled with the stale words of people who are dead inside. It's clear by now what your job is. Just make sure the forum doesn't make your overlord look bad, by any means available to you. I can look back at threads from 2013, before your changes, and detect the obvious difference in tone. Soon after, the trend in hellbans and ranking shifted the tone. Volume changed the site, and continued to snowball, and no matter what, there are more users, but the conversations and submitted stories are worse. New accounts serve no purpose as throwaways, since all new accounts default to invisible. What a fucking joke. You've managed to elevate sickly, boring personalities to new heights, while failing to attract anybody interesting. The nobodies chat away, and they prattle on about the things no one is interested in listening to. Right here, we have someone with something interesting to say. They poke holes at soft science with this comment, and point to a cult of personality, where students must ingratiate themselves to faculty with feel good bullshit artistry. Not real science. But cynicism has no place here. Snark provokes fear beneath the spectre of suicides of Aaron Swartz and Ilya Zhitomirskiy. Once bitten, twice shy. Oh well. Nothing interesting will ever happen on HN again.

im3w1l 7y ago

It's clear that "this mood enhancement research" has some value. So what is the problem? That we should aim higher? What could be done better to compared to the story you describe?

coldtea 7y ago
>It's clear that "this mood enhancement research" has some value. Only in the same sense that the fad diet industry has "some value". It makes people careers and money. Actual value in the field would be to discover truths about people's psychology.