6 ms·

Frankly, if your standard for a good definition is that it is readily apparent to the public at large, then pretty much every academic discipline will fail your

by c7b 4y ago

Frankly, if your standard for a good definition is that it is readily apparent to the public at large, then pretty much every academic discipline will fail your rigour test. Even (or especially) mathematics. Which should make it clear that this is an unfair and useless standard to hold psychology up to.

jrm4 4y ago
Fair, "at large" is a bit extreme. This is a spectrum. But psychology appears to be far worse than the others, even reading from this paper. I'm a lawyer, and even law isn't this bad. "Symptoms are unobservable?"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lofatdairy 4y ago
  Actually symptoms being unobservable is not only not unique to psychology (the distinction is well known in medicine), it's a core challenge within the practice of medicine and one of its historic tensions. Yeah, a patient might be complaining of chest pain, but the reason for the complaint is going to be unknown to you until you start the process of diagnosis. Chest pain is a symptom of many conditions, and you can't even trust that there's an observable cause, you can only believe what the patient tells you. This was obviously even worse until modern developments of things like MRIs and X-rays. Compare that to signs, where you can see that a patient has say, a lesion or is clearly coughing.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  That sounds like a standard medical definition. I’m sure there are technical terms used in the law which differ from common usage.
- c7b 4y ago
  Law, really? Aren't there a lot of legal terms (like 'ownership', 'possession' 'contract',...) that have precise legal definitions that may differ in crucial aspects from their colloquial usage? I think you're confusing a definition being easy to understand with it being well-defined. Mathematical definitions are often hard to grasp exactly because they are so well-defined. If you want something to be easily understandable by a lot of people (especially outside the discipline), you'll usually have to sacrifice rigor.
  - lazide 4y ago
    In my unfortunately extensive experience with legal matters as a non lawyer, there really aren’t many legal terms with material reduction in meanings when used legally. For the most part, like in medicine, a less commonly used word is used instead (often in another less commonly used language, such as Latin). For example, most people would consider a contract to be something written down that says ‘contract’. A few know it can be verbal too. When really, it could be verbal, video, scrawled in blood on the side of a fence, or any number of other forms, and really covers any agreement that meets certain criteria (generally that there is some form of payment or consideration, an offer, and an acceptance - think ‘quid pro quo’ or something for something). 99% of the time, the public is right. The other times, something went really wrong somewhere and someone did something pretty weird and dumb for it to matter. In engineering, physics, math, it’s not uncommon to need SOME unique identifier for the thing, and there are very specific technical needs for it to even have a conversation on the topic - and often we’ve run out of pronounceable or recognizable symbols, alternative alphabets, etc. So down spin quark it is.
    - jrm4 4y ago
      Ha, contract is a really bad example here, as proven by the very very wrong term "Smart Contract." The thing that is called a "Smart contract" has literally no overlap with a legal contract; because a legal contract is the "separate human statements of agreement that are associated with the action/performance and usually only needed when the performance goes wrong," The "smart contract" is the actual performance.
- light_hue_1 4y ago
  This is basically the case in much of medicine. Pain is not observable. It's reported. Loss of vision or hearing isn't observable, it's reported. You can run tests to get an idea of whether any of these are happening. But you are not observing any of these symptoms. You're observing behavior and inferring what kinds of symptoms the person is experiencing and what degree.
  - rhino369 4y ago
    But is a runny nose (observable) not a symptom of a cold? Is fever not a symptom of Covid? If that's how medicine actually uses the term, okay, sometimes terms of art clash with the plain meaning, but damn that is a pretty weird distinction, as a layman.
    - llbeansandrice 4y ago
      In the US those would be "signs", not symptoms. Symptoms are things like pain, fatigue, etc. Signs are observable. I think other countries/languages often use "subjective" symptoms and "objective" symptoms. It's a very useful distinction between things that only the patient can tell you versus things that can be observes and tested for. How do you run a test to determine if a patient is "really" experiencing chest pain? You cannot. You can run tests to try and determine an obvious cause for that symptom, but there is no test to tell you if say perhaps the patient is lying about having chest pain.
      - rhino369 4y ago
        It might be a useful distinction, but it's weird terminology to a layman. Because in non-medical lingo, those are symptoms in the USA.

by c7b 4y ago

jrm4 4y ago

Fair, "at large" is a bit extreme. This is a spectrum. But psychology appears to be far worse than the others, even reading from this paper. I'm a lawyer, and even law isn't this bad. "Symptoms are unobservable?"

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lofatdairy 4y ago
Actually symptoms being unobservable is not only not unique to psychology (the distinction is well known in medicine), it's a core challenge within the practice of medicine and one of its historic tensions. Yeah, a patient might be complaining of chest pain, but the reason for the complaint is going to be unknown to you until you start the process of diagnosis. Chest pain is a symptom of many conditions, and you can't even trust that there's an observable cause, you can only believe what the patient tells you. This was obviously even worse until modern developments of things like MRIs and X-rays. Compare that to signs, where you can see that a patient has say, a lesion or is clearly coughing.
amanaplanacanal 4y ago
That sounds like a standard medical definition. I’m sure there are technical terms used in the law which differ from common usage.
c7b 4y ago
Law, really? Aren't there a lot of legal terms (like 'ownership', 'possession' 'contract',...) that have precise legal definitions that may differ in crucial aspects from their colloquial usage? I think you're confusing a definition being easy to understand with it being well-defined. Mathematical definitions are often hard to grasp exactly because they are so well-defined. If you want something to be easily understandable by a lot of people (especially outside the discipline), you'll usually have to sacrifice rigor.
- lazide 4y ago
  In my unfortunately extensive experience with legal matters as a non lawyer, there really aren’t many legal terms with material reduction in meanings when used legally. For the most part, like in medicine, a less commonly used word is used instead (often in another less commonly used language, such as Latin). For example, most people would consider a contract to be something written down that says ‘contract’. A few know it can be verbal too. When really, it could be verbal, video, scrawled in blood on the side of a fence, or any number of other forms, and really covers any agreement that meets certain criteria (generally that there is some form of payment or consideration, an offer, and an acceptance - think ‘quid pro quo’ or something for something). 99% of the time, the public is right. The other times, something went really wrong somewhere and someone did something pretty weird and dumb for it to matter. In engineering, physics, math, it’s not uncommon to need SOME unique identifier for the thing, and there are very specific technical needs for it to even have a conversation on the topic - and often we’ve run out of pronounceable or recognizable symbols, alternative alphabets, etc. So down spin quark it is.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Ha, contract is a really bad example here, as proven by the very very wrong term "Smart Contract." The thing that is called a "Smart contract" has literally no overlap with a legal contract; because a legal contract is the "separate human statements of agreement that are associated with the action/performance and usually only needed when the performance goes wrong," The "smart contract" is the actual performance.
light_hue_1 4y ago
This is basically the case in much of medicine. Pain is not observable. It's reported. Loss of vision or hearing isn't observable, it's reported. You can run tests to get an idea of whether any of these are happening. But you are not observing any of these symptoms. You're observing behavior and inferring what kinds of symptoms the person is experiencing and what degree.
- rhino369 4y ago
  But is a runny nose (observable) not a symptom of a cold? Is fever not a symptom of Covid? If that's how medicine actually uses the term, okay, sometimes terms of art clash with the plain meaning, but damn that is a pretty weird distinction, as a layman.
  - llbeansandrice 4y ago
    In the US those would be "signs", not symptoms. Symptoms are things like pain, fatigue, etc. Signs are observable. I think other countries/languages often use "subjective" symptoms and "objective" symptoms. It's a very useful distinction between things that only the patient can tell you versus things that can be observes and tested for. How do you run a test to determine if a patient is "really" experiencing chest pain? You cannot. You can run tests to try and determine an obvious cause for that symptom, but there is no test to tell you if say perhaps the patient is lying about having chest pain.
    - rhino369 4y ago
      It might be a useful distinction, but it's weird terminology to a layman. Because in non-medical lingo, those are symptoms in the USA.