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Betteridge's law not withstanding, for the first time in human history, things like loneliness have become the subject of scientific inquiry. This has happened
by YossarianFrPrez 2y ago
Betteridge's law not withstanding, for the first time in human history, things like loneliness have become the subject of scientific inquiry. This has happened over the last ~50ish years, if that.
As Feynman says, figuring out which of our theories are true, and which of our ideas are subject to the illusion of explanatory depth is important. Especially when it comes to things we think we know, like interpersonal relationships and our own psychology.
True, the social sciences are quite young compared to other scientific fields. But already we have estimates for distinguishing what impacts between and within person variation in loneliness. At the moment, most of this work is done at a very general level; the work tries to characterize various populations of people.
However, one of the newer / more cutting-edge methods of studying things like loneliness involves pinging them multiple times a day to see how their emotional state is changing over time. (So called Ecological Momentary Assessments if you are curious.) Some researchers are using such designs to try and figure out / model what makes an individual tick.
Clinical psychology, anecdotal folk wisdom, research psychology, and potentially even Neuroscience will eventually converge. In my opinion, one semi-unique challenge is that the set of skills that makes one a good researcher and one a good people person are not highly correlated. This doesn't matter for Chemistry (etc.), but I think it matters more for the social sciences.
- AmericanChopper 2y agoThe problem with social sciences isn’t that they’re young, it’s that they’re all junk science. They’re all filled with poorly defined experiments, theories that you can never properly test, results that you cannot reproduce and that nobody’s going to try to, and if the topic of a study is even slightly political or controversial, you’ll often find that a study can’t feasibly be conducted, or it will be conducted by people who don’t want it to be rigorous in the first place. I’m skeptical that a lot of these questions even can be answered scientifically at all, but rather confident that they’re not going to be by the existing system.
- YossarianFrPrez 2y agoThere is plenty of junk, I'll grant you that. But there is also variation in study quality, which ipso facto implies that some studies might just even be good. I take what you are talking about to be the relative immaturity of social sciences.
- lelanthran 2y ago> But there is also variation in study quality, which ipso facto implies that some studies might just even be good. The fact that there's variation doesn't at all imply that any of it is any good. It could vary from "embarrassingly flat-earth-theory-in-2024" bad, to "unable to produce a falsifiable hypothesis" bad. And even when some of it is good (controls, reproducability, etc), it gets completely ignored by practitioners[1]. Imagine if doctors prescribed eye of newt even when there's studies proving the efficacy of paracetemol. [1] By practitioners I mean therapy and therapists. You could send 100 random people to 100 different therapists and all of them would report that a followup visit has been recommended. As far as therapists are concerned, there is no such thing as "You're perfectly normal. Congratulations and come back only when you have a problem"
- delichon 2y ago> However, one of the newer / more cutting-edge methods of studying things like loneliness involves pinging them multiple times a day to see how their emotional state is changing over time. That would seem to have a strong Heisenberg problem. "I'm not so lonely any more, sociologists keep asking for my important opinion."
- YossarianFrPrez 2y agoFair point. It's controlled for statistically; while there are no perfect measures, it's a decently novel lens into daily experience. Even Apple Health does a version of it now.