4 ms·

Psychology might be a big stinkin' load of hogwash and that's just fine

47 points by nickwritesit 2y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
> That’s all right—it means we can still pull off the greatest heist of all time. The biggest, shiniest jewel in all of science—why do people do what they do?—is still sitting in Nature’s vault, waiting for us to drill the lock, melt the hinges, blow the door, whatever it takes. I am going to steal that jewel or die trying. Is it really possible? And if it was, think about the implications for social control and democracy, etc. Might this actually be more dangerous than anything to do with LLMs. Or is it like the search for the philosophers stone that transmuted base metals to gold? Also, how many people will get hurt and messed up in the process?
- mcmoor 2y ago
  Yeah. Eugenics for instance didn't go down before claiming millions of lives, and even seeing another resurgence just after several decades.
- mistermann 2y ago
  Whoever has the best story rules the world. Truth of the story is typically of little consequence. Try and find an exception to this simple rule.
  - nuc1e0n 2y ago
    I think Ricky Gervais has a good point when he says if you were to get rid of scientific literature but keep the same process our scientific knowledge would all come back again. Being reflective of the nature of the existence just plain makes for the most useful story. Otherwise you can waste a lot of effort on imaginary things like flying spaghetti monsters.
    - mistermann 2y ago
      I love the irony of Ricky (and all atheists/scientific materialists, really) holding faith based beliefs[1] while constantly shit talking religious people for the same. But, he does well demonstrate how science's popularity is largely a consequence of it having good stories, that those telling and believing the stories have no idea any of this is going on makes the myth even more powerful imho. That aside, huge fan of his comedy! [1] That's just one of them, I see him on TikTok quite a bit shooting his mouth off.
      - nuc1e0n 2y ago
        I think you may have misinterpreted him. We all tell stories. But ironically I can't stand him as an individual.
        mistermann 2y ago
        No, I have not misinterpreted him, he makes faith based claims of fact regularly, as do most/all atheists, famous or not. Our culture ingrains bad epistemological practices into us from the day we are born, we literally teach ourselves to think delusionally.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ganzuul 2y ago
I think consciousness actually masters multiple tracks of 'reality' into a single timeline. It's not precognition; our idea about what time is is simply wrong. There is no time, there is only computational irreducibility.
- endofreach 2y ago
  Sounds cool, but what do you actually mean by that?
  - ganzuul 2y ago
    I mean that here-and-now is an aggregate of discrete attention spans. Without integration these spans are separate "now" without "here". Attention directed to future events is not truly separate from those events (coupling constant unknown), doing away with some conventions about mind-over-matter/matter-over-mind. - When we make plans part of us goes to a future "now" which is not "here" yet. The future already exists in some uncollapsed quantum world which our attention can go to but we don't have a means of navigating our conscious here-and-now to that future unless we construct the path there, which we do in the conventional sense. This means that things which we are able to imagine are not dualistic illusions but real to a different degree than what we have been assuming 'real' is. To me personally this philosophy makes for a richer and more rewarding inner world. Computational irreducibility does away with any practical significance the simulation hypothesis could have, and it provides structure to plans-turned-paths-to-the-future. Your attention into the future is one degree of irreducibility, your consciousness is another, and the zeitgeist of our age is a third, resulting in an ego with three shells.
    - rokkamokka 2y ago
      I feel if this was true, it would be provable by experimentation. If it's true but not provable, it also doesn't seem to have any impact.
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
bloqs 2y ago
I found this piece was trying too hard to be funny and I really struggled to focus on the points it was trying to make.
- coldtea 2y ago
  And then hand-waved the problem with "most studies don't matter and are crap anyway". Well, then perhaps your field doesn't matter in aggregate? He has this premise that "the field is disparate findings anyway" so even if most are shot down, doesn't matter, but even in that case, seems like a waste and very low signal vs noise ratio to keep it up...
  - nuc1e0n 2y ago
    I disagree. As the author says, the field is still quite young and they are 'flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks'. Good for them.
moi2388 2y ago
So the replication crisis is not an actual crisis because most studies didn’t make sense to begin with? That’s not the advertisement for psychology you think it is..
- drekk 2y ago
  Did you read the article? It's not an actual crisis to begin with because cherry picking 100 studies and replicating them poorly isn't representative of all of psychology. Nor does it make sense to go scorched earth and replicate every single study if not every single study has value.
  - moi2388 2y ago
    Yes, I am well aware. But even in studies that do get replicated they often find lower correlations. Let alone the questions one could pose with the validity of the experiments and underlying models to begin with. During my studies psychology we replicated some alleged results as well. We were students, so I’m sure we didn’t do all of it properly, but we actually usually found the opposite results. And you (probably) have no idea how bad the statistics in quite some psychology studies are, especially in this field they very often assume basic normal distributions without any testing, and stare blindly at a p-value of .05 regardless of the study. Of course there are also a lot of very ingenious and good studies, but from my personal experience (for whatever that’s worth), psychology as a field has some serious catching up to do to more STEM based fields. All of this being merry my own experience of course, I readily admit I have not done the science in this regard.
nuc1e0n 2y ago
My angle is I think those following the field of Psychology are not being mindful enough of when Socrates said "All I know, is that I know practically nothing". At least the author acknowledges we are still in the dark ages in many ways toward the end of their post. I'm also critical of the post's author when they say "Try to explore her jungles and she will send snakes and mosquitoes to stop you." . 'Nature' as a personification is a metaphor, and animals are not collectively trying to stop you from scientific enquiry. Nor is knowledge being kept secret from you. My view is that all organisms are simply trying to make a living for themselves and why would you imagine phenomena are arranged for easy discovery or otherwise? My advice is to avoid getting lost in your own analogies. That's the path to the insane asylum. Physician heal thyself!

47 points by nickwritesit 2y ago

> That’s all right—it means we can still pull off the greatest heist of all time. The biggest, shiniest jewel in all of science—why do people do what they do?—is still sitting in Nature’s vault, waiting for us to drill the lock, melt the hinges, blow the door, whatever it takes. I am going to steal that jewel or die trying. Is it really possible? And if it was, think about the implications for social control and democracy, etc. Might this actually be more dangerous than anything to do with LLMs. Or is it like the search for the philosophers stone that transmuted base metals to gold? Also, how many people will get hurt and messed up in the process?

mcmoor 2y ago
Yeah. Eugenics for instance didn't go down before claiming millions of lives, and even seeing another resurgence just after several decades.
mistermann 2y ago
Whoever has the best story rules the world. Truth of the story is typically of little consequence. Try and find an exception to this simple rule.
- nuc1e0n 2y ago
  I think Ricky Gervais has a good point when he says if you were to get rid of scientific literature but keep the same process our scientific knowledge would all come back again. Being reflective of the nature of the existence just plain makes for the most useful story. Otherwise you can waste a lot of effort on imaginary things like flying spaghetti monsters.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    I love the irony of Ricky (and all atheists/scientific materialists, really) holding faith based beliefs[1] while constantly shit talking religious people for the same. But, he does well demonstrate how science's popularity is largely a consequence of it having good stories, that those telling and believing the stories have no idea any of this is going on makes the myth even more powerful imho. That aside, huge fan of his comedy! [1] That's just one of them, I see him on TikTok quite a bit shooting his mouth off.
    - nuc1e0n 2y ago
      I think you may have misinterpreted him. We all tell stories. But ironically I can't stand him as an individual.
      - mistermann 2y ago
        No, I have not misinterpreted him, he makes faith based claims of fact regularly, as do most/all atheists, famous or not. Our culture ingrains bad epistemological practices into us from the day we are born, we literally teach ourselves to think delusionally.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ganzuul 2y ago

I think consciousness actually masters multiple tracks of 'reality' into a single timeline. It's not precognition; our idea about what time is is simply wrong. There is no time, there is only computational irreducibility.

endofreach 2y ago
Sounds cool, but what do you actually mean by that?
- ganzuul 2y ago
  I mean that here-and-now is an aggregate of discrete attention spans. Without integration these spans are separate "now" without "here". Attention directed to future events is not truly separate from those events (coupling constant unknown), doing away with some conventions about mind-over-matter/matter-over-mind. - When we make plans part of us goes to a future "now" which is not "here" yet. The future already exists in some uncollapsed quantum world which our attention can go to but we don't have a means of navigating our conscious here-and-now to that future unless we construct the path there, which we do in the conventional sense. This means that things which we are able to imagine are not dualistic illusions but real to a different degree than what we have been assuming 'real' is. To me personally this philosophy makes for a richer and more rewarding inner world. Computational irreducibility does away with any practical significance the simulation hypothesis could have, and it provides structure to plans-turned-paths-to-the-future. Your attention into the future is one degree of irreducibility, your consciousness is another, and the zeitgeist of our age is a third, resulting in an ego with three shells.
  - rokkamokka 2y ago
    I feel if this was true, it would be provable by experimentation. If it's true but not provable, it also doesn't seem to have any impact.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago

bloqs 2y ago

I found this piece was trying too hard to be funny and I really struggled to focus on the points it was trying to make.

coldtea 2y ago
And then hand-waved the problem with "most studies don't matter and are crap anyway". Well, then perhaps your field doesn't matter in aggregate? He has this premise that "the field is disparate findings anyway" so even if most are shot down, doesn't matter, but even in that case, seems like a waste and very low signal vs noise ratio to keep it up...
- nuc1e0n 2y ago
  I disagree. As the author says, the field is still quite young and they are 'flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks'. Good for them.

moi2388 2y ago

So the replication crisis is not an actual crisis because most studies didn’t make sense to begin with? That’s not the advertisement for psychology you think it is..

drekk 2y ago
Did you read the article? It's not an actual crisis to begin with because cherry picking 100 studies and replicating them poorly isn't representative of all of psychology. Nor does it make sense to go scorched earth and replicate every single study if not every single study has value.
- moi2388 2y ago
  Yes, I am well aware. But even in studies that do get replicated they often find lower correlations. Let alone the questions one could pose with the validity of the experiments and underlying models to begin with. During my studies psychology we replicated some alleged results as well. We were students, so I’m sure we didn’t do all of it properly, but we actually usually found the opposite results. And you (probably) have no idea how bad the statistics in quite some psychology studies are, especially in this field they very often assume basic normal distributions without any testing, and stare blindly at a p-value of .05 regardless of the study. Of course there are also a lot of very ingenious and good studies, but from my personal experience (for whatever that’s worth), psychology as a field has some serious catching up to do to more STEM based fields. All of this being merry my own experience of course, I readily admit I have not done the science in this regard.

nuc1e0n 2y ago

My angle is I think those following the field of Psychology are not being mindful enough of when Socrates said "All I know, is that I know practically nothing". At least the author acknowledges we are still in the dark ages in many ways toward the end of their post. I'm also critical of the post's author when they say "Try to explore her jungles and she will send snakes and mosquitoes to stop you." . 'Nature' as a personification is a metaphor, and animals are not collectively trying to stop you from scientific enquiry. Nor is knowledge being kept secret from you. My view is that all organisms are simply trying to make a living for themselves and why would you imagine phenomena are arranged for easy discovery or otherwise? My advice is to avoid getting lost in your own analogies. That's the path to the insane asylum. Physician heal thyself!