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Completely false equivalence. The entire foundations of modern Psychology are wobbling. In order for the same to be true for the hard sciences we would need to

Completely false equivalence. The entire foundations of modern Psychology are wobbling. In order for the same to be true for the hard sciences we would need to be failing to replicate experiments which hinge on germ theory, atomic theory, the standard model, etc. Nothing like that is happening. This false equivalence originates from several types of people: 1. Journalists that want/need to foment the largest possible catastrophe. 2. Political pundits which want/need to discredit some field. 3. Social scientists playing defense.

llamaimperative 2y ago
What exactly do you think are the foundations of modern psychology? Serious question. There are tons of non-replicable findings way, way further down the stack than psychology, and those tend to have a lot more relying on them than psychology/sociology studies. If you're upset about scientific validity, consider directing your ire to where problems are more likely to actually hurt people -- the "hard sciences." Nice ad hominem but I'm none of those things. I work in clinical trials, one of the few areas where we actually do have to know things, and a very good empirical demonstration of exactly how incredibly difficult that is.
- elliotto 2y ago
  I'm curious to hear your perspective on the validity of psychology / psychiatry / sociology as someone adjacent to the field. I am a hard science maths / data science guy, but unlike a lot of my peers I have a great interest in softer reasoning (philosophy, ethics, political science etc). But I am constantly disappointed by how tainted by ideology psychology and psychiatry feel (and economics, but this is a different discussion). Do you think that psychology and psychiatry are held to the same rigour as harder sciences and should be considered as valid?
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    All fields of inquiry are tainted by ideology. Read the history of literally any scientific field ever. The entire system is designed to accept this as fact, because science is done by humans, and to still arrive at the truth nonetheless. If we take those two observations: a) science is done by humans and b) humans have motivations, obviously the way to arrive at truth is to allow for most things to be wrong most of the time. This is the process by which we've learned every single thing about the universe. I don't know what you mean by "held to the same rigor." I don't think any psychologist on the planet would tell you we understand psychology as well as we understand basic chemical reactions.
darby_nine 2y ago
> The entire foundations of modern Psychology are wobbling. What do you mean by this? the field of psychology is perfectly capable of policing itself, and it's rejected much of the conclusions of its historical predecessors. > In order for the same to be true for the hard sciences we would need to be failing to replicate experiments which hinge on germ theory, atomic theory, the standard model, etc. "hard sciences" also fail to produce results relevant to most people. Sure, they can maybe make better batteries, but how can they explain how dysfunctional society is? EDIT: We can also directly blame the poor communicational skills of "hard sciences" for diet culture. "hard sciences" have failed in their efforts to produce a population that can reason about nutrition in an evidence-backed manner, and this can be traced directly to how scientists choose to present their data.
- zarathustreal 2y ago
  You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Incorrect information is worse than no information.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    > You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. You absolutely do lol, or you're just straight wrong. Take your pick. > The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Neither can hard sciences. Proofs are incompatible with empiricism. Abductive proofs (which is what the scientific process offers) are necessarily bounded by limited certainty. All you can do is progressively improve certainty approaching 100%, but reaching it is necessarily impossible. This is just basic Hume. You can never be 100% sure the sun will rise tomorrow or that the fundamental laws of physics won't arbitrarily change. But, the same applies to soft sciences. We can and do increase our certainty continually. This is absolutely worthwhile and is probably far more valuable to humanity than merely modelling physical phenomena.
    - zarathustreal 2y ago
kjkjadksj 2y ago
To be fair all of that was up in question a century ago in the hard sciences. People used to believe in the plum pudding model, or doubt what component in the cell contained genetic information. The only thing that changed that was incremental experimental evidence. Social sciences are evidently going through a similar transition but we shouldn’t use that to discredit the field alone, work is still able to stand for itself if it is done well.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  The level of ignorance of this basic, basic historical fact is just completely astounding on this website sometimes. It was called natural philosophy for Christ's sake. Modern medicine's forefather was heroic medicine, based on modulating the 4 humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile). We didn't zap into existence with the hard sciences being hard. We made them that way through centuries of intellectual effort, almost all of which turned out to be wrong!

llamaimperative 2y ago

What exactly do you think are the foundations of modern psychology? Serious question. There are tons of non-replicable findings way, way further down the stack than psychology, and those tend to have a lot more relying on them than psychology/sociology studies. If you're upset about scientific validity, consider directing your ire to where problems are more likely to actually hurt people -- the "hard sciences." Nice ad hominem but I'm none of those things. I work in clinical trials, one of the few areas where we actually do have to know things, and a very good empirical demonstration of exactly how incredibly difficult that is.

elliotto 2y ago
I'm curious to hear your perspective on the validity of psychology / psychiatry / sociology as someone adjacent to the field. I am a hard science maths / data science guy, but unlike a lot of my peers I have a great interest in softer reasoning (philosophy, ethics, political science etc). But I am constantly disappointed by how tainted by ideology psychology and psychiatry feel (and economics, but this is a different discussion). Do you think that psychology and psychiatry are held to the same rigour as harder sciences and should be considered as valid?
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  All fields of inquiry are tainted by ideology. Read the history of literally any scientific field ever. The entire system is designed to accept this as fact, because science is done by humans, and to still arrive at the truth nonetheless. If we take those two observations: a) science is done by humans and b) humans have motivations, obviously the way to arrive at truth is to allow for most things to be wrong most of the time. This is the process by which we've learned every single thing about the universe. I don't know what you mean by "held to the same rigor." I don't think any psychologist on the planet would tell you we understand psychology as well as we understand basic chemical reactions.

darby_nine 2y ago

> The entire foundations of modern Psychology are wobbling. What do you mean by this? the field of psychology is perfectly capable of policing itself, and it's rejected much of the conclusions of its historical predecessors. > In order for the same to be true for the hard sciences we would need to be failing to replicate experiments which hinge on germ theory, atomic theory, the standard model, etc. "hard sciences" also fail to produce results relevant to most people. Sure, they can maybe make better batteries, but how can they explain how dysfunctional society is? EDIT: We can also directly blame the poor communicational skills of "hard sciences" for diet culture. "hard sciences" have failed in their efforts to produce a population that can reason about nutrition in an evidence-backed manner, and this can be traced directly to how scientists choose to present their data.

zarathustreal 2y ago
You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Incorrect information is worse than no information.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  > You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. You absolutely do lol, or you're just straight wrong. Take your pick. > The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Neither can hard sciences. Proofs are incompatible with empiricism. Abductive proofs (which is what the scientific process offers) are necessarily bounded by limited certainty. All you can do is progressively improve certainty approaching 100%, but reaching it is necessarily impossible. This is just basic Hume. You can never be 100% sure the sun will rise tomorrow or that the fundamental laws of physics won't arbitrarily change. But, the same applies to soft sciences. We can and do increase our certainty continually. This is absolutely worthwhile and is probably far more valuable to humanity than merely modelling physical phenomena.
  - zarathustreal 2y ago

kjkjadksj 2y ago

To be fair all of that was up in question a century ago in the hard sciences. People used to believe in the plum pudding model, or doubt what component in the cell contained genetic information. The only thing that changed that was incremental experimental evidence. Social sciences are evidently going through a similar transition but we shouldn’t use that to discredit the field alone, work is still able to stand for itself if it is done well.

llamaimperative 2y ago
The level of ignorance of this basic, basic historical fact is just completely astounding on this website sometimes. It was called natural philosophy for Christ's sake. Modern medicine's forefather was heroic medicine, based on modulating the 4 humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile). We didn't zap into existence with the hard sciences being hard. We made them that way through centuries of intellectual effort, almost all of which turned out to be wrong!