4 ms·

I agree with the authors identification of the problems in the field, but I'm not sure about their conclusions, or 'ways forward', which are 1. Debunk 'folk' p

I agree with the authors identification of the problems in the field, but I'm not sure about their conclusions, or 'ways forward', which are 1. Debunk 'folk' psychology, with comparisons to the illegitimacy of 'folk' biology and 'folk' physics 2. Shake things up- meaning don't be afraid to question established dogma regardless of reputational risks I, a completely unqualified internet commenter, will give number 2 a try. I'd argue that psychology is a folk science, which is to say its not a science at all, but an art. As we've recently discovered, a massive swath of psychological studies are non-reproducible. So maybe we shouldnt treat psychology as if it were a rigorous scientific pursuit, but a philosophical one, or even a therapeutic one (IE. make it synonymous with psychiatry). Leave the science to the neuroscientists, who can quantify and measure the things they're studying (I understand there is some overlap between these fields sometimes). If your study consists of asking people questions and treating their answers as quantitative measurements of anything, I don't know- it feels like something has been lost in the sauce there. Too many variables to draw any meaningful conclusions.

lazyeye 2y ago
In a similar way Im wondering what gender studies would be called?
dudu24 2y ago
What a stereotypical hackernews comment, wow. > I, a completely unqualified internet commenter, Just leave it there.
- dartos 2y ago
  How would people learn if they don’t get feedback on their ideas? Why go out of your way to gatekeep random internet comments?
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Sometimes you should make the effort to learn before sharing your idea with other people. So many people will blindly walk forward in the dark, completely in ignorance, and then get upset that people ask them to light a candle first.
- cheeseomlit 2y ago
  Care to enlighten me? It's not like I stated any of that as fact, it was qualified with an admission of my own ignorance- I'm open to being corrected. Or are you just demonstrating what happens when established dogma is questioned in this field? If so point taken, I can see why they're having problems
  - DinoDad13 2y ago
    Which established dogma do you want to challenge and why?
    - cheeseomlit 2y ago
      Moreso 'question' than 'challenge'- but it seems like the idea that psychology is a hard science at all is sort of a baseline assumption, or dogma. This article goes into great detail on all sorts of issues in the field, but stops short of questioning whether or not the whole thing could even be classified as scientific. I'd argue that the reproducibility crisis throws that into question to some degree (though that crisis apparently extends into 'harder' sciences as well, so maybe not?)- And intuitively, human psychology just doesn't seem like something you can quantify, at least not to the level of granularity required by the scientific method. That is, unless you're measuring the activity of neurons, synapses, hormone levels, any physical measurable phenomena, to draw your conclusions- and I'm not sure how much of that is done in psychology as opposed to neuroscience
      - DinoDad13 2y ago
        Psychology has always been considered a soft science.
  - feoren 2y ago
    I think there's a common pattern on Hacker News that goes something like: A: Overly broad generalization of a huge body of work put together over 100 years by tens of thousands of professionals B: Ugh, hate this take from armchair experts A: Okay, then give me all the examples! Otherwise you're proving me right! I happen to think your overly broad generalization is more right than wrong, but I also recognize the silliness of asking to be "enlightened" on an entire branch of human endeavor via internet comments. This is a problematic argument form, and someone calling out this behavior does not prove you right. So let's be clear about what "enlightening you" means. If your argument is "psychology is based on a fundamentally flawed/useless study design (surveys) and we can never learn anything real from it", then a few examples of reproducible, interesting, not a-priori obvious results from surveys should be sufficient to show that we actually can learn real things from surveys. (And be careful not to fall into the "I could have told you that!" fallacy.) Luckily, this question was already asked on Reddit, and I think there are some strong examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/qktt6h/what_are_the_most_robust_and_important_findings/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/qktt6h/... On the other hand, the field is absolutely rife with problematic study design and even some entire psychology departments (e.g. Stanford) seem to be completely rotten. The most salient example of this is the "implicit bias" studies that came out of Stanford. Their study design was something like: Task 1: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes as fast as you can Task 2: Associate bad words with "foreign" themes Task 3: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes again Task 4: Associate good words with "foreign" themes And the result is: you're racist because Task 4 takes you a few milliseconds longer. It never occurred to them (or it did and they intentionally forced the result) that in Task 4, you're literally unlearning what you've just practiced 3 times. It was one of the most blatantly bad studies I've ever seen in my life and I didn't see anyone else calling out how problematic it was, because Stanford. So in general I actually agree with your take: the field is rife with junk science, some of it obvious, and almost certainly some of it intentional. But please also recognize that "I'm an expert in tech and therefore everything, and if you can't prove me wrong in an internet comment then that proves me right!" is a very problematic argument style. It sounds like you're trying to prove yourself right, and a much more efficient way to get smarter is to habitually try to prove yourself wrong.
bee_rider 2y ago
Philosophy is often very well grounded, often annoyingly so. We gave up on it because it turns out you can create iPhones if you ignore the philosophical problem of induction, go do science instead, and assume the laws of physics won’t try and conspire against you. Rather, I wonder if Psychology would be better thought of as something even less grounded than science. Something where we’re just are happy with an accumulation of stuff that’s happened to work well enough, without pretending that we’re hunting fundamental principles. Something like a profession: Engineering, Doctoring, that sort of stuff.
- mistermann 2y ago
  Why would the problem of induction prevent one from inventing things? Also, where did you learn it was given up on, and that is the reason why?
dambi0 2y ago
Neuroscience isn't immune from non-reproducibility, for example this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41672599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41672599 from just a couple of weeks ago

lazyeye 2y ago

In a similar way Im wondering what gender studies would be called?

dudu24 2y ago

What a stereotypical hackernews comment, wow. > I, a completely unqualified internet commenter, Just leave it there.

dartos 2y ago
How would people learn if they don’t get feedback on their ideas? Why go out of your way to gatekeep random internet comments?
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Sometimes you should make the effort to learn before sharing your idea with other people. So many people will blindly walk forward in the dark, completely in ignorance, and then get upset that people ask them to light a candle first.
cheeseomlit 2y ago
Care to enlighten me? It's not like I stated any of that as fact, it was qualified with an admission of my own ignorance- I'm open to being corrected. Or are you just demonstrating what happens when established dogma is questioned in this field? If so point taken, I can see why they're having problems
- DinoDad13 2y ago
  Which established dogma do you want to challenge and why?
  - cheeseomlit 2y ago
    Moreso 'question' than 'challenge'- but it seems like the idea that psychology is a hard science at all is sort of a baseline assumption, or dogma. This article goes into great detail on all sorts of issues in the field, but stops short of questioning whether or not the whole thing could even be classified as scientific. I'd argue that the reproducibility crisis throws that into question to some degree (though that crisis apparently extends into 'harder' sciences as well, so maybe not?)- And intuitively, human psychology just doesn't seem like something you can quantify, at least not to the level of granularity required by the scientific method. That is, unless you're measuring the activity of neurons, synapses, hormone levels, any physical measurable phenomena, to draw your conclusions- and I'm not sure how much of that is done in psychology as opposed to neuroscience
    - DinoDad13 2y ago
      Psychology has always been considered a soft science.
- feoren 2y ago
  I think there's a common pattern on Hacker News that goes something like: A: Overly broad generalization of a huge body of work put together over 100 years by tens of thousands of professionals B: Ugh, hate this take from armchair experts A: Okay, then give me all the examples! Otherwise you're proving me right! I happen to think your overly broad generalization is more right than wrong, but I also recognize the silliness of asking to be "enlightened" on an entire branch of human endeavor via internet comments. This is a problematic argument form, and someone calling out this behavior does not prove you right. So let's be clear about what "enlightening you" means. If your argument is "psychology is based on a fundamentally flawed/useless study design (surveys) and we can never learn anything real from it", then a few examples of reproducible, interesting, not a-priori obvious results from surveys should be sufficient to show that we actually can learn real things from surveys. (And be careful not to fall into the "I could have told you that!" fallacy.) Luckily, this question was already asked on Reddit, and I think there are some strong examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/qktt6h/what_are_the_most_robust_and_important_findings/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/qktt6h/... On the other hand, the field is absolutely rife with problematic study design and even some entire psychology departments (e.g. Stanford) seem to be completely rotten. The most salient example of this is the "implicit bias" studies that came out of Stanford. Their study design was something like: Task 1: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes as fast as you can Task 2: Associate bad words with "foreign" themes Task 3: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes again Task 4: Associate good words with "foreign" themes And the result is: you're racist because Task 4 takes you a few milliseconds longer. It never occurred to them (or it did and they intentionally forced the result) that in Task 4, you're literally unlearning what you've just practiced 3 times. It was one of the most blatantly bad studies I've ever seen in my life and I didn't see anyone else calling out how problematic it was, because Stanford. So in general I actually agree with your take: the field is rife with junk science, some of it obvious, and almost certainly some of it intentional. But please also recognize that "I'm an expert in tech and therefore everything, and if you can't prove me wrong in an internet comment then that proves me right!" is a very problematic argument style. It sounds like you're trying to prove yourself right, and a much more efficient way to get smarter is to habitually try to prove yourself wrong.

bee_rider 2y ago

Philosophy is often very well grounded, often annoyingly so. We gave up on it because it turns out you can create iPhones if you ignore the philosophical problem of induction, go do science instead, and assume the laws of physics won’t try and conspire against you. Rather, I wonder if Psychology would be better thought of as something even less grounded than science. Something where we’re just are happy with an accumulation of stuff that’s happened to work well enough, without pretending that we’re hunting fundamental principles. Something like a profession: Engineering, Doctoring, that sort of stuff.

mistermann 2y ago
Why would the problem of induction prevent one from inventing things? Also, where did you learn it was given up on, and that is the reason why?

dambi0 2y ago

Neuroscience isn't immune from non-reproducibility, for example this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41672599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41672599 from just a couple of weeks ago