5 ms·

It would help if those "soft sciences" had any sort of reproducible outcomes. As far as I can tell every instance of these "soft sciences" are just an arm of th

It would help if those "soft sciences" had any sort of reproducible outcomes. As far as I can tell every instance of these "soft sciences" are just an arm of the geopolitical body/state that backs them...with the sole purpose of rationalizing what ever that states status quo is.

kiba 2y ago
Ignorance is really not a virtue. If you suspect that you're being lied to by the consensus, feel free to read alternatives by heterodox scholars. I suspected that they're crank. It's not like I particularly agree with the way things work now, only that we shouldn't make things worse by making obviously stupid moves in the wrong direction.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
How aware of them do you consider yourself to be? There's an entire field of literature called critical theory that's explicitly dedicated to challenging the status quo. My own field (anthropology/archeology) does it so commonly that there are multiple terms for slightly different shades of it (public, applied, postcolonial, etc).
chasing 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (I don't think the GP comment was very good either, but taking the thread flameward is definitely not what we want.)
  - chasing 2y ago
    Easy to be snarky online. I'll pull it back.
    - dang 2y ago
      Appreciated!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ryandrake 2y ago
Can you give an example? It seems like you have a lot to share but stopped short at a vague implication of a shadowy elite controlling entire academic subjects.
- Palomides 2y ago
  [dead]
- asdasdsddd 2y ago
  Priming for starters https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/ https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
  - kiba 2y ago
    The best source of information about the reliability of scientific information...are within the scientific community. If you engage outside the scientific community, you're most likely going to encounter cranks.
- cfraenkel 2y ago
  Economics, and the Powell Memo, followed by Milton Friedman and the Phillips curve and trickle down and Reaganomics, to start with.
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > […] and trickle down and Reaganomics, to start with. Ideas that were not taken seriously even by the people who put them forward: > Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for the presidency on a platform advocating for supply-side economics. During the 1980 Republican Party presidential primaries, George H. W. Bush had derided Reagan's economic approach as "voodoo economics".[23][24] Following Reagan's election, the "trickle-down" reached wide circulation with the publication of "The Education of David Stockman" a December 1981 interview of Reagan's incoming Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman, in the magazine Atlantic Monthly. In the interview, Stockman expressed doubts about supply side economics, telling journalist William Greider that the Kemp–Roth Tax Cut was a way to rebrand a tax cut for the top income bracket to make it easier to pass into law.[25] Stockman said that "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."[25][26][27] > Political opponents of the Reagan administration soon seized on this language in an effort to brand the administration as caring only about the wealthy.[28] In 1982, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the "trickle-down economics" that David Stockman was referring to was previously known under the name "horse-and-sparrow theory", the idea that feeding a horse a huge amount of oats results in some of the feed passing through for lucky sparrows to eat.[29] Reagan administration officials including Michael Deaver wanted Stockman to be fired in response to his comments, but he was ultimately kept on in exchange for a private apology.[30] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics#Reagan_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics#Reagan_... See also: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment It'd be like saying traffic engineering and urban design are bullshit because politicians keeps building highways—when traffic engineers know this won't solve the issue of traffic: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox Also: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city#Conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city#Conspiracy_theo... Just because quack ideas attributed to a particular field are used to justify certain ideological ideas or policies does not mean the field itself is devoid of valid models.
lajy 2y ago
Are you really saying that psychology doesn’t have “any sort of reproducible outcomes,” or are you not including that one in your definition of “soft sciences?” The comment you’re replying to explicitly did, but I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. Because Skinner boxes exist. There are entire multi-billion dollar industries built around them (casinos, gacha games/loot boxes), just to pick a super low-hanging-fruit example.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  To reinforce your point with another example: If psychology wasn't reproducible then ads wouldn't work. Of course they are reproducible. It's trivial.
  - lazide 2y ago
    some is reproducible. And very little of psychology covers what is used in ads.
kiba 2y ago
There's more to knowledge than just reproducible outcomes. For example, history is frustrating because you are going to end up in unique circumstances and you're not going to be able to see into the future, only the present. Yet, we must at least have an understanding of the world around us and critical thinking skills that can only come from with doing history.
kiitos 2y ago
Thanks for providing a case in point.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
> As far as I can tell every instance of these "soft sciences" are just an arm of the geopolitical body/state that backs them...with the sole purpose of rationalizing what ever that states status quo is. This is 100% a sociological take though. Ie: it is in part doing sociology. Perhaps without knowing it, you've arrived at an Althusserian perspective on structuralism through the lens of conflict theory. Do you suppose that these institutions be systematically studied and can we build models of how they work to reproduce the status quo?

kiba 2y ago

Ignorance is really not a virtue. If you suspect that you're being lied to by the consensus, feel free to read alternatives by heterodox scholars. I suspected that they're crank. It's not like I particularly agree with the way things work now, only that we shouldn't make things worse by making obviously stupid moves in the wrong direction.

AlotOfReading 2y ago

How aware of them do you consider yourself to be? There's an entire field of literature called critical theory that's explicitly dedicated to challenging the status quo. My own field (anthropology/archeology) does it so commonly that there are multiple terms for slightly different shades of it (public, applied, postcolonial, etc).

chasing 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (I don't think the GP comment was very good either, but taking the thread flameward is definitely not what we want.)
- chasing 2y ago
  Easy to be snarky online. I'll pull it back.
  - dang 2y ago
    Appreciated!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ryandrake 2y ago

Can you give an example? It seems like you have a lot to share but stopped short at a vague implication of a shadowy elite controlling entire academic subjects.

Palomides 2y ago
[dead]
asdasdsddd 2y ago
Priming for starters https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/ https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
- kiba 2y ago
  The best source of information about the reliability of scientific information...are within the scientific community. If you engage outside the scientific community, you're most likely going to encounter cranks.
cfraenkel 2y ago
Economics, and the Powell Memo, followed by Milton Friedman and the Phillips curve and trickle down and Reaganomics, to start with.
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > […] and trickle down and Reaganomics, to start with. Ideas that were not taken seriously even by the people who put them forward: > Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for the presidency on a platform advocating for supply-side economics. During the 1980 Republican Party presidential primaries, George H. W. Bush had derided Reagan's economic approach as "voodoo economics".[23][24] Following Reagan's election, the "trickle-down" reached wide circulation with the publication of "The Education of David Stockman" a December 1981 interview of Reagan's incoming Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman, in the magazine Atlantic Monthly. In the interview, Stockman expressed doubts about supply side economics, telling journalist William Greider that the Kemp–Roth Tax Cut was a way to rebrand a tax cut for the top income bracket to make it easier to pass into law.[25] Stockman said that "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."[25][26][27] > Political opponents of the Reagan administration soon seized on this language in an effort to brand the administration as caring only about the wealthy.[28] In 1982, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the "trickle-down economics" that David Stockman was referring to was previously known under the name "horse-and-sparrow theory", the idea that feeding a horse a huge amount of oats results in some of the feed passing through for lucky sparrows to eat.[29] Reagan administration officials including Michael Deaver wanted Stockman to be fired in response to his comments, but he was ultimately kept on in exchange for a private apology.[30] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics#Reagan_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics#Reagan_... See also: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment It'd be like saying traffic engineering and urban design are bullshit because politicians keeps building highways—when traffic engineers know this won't solve the issue of traffic: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox Also: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city#Conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city#Conspiracy_theo... Just because quack ideas attributed to a particular field are used to justify certain ideological ideas or policies does not mean the field itself is devoid of valid models.

lajy 2y ago

Are you really saying that psychology doesn’t have “any sort of reproducible outcomes,” or are you not including that one in your definition of “soft sciences?” The comment you’re replying to explicitly did, but I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. Because Skinner boxes exist. There are entire multi-billion dollar industries built around them (casinos, gacha games/loot boxes), just to pick a super low-hanging-fruit example.

kelseyfrog 2y ago
To reinforce your point with another example: If psychology wasn't reproducible then ads wouldn't work. Of course they are reproducible. It's trivial.
- lazide 2y ago
  some is reproducible. And very little of psychology covers what is used in ads.

kiba 2y ago

There's more to knowledge than just reproducible outcomes. For example, history is frustrating because you are going to end up in unique circumstances and you're not going to be able to see into the future, only the present. Yet, we must at least have an understanding of the world around us and critical thinking skills that can only come from with doing history.

kiitos 2y ago

Thanks for providing a case in point.

kelseyfrog 2y ago

> As far as I can tell every instance of these "soft sciences" are just an arm of the geopolitical body/state that backs them...with the sole purpose of rationalizing what ever that states status quo is. This is 100% a sociological take though. Ie: it is in part doing sociology. Perhaps without knowing it, you've arrived at an Althusserian perspective on structuralism through the lens of conflict theory. Do you suppose that these institutions be systematically studied and can we build models of how they work to reproduce the status quo?