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Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#191

Post by mjburgess »

akiselev wrote: post #140
nurettin wrote: post #124

Articles and generally ideas like this always seem too dismissive. CPUs are nothing like brains because: intricacies. Algorithms can't be applied to literature because: intricacies. It is almost an appeal to emotions to say that rather than saying "ok well we tried to apply these electric constructs and algorithms in order to understand ideas and literature better, we got nowhere and here's exactly why", they are lik…

I'd hesitate to even call them intricacies. Billions of years of evolution in biochemistry and multicellular organisms, half a billion years in nervous systems, and over 200 million years in mammalian brains have culminated with about 50 million years of evolution of the primate brain. For every human being that has ever lived, nature has run 10^X continuous brute force "simulations" to arrive at our present civiliza…

I'd be glad when the upcoming AI winter finally arives; when the self-driving car divisions are all closed; and biologists once again run biology.

The hubris of computer scientists is now boring; and the journalism around this tiresome.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#193

Post by enitihas »

mihaaly wrote: post #165

The story reminds me of the HR practices of 'measuring' personality based on questionnaire to judge the competence of people for certain positions and determine their carrier path inside the organization (e.g. at Trimble). Imagine you are a software engineer applying for an engineering role and they ask you a hundred or more questions to compare the importance of aspects such as punctuality, trust, being patient, law…

Isn't this the route most US universities are increasingly taking, i.e judging applications on personality traits (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...)

Offcourse, they could grow a spine and introduce quotas to achieve the same effect, but I guess that is bad for PR.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#194

Post by naasking »

luckylion wrote: post #150
naasking wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replication and publishing negative results do not get the respect they deserve. They should be given equal attention and funding as novel results. That would fix the replication crisis.

Are they not published in the major journals, or are they not published at all? The latter would seem insane. "We've tried this, it didn't work, but nobody will know and somebody will try it again next week to find out that it doesn't work."

They get published in lower impact journals because it's not as sexy. They get less funding for similar reasons.

I think a change of bureaucratic structure might be needed, like funding for every study should include funding for at least one independent replication.

Not only would the replication itself cull some of the false results, but knowing a replication was coming might make researchers more open and honest, ie. less p hacking, document more of their methods and in greater detail, etc.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#195

Post by nurettin »

jefflombardjr wrote: post #190
nurettin wrote: post #124

Articles and generally ideas like this always seem too dismissive. CPUs are nothing like brains because: intricacies. Algorithms can't be applied to literature because: intricacies. It is almost an appeal to emotions to say that rather than saying "ok well we tried to apply these electric constructs and algorithms in order to understand ideas and literature better, we got nowhere and here's exactly why", they are lik…

Can't upvote enough. It's easy to dismiss something you don't understand and wreck-less to assume you do. It's attitudes like these articles that led Planck to say, "Science progresses one funeral at a time" If learning, math or otherwise, doesn't destroy your ego, you can do better. There is no shame in vocalizing uncertainty or a feeling of not understanding. Look at Stephen Hawkings - he had the courage to admit h…

Right, and if bernoulli thought that "omg birds evolved a billion years, we can't simply model their wings to levitate a plane, look at those intricate feathers!" or the guy who first suggested CNNs thought "human brain! hundred million years of evolution from early primates! we can't simply use the neuron structure to create anything better, it's all over oh no!" we wouldn't simply be at the point we are standing today. On the shoulders of pretty smart people and their brave ideas.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#196

Post by fmoralesc »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

This is a terrible article. First of all, the introduction which bashes the paper which applying social network techniques to fiction? If the author had bothered to look it up, they would have realized the authors are an applied mathematician and theoretical physicist. Not humanities . Then they goes on to criticize political science and psychology as their poster children for the humanities, except these are social…

> First of all, the introduction which bashes the paper which applying social network techniques to fiction? If the author had bothered to look it up, they would have realized the authors are an applied mathematician and theoretical physicist. Not humanities.

Nonsense. Whether a piece of research belongs to the humanities doesn't have to do with the credentials of the researchers but with the subject matter. If we genuinely want to say that scientific and mathematical methods are fruitful to explore questions in the humanities (contra the main claim of the article), we have to at least allow this. Or would you say that the paper on the network structures in fictions is a piece of theoretical physics?

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#197

Post by AnHonestComment »

enitihas wrote: post #193
mihaaly wrote: post #165

The story reminds me of the HR practices of 'measuring' personality based on questionnaire to judge the competence of people for certain positions and determine their carrier path inside the organization (e.g. at Trimble). Imagine you are a software engineer applying for an engineering role and they ask you a hundred or more questions to compare the importance of aspects such as punctuality, trust, being patient, law…

Isn't this the route most US universities are increasingly taking, i.e judging applications on personality traits ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme... ) Offcourse, they could grow a spine and introduce quotas to achieve the same effect, but I guess that is bad for PR.

Quotas are illegal.

The problem is that they’re using biased metrics to pretend they’re not violating civil rights laws.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#198

Post by slothtrop »

mihaaly wrote: post #159
cycomanic wrote: post #127

This is such a horrible article. Many have already mentioned the conflation of humanities and social sciences. Then by using the example of books (because most would agree books would loose their essence if we just describe them by numbers) it constructs a straw man that somehow we loose something (the beauty?) by using quantitative measures. Sure many studies have flaws (not just in the social sciences), but what is…

When the measurement is flawed you will not know if the therapy works. Sorry. And the measurement is flawed! Actually, there is a crisis of reliability concerning modern research papers. (probably this is the source that many try to build castle out of dough?...)

Saying sorry in an argument is among the cheapest, most annoying rhetorical devices.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#199

Post by mettamage »

mihaaly wrote: post #165

The story reminds me of the HR practices of 'measuring' personality based on questionnaire to judge the competence of people for certain positions and determine their carrier path inside the organization (e.g. at Trimble). Imagine you are a software engineer applying for an engineering role and they ask you a hundred or more questions to compare the importance of aspects such as punctuality, trust, being patient, law…

I thought about 6 months whether I should call companies out if I'm really unhappy with their recruiting process. I decided the potential increase in transparancy is worth the risk.

I once applied to ING (the biggest Dutch national bank). They gave me a test like this and rejected me because I'm not responsible enough.

The irony is that I was complimented on my responsibility when I was an instructor on a coding school. This was especially in light of all the other teachers resigning because they couldn't cope with their classes.

I told ING this. I told them I'd work for free for 3 months, so they can try me out. Nope, I'm too irresponsible, no matter that I completed my 4 academic study programs in time with high marks and did extracurricular stuff.

It is bullshit indeed. IMO, the real answer is: it seems that Mettamage is responsible based on his past accomplishments. Based on the questionnaire he doesn't rank his responsibility a lot lower compared to the average person. Time will tell whether he is responsible.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#200

Post by antepodius »

progre wrote: post #143
pdonis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last forty years has been shaped by neoliberalism, which is exactly based on the idea of free markets as self-correcting. This is not only wrong, it's laughable. Governmental interference in the economy has grown over the last forty years, not shrunk. And not with good outcomes, either: the crash of 2008-2009 was due to too much government meddling over a period of decades finally catching up with everyone.

> the crash of 2008-2009 was due to too much government meddling I thought it was because of irresponsible speculation in dubious securities backed by by corrupt rating houses?

The US government had a policy of increasing home ownership through affordable housing.
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