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

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

#211

Post by pluto9 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #163
lopmotr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? It's selective breeding for humans the same as we do for farm animals and cats and dogs. It's not pseudoscientific.

No - it's pseudo moral. It's reviled because proponents are reliably racist idiots who don't even understand the limits of the science - or why breeding humans like farm animals really isn't such a great idea.

> It's reviled because proponents are reliably racist idiots

It's reviled because it's inherently immoral. Its proponents are indeed usually racist idiots, but even if they had the best of intentions, it would still be immoral.

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

#212

Post by qntty »

waheoo wrote: post #18
qntty wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because I actually think that the opposite would be nice. You never know what technical knowledge you'll end up needing, so it would be nice to have technical education integrated with work throughout the first several years of working. But everyone can benefit from having a broad education in liberal arts and sciences.

Youre forgetting that study is optional and most of us have little to no interest in liberal arts and sciences.

It would be nice to have as an option for those who do have an interest. I suspect that most would have an interest in college level liberal arts and sciences if it didn't conflict with getting a job.

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

#213

Post by selectionbias »

kunfuu wrote: post #156
selectionbias wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I haven't read or even heard of Kate Raeworth, but I am an academic economist. Most modern economic research is empirical, a paper poses a policy-relevant empirical question 'did policy X reduce unemployment' and then empirical evidence is presented (perhaps using data from a randomly controlled trial or using quasi-experimental variation). The statistics are calculated and the assumptions required for the va…

Hypothesis driven research disregarding rigoriousness of hypothesis formation is most often flawed, as the hypotheses will be filled with suspicious/flawed concepts that cannot serve as reliable and meaningful abstraction of reality. Consider the measures prefixed with 'real', for example, 'real wage'. The concept of 'real wage' isn't meaningless, since it captures the relation between wage and purchasing power when…

Well, at the very least, the argument over hypothesis formation is not specific to economics. The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that science should aim to empirically falsify hypotheses, and that the way scientists develop those hypotheses, while an interesting psychological question, is irrelevant for the scientific method. He argued that hypothesis formation always contains an element of irrationality and instinct and he quotes Einstein who expressed views to that effect.

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

#214

Post by selectionbias »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #164
selectionbias wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the latest edition of QJE. You will see mostly studies addressing a particular policy question, e.g., 'what was the effect of this policy change on unemployment' which they answer using randomly controlled trials or quasi-experimental methods. Which aspect of this falls apart when you prod it?

What's a "quasi-experimental method" and how do you do randomly controlled trials on entire countries?

Quasi-experimental variation refers to situations in which assignment of treatments is 'as good as random' but treatments weren't assigned by the researchers in an RCT. A classic example is Angrist and Lavy https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

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

#215

Post by pdonis »

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?

Irresponsible speculation in dubious securities by investment banks who knew the government would bail them out (or bail out the insurance companies underwriting their risk, which comes to the same thing) because they were "too big to fail".

And the dubious securities themselves were derivatives based on the housing market, which was in a huge bubble caused by government policies that basically forced banks to lend to people who couldn't afford the loans in order to encourage home ownership, as antepodius pointed out.

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

#216

Post by konfekt »

Daub wrote: post #102

My father (a physicist) used to quote Rutherford to me: "all science Is either physics or stamp collecting". An extreme position perhaps. I now work in a college of humanities and have frequently collaborated with engineers. I have seen first hand how poorly applied scientific thinking has become within the humanities. But I cannot blame them. They are only giving to the uni what has been asked of them. The untold re…

In the UK Thatcher might have been a driving force. In Western thinking (entering a rabbit hole) conceiving humanities as sciences is a recurrent theme (say, in the Scepticism of Hume) that Auguste Comte in the 19th century turned into the doctrine of positivism:

- The scientific method (and precision of mathematics) applies to all sciences, social and natural.

- Knowledge can be proved only by observation trough empiric means and deductive reasoning.

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

#217

Post by kebman »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #171
kebman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, there. I've studied Political Science, Film "Science" and IT. And Pedagogy. Why do I say Film "Science"? Because I had to use refuted "science" to analyze films, among other things (Freudian Analysis, which was of course groundbreaking at the time, but that does not hold up to modern scientific standards anymore). The professor said to me that, "Yes, I understand you when you say that this isn't stricly 'science,…

Ironically this thread - and the OP - is a superb example of why everyone should study narrative techniques so they can understand the kinds of categories that common arguments and positions fall into. You can learn a huge amount from ad hoc observational models of behaviour that aren't based on equations or statistics. You can even use them to make accurate predictions. I used to know a manager who had an outstandin…

There's definitively a value in knowing about culture, and being able to categorize it and discuss it on many levels. If you simply want to get through to more people, the most direct approach I can think of is to study things like rhetoric or take communication classes. There's a wealth of knowledge there for how to improve the way your communication impacts and includes other people. And while I'm at it, let's not forget the cross-section between marketing and psychology, for all those boiler-room types among you. :D

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

#218

Post by yk »

shash wrote: post #153
yk wrote: post #36

I fully agree with the premise that humanities aren't a science. In fact I am fairly certain that the current paradigm of science can not work for at least history, though I strongly suspect most of the humanities. One of the problems is computability, when I try to build statistics on a space of human intentions, then I strongly suspect that this is at least as complicated as trying to build a measurable space atop…

I disagree entirely, especially about history. You form hypotheses on the basis of evidence (literary, archaeological, documentary, etc), make predictions about the kinds of effects you’d expect to find in the historical record, and then modify those hypotheses based on what you find later. How is that not a science?

> make predictions about the kinds of effects you’d expect to find in the historical record,

You want to make predictions about the past?

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

#219

Post by neonate »

0d9eooo wrote: post #80
neonate wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology hasn't simply become more reproducible. It has been gutted by a reproducibility crisis and it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.

The reproducibility crisis extends far beyond psychology. Psychologists are the messengers, just like they were with meta-analysis in the 60s and 70s. Similar problems have been demonstrated in a host of fields, mostly the biomedical sciences. To take one prominent example, HN has been plastered with articles about COVID studies of dubious quality.

I agree.

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

#220

Post by stanfordkid »

jaundermann wrote: post #125
stanfordkid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The equations of quantum physics don't change by virtue of you observing them.

Maybe, but the laws as we know them do. People create and change them.

Sure. But updating the equations doesn't change the outcome of the Michelson-Morley experiment or make a ball fall up instead of down -- it simply converges on a more precise outcome.
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