Psychology/sociology

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like these "scientific" fields are mostly bullshit, and most of the "studies" are put forth for political reasons. Feels like the fields are not about empirical observation, but rather making wild claims from small data sets. What do you think? Would society be better off if we didn't accept these as legitimate sciences? I hate seeing psychology studies brought up in political debates.

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You're right

Science is the opiate of the misinformed

We should all focus on literature, where true intelligence lies.

They're only respected if you have a PHD for them. But there are still stacies and normie retards who think an undergraduate Psych/Socio degree isn't a waste of time even if they don't want to go to grad school.

Science is the new religion.

>scientific studies about human behaviour doesnt match with political beliefs
>"must be bullshit my feels cant be wrong"

Wew lad you truly honor your flag. At least you said you could be wrong

What Do You Guys Think threads are forbidden in the rules, stylistically hideous, and are a kind of defamatory data-mining in which CTR invites Sup Forums users to provide real quotes that can be used against the site later (in this case, "pol users don't believe in science").
Type sage in the option field (below name), then call up the menu from the left corner and select hide thread.
Saged and hidden.

>Implying any 'social science' with the exception of economics has anything to do with actual science

Psychology and sociology aren't sciences, kid. They do not adhere to the scientific method and essentially exist to promote Leftism. Especially sociology.

>sociology
You need to watch Hjernevask.

Both of those "fields" are almost entirely bullshit, yes. You can't box people up. Or at least you can't box non-drones up.

For Macro Economics its the Same, muh Austrian, muh Keynes.
Psychologie has some clean fields, but a good amount is bullshit.
Sociollogy is pure cancer, but it has to be added, if you work empirical and take biology into account Even there is Potential.

>this is what 1st world education looks like

I recommend you at least read "huamnities for dummys" or something.

Look at B.F. Skinner and radical behaviorism before you talk shit.

The only people who consider psychology and sociology science are psychologists and sociologists.

Kind of like how chiropractors insist they are real doctors, but no one really believes them.

He was nearly completly debunked, he misted to mention that genes (instincts) are much stronger in influencing the behavior than the Environment(conditioning).

I was a double major, both of which were liberal arts. I know my humanities and I can tell you that other than economics, there's nothing scientific about any of it.

kek wills it

Nah only Micro Economics. Macro is never a good choice to lean on, the data shows that all theory is nearly worthless in making significant predictons on the Macro scale. The best you can do is to use Mirco carefully and extend it in the Macro direction this gives somewhat reliable results.

Studies show that nine out of ten Studies are utter bullshit.

They aren't bullshit, they are just in a very infant stage as so little is really understood about our brains.

Once psychology is more linked up to psychiatry things will get really interesting but it takes time

Psychiatry is also much bullshit, you propably mean neurology.

You will never hear a sociological theory more bizarre and incredulous than the sort of theories that physicist are coming up with and calling science. "Feels like the fields are not about empirical observation"--why not see what these theoretical physicists do with zero observation. You trust that?

>Implying religion is obsolete

Often times, I operate entirely out of empiricism, and then explain after-the-fact why its the case. So I can give accurate results about certain things, even if I fail to understand the causal mechanism behind it. To me, what's more important is explaining how before why, where-as when we dwell in the why, we tend to ignore the how. In physical sciences, my method wouldn't work, but in social sciences, it somehow produces good results.

>"I perform the dance like X. Y appreciate it. Now I have to find out why."

This, in addition to anthropology

Which is funny when you realize all three fields were spearheaded by conservative based white men before they were hijacked by jews and women

Macro is good for understanding the past, but I definitely agree that nobody can accurately make macro predictions.

There are many things which were later proofed empirical in experimental physics have been predicted in theoretical physics. In sociology none of this has ever happend.

That have been^^

>Who is B.F Skinner

That's because sociology renounced predictive power. A good sociologist, in theory, could explain a social relationship, and then infer the outcome of a different social relationship based on the previous one.

Very few people do prediction in Social Sciences, which is why they generally don't produce much of anything, anymore.

>behaviorism (read: autismcraft)
>breaking people down into input/output
>lost its clout to the cognitive revolution

nah you just say this because you would rather dismiss things then have to understand them. Also notice you came to this conclusion with your feelings. Not to say people do not use these fields to manipulate and it is absolute truth, but to dismiss it completely is foolish especially when it has many applications.

I think the evidence points in the direction, that we only believe we could, but in Reality only adaped our reasoning to the data. So even about the retrospektiv/ explenatory power of the theory you have to be careful.

really made me think

meant for op oh well

The problem with psychology is that it must be about the single most important field of study for modern man, but everyone inside it is either beholden to some misguided sense of morality that basically boils down to "don't discover anything uncomfortable" or it's outright pseudoscience.

We've known for thousands of years how to manipulate people in bad ways, but somehow it's immoral to discover ways to teach people to manipulate themselves, extend their own capabilities etc.

Economics isn't really a science either user. It's impossible to test anything right now.

The worst thing is they COULD be science, but they were hijacked by people who have no interest in the truth.

you don't actually think humans act in a completely random and unexplainable manor do you?

I'm familar with this. There is the debate about the idealtypus and the Methodenstreit. Basiclly most decided, that they do not want to be bound by reality, but instead from their own. Like Marx said all philosophers have described the world diffrently, but would matters is that you change it.

That sums it up well. Sociologist and Psychologists use their studies as means of persuasion rather than interpretation. Which is why the world is running blind in the Social Sciences department.

Hegel's would-be response to Marx, however, is less well known. "By interpreting the world, you can change the world."

But dude, that's exactly what people are.

I know it's uncomfortable as shit, but you are basically an information system-- a computer.

Cognition is great and all, but most behavior is not cognitive. Cognition is slave to to a more primordial reactive mind. Most people only use their cognitive functions to justify their actions and convince them they're reasonable people AFTER they've made a decision emotionally. How many times have you bought something expensive on a whim and immediately said "well, I deserve it," or "I 've saved $5,000 this month I can afford it" etc? Now if you'll be honest you'll realize most of your other decisions are the same way.

As long as people don't recognize this simple fact, we'll be beholden to the interminable cycles of history, the predictable rise and fall of empires, the rise with morality and the fall with degeneracy.

Until we have some objective understanding of how humans best operate, what relationships work best, what life setups etc we're basically flying blind. I'm not calling for a scientific morality, because morality is subjective. Morality gets applied LATER, after we understand the system. We have to know *how* to build the world we want before we just start throwing together what feels right.

Agreed. The study of psychology right now is shitty as hell, and it probably won't get better until the current generation of psychologist types die off.

What's so sad is that if studied honestly and scientifically, it could prevent the return of the dark ages.

You have to distinguish between Marco and Micro. If Marco is concernt you are right, but Micro is another Story.

>I feel like these "scientific" fields are mostly bullshit, and most of the "studies" are put forth for political reasons.
oy vey, no way, goy

t. Freudian

Of course not, but psychology studies can never control for all the variables that make up human behavior. So how can it be science?

With a large enough sample size, you can at least get close to the truth.

But yeah, the observer effect etc.. are all big problems.

Nope read my post

Yeah I'd say society is a better judge as a whole than select studies done on comparatively tiny groups. These studies are less efficient than stereotyping and ALWAYS produce the same results as stereotypes, unless the test was flawed, which it almost always is anyway.
That being said, I'm probably going to be seeing a psychologist pretty soon. Just got some shit I need to talk about and want to hear some opinions and theories, maybe some advice on how to get out of my current situation. Because they're basically counselors. A counselor would actually be better because their head isn't filled with bullshit theories, but I'm not in high school anymore. You need 10 PhDs to talk to an adult, apparently.

Microeconomics is decidedly less useful than a rigorous macroeconomics would be though.

psychology pre-1950 or so is okay, anything after that is tainted by liberal bias

>the autism intensifies

read philosophy of science to see issues that are extremely autism tier blatantly represented in the soft sciences.
>translate behavioral observation into math
>completely subjective perspectives argued to be objective absolutes

B.F. Skinner oversimplified a lot, and didn't leave as many openings for his theory to adapt and grow. It doesn't mean the core conceit is false and you haven't proven anything to that effect.

hey...
hey buddy...
What's in the bag?

Mainstream psychology suffers from the same problems that all mainstream forms of the sciences do. The only difference is that psychology is more exploitable.
It's also the one scientific field that women control.
t. man with a Ph.D. in psychology

>Read an argument you don't like
>Call the other guy autistic
Seems pretty action/reaction to me.

What you're sensing is the Jewishness of those fields.

But that isn't true. Even epigenetics (ie, the environment effecting gene expression) has a stronger effect on behaviour than outright genetics.

Something as physical-structure of the brain altering as schizophrenia has only a relatively weak genetic component.

Behaviourism is still real. It is just unpopular. Skinner himself said that he only writes books because hes been conditioned to do so. You want to talk about a red-pill, admit that your free will is an illusion.

As an experiment, right now I could use operant conditioning to make you like something you dislike. This disproves your statement immediately.

This is also true. I'm doing my honours year in psychology and at least half of the women in my class have openly said that we shouldn't be taught statistics because they don't like it.

Economics is quite possibly the worst offender. Don't be fooled because it deals with non-statistical math.

Psychologist here, it is true in research. My advisor a long time ago said that getting "significant" findings was more important than being a sound repeatable experiment, therefore I should tweak my study based on the data until it comes up the way I need it to.

Feynman

youtube.com/watch?v=DOKKiiAzjdg

>Free will is an illusion
I don't go quite that far. I think you can train yourself to exercise free will at least some of the time.

It is right there is conditioning but it is much weaker than he claimed and can't stand against instincts. I have read approximativ half of his work. And he claimed give me x number of people Point out one and say what profession he should take and i make him able to/and take the profession. Another one and another. Lets say there are five blacks, here i come this one quantum physicist, this one mathematican, this one general, this one chemist, this one a neurobiologist.

Could just call you a jew.

Like psychoanalysis, behaviorism has largely been discredited. All it's really used for is animal training and some aspects of it show up in CBT. The reason why I call it, and you, autismcraft/autistic is because that dehumanized mechanical view of the hardline behaviorist is just that, autistic af.

I dont expect you to buy it though, one of the key signs of autism is lack of theory of mind. You can't comprehend that I, and many many others, find behaviorism to be bunk. You just plow away with MUH INPUT/OUTPUT

>Non-statistical math
>What is econometrics

it was justified because what you wrote is complete garbage

>Until we have some objective understanding of how humans best operate
i don't know if you think it's even possible to obtain an objective understanding, because you realize that morals are subjective, but I really hope you understand that science/math is also rooted in human thought (which is subjective fag). every concept that you can understand was FELT by some fag and then a group of other fags FELT something more was necessary and added onto it.

you have supreme autism if you believe that we aren't just working inside systems rooted in emotion, but rather we are are able to objectively experience the universe through our dogshit limited sensory organs and start a perfect human-made system that is 1:1 to an objective, universal equivalent

Water.

Lavren is a qt

>epigenetics (ie, the environment effecting gene expression) has a stronger effect on behaviour than outright genetics.
Hmmm... so this is the true power of Zionist brainwashing.

Depends on what you are looking to my Knowledge the genetic component mostly dominant, in iq it is 55-70 percent. Schizophrenia is a weak discribed illness with many many and often changing sub types, the problem is normaly you can't see anormalies via neuro Imaging and if you do it is not because Schizophrenia is claimed to be chemical imbalance.

Yeah.. conditioning doesn't stand against some animals instincts, because they aren't as smart.

Example, a pig, dog, or chimp will stay conditioned for a lot longer than something with a great degree of instinctual behaviours like a chicken or a goose.

But a human? Can be completely conditioned in a way they're not even aware of.

And he is right, to a degree, about conditioning people to do certain roles. He was just unaware of the degree to which humans have individual differences, eg, the extent to which IQ plays a role in mind and other types of reasoning skills.

It hasn't been discredited. It is just unpopular. It shows up in ALL types of therapy - even breath training, and esoteric crazy types of therapy rely on the idea that thoughts are a behaviour.

>Muh theory of mind
Yeah, okay. Are you literally trying to state that the mind grows all on its lonesome with no input?

yeah over %50 of published psychology studies cannot be replicated, which means they're bullshit. i bet its even worse for sociology etc.

Dude, no. I probably shouldn't have defended Skinner at all, because I've got you all off on tangents about the stuff he was obviously wrong on.

In the end, the mind is essentially a mechanical system that can be understood. Your emotions, whether they're programmed in genetically or in reaction to experience, are still just that-- programs. They resist conscious analysis.

>you have supreme autism if you believe that we aren't just working inside systems rooted in emotion
Good god you people love to seize on the stupidest shit like it has any bearing on the discussion. I understand that there is probably no "objective" a priori truth, and even if there were it'd be subject to enough doubt that it's not really beneficial to try and hold that as a standard.

Inductive reasoning is the name of the game, since you obviously want to get reductive with it. We have to find out what (can reliably) causes what effects, hopefully experimentally, and decide how we want to apply that to the real world.

I understand that I am emotional. That's why I think understanding our emotional systems is so important.

> lack of theory of mind
Oh good god fampai

>it actually is water
i can't tell memes from regular answers anymore

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abzu

So everyone who is a doctor was just born with that knowledge and understanding right user? Heres a question, do you even know what epigenetics is? Care to explain?

IQ is a pretty tricky one (all shilling about muh racial differences aside) because theres not really a fabulous test for it. And fluid intelligence can be partially trained.

Schizophrenia has slowly started to come together for scientists, a lot of people in different disciplines (eg neuropsychs, neurologists, psychiatrists) are starting to use each others concepts of how the brain works. Schizophrenia is not only claimed to be a chemical imbalance but also a lack of development as far as connection between brain areas. The best part about schizophrenia is when it truly manifests it is very obvious and so there is a lot of differences to study. Pretty cool stuff is happening with it.

No you are wrong because you because you believe human to have near to no instincts this is not true. It proves nothing i have tried conditioning in experiments with me and friends and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. You are Wrong in the assumtion that we are fundamentaly different than other animals which is not the chase.

Sorry my Autocorrect is messing with my Text.

I think you are confusing memory and learning with epigenetics, not even sure why you are asking me that question.
I mean, are you implying that all the lectures and rounds I attended somehow activated certain genes that allowed me to become a doctor?
What are you trying to say?

Humans have almost no instincts in comparison to animals like deer. A vast majority of human behaviour is learned.

Pretty much all we're born with is trying to look at and connect socially with our mother/ caregiver, breathing, and suckling instincts.

Conditioning experiments are hard in practice because you're always going to attempt to condition yourself to do something that you've been conditioned not to do (eg, "Can we use operant conditioning to go to the gym/ stop eating McDonalds etc).

It can be done you just have to have a greater degree of reward than the reward you get for the behaviour you want to stamp out.

But a small child? You can condition a small child to love solving mathematics problems. Easily. With candy. And this is because there aren't all these complicated internal conditioned structures.

>Humans have almost no instincts in comparison to animals like deer.
No. Humans have overwhelmingly more different types of behavior than deer, so obviously your comparison is a little distorted.

In our social interactions alone, there's probably more instinctive shit going on than comprises a Deer's entire repertoire.

>Science is the new religion.
The worst thing you can ever say about something is to call it a "religion".

What I'm saying is that something like "depression" has an epigenetic component.(I would classify depression as a behaviour).

Eg, you might be 12 and have no "genetic" markers for depression, then something happens and your genes literally change to the point that you now do have this proposed genetic marker that leads to depression outcomes.

The point I'm trying to make is that outright genetics is not as big a predictor of behaviour as the environment.

Yes.. and are those behaviours learned or instinctive, user?

Our social interactions might be unconscious, but they are not instinctive. There are relatively few universally recognised facial expressions, for example.

>But a small child? You can condition a small child to love solving mathematics problems. Easily. With candy. And this is because there aren't all these complicated internal conditioned structures.
What if the kid isn't good at math, doesn't have the intelligence or patience for it? Can you condition past that? What about a subsaharan African kid who can't even sit in his seat for five minutes?

The behavior of solving math problems might not be instinctive, but you're discounting about half the equation by just focusing on them. Aptitudes count too, and they're probably genetic (or at least in-born).

why do secular jews in Israel have a birthrate over 3,0, meanwhile American jews have under 1,5 kids

Is zionism the only factor of the demographie miracle in Israel or am i missing something

>pic semi-related

There are patterns of behavior that emerge in every civilization we've ever observed. Pair bonding and mate guarding, female attraction to dominant males, *religion*.

If fucking religion is instinctive, where the fuck does that leave your blank-slate theory?

The Material from the experiments in the us done after the 2 world war is quiet interesting. Still we are no blank slate and you can lets say make someone love Maths but when his Brain pysiology is not the right one he will have no ground Breaking mathematical Theorem he came up with. The Cooperation is twenty years old and the evidence is still lousy. I know of not less than three different Theories which are hold or spread by leading scientists.

No, of course you can't. It's no different to when they try to make chimps learn sign language, few chimps are intelligent enough to do it.

It was an example, not meant to provide a hard and fast proof. The example being that if you want someone to perform a behaviour and enjoy it, you can condition them to do so even if they have no inherent interest in it- and its easier if they're young because there is no conflicting other conditioning (Eg, if you get a 14 year old who yelled out in math class "BOO THIS IS STUPID" and his whole class cheered - he will have a strong reward in place for not liking maths. You see?)

Sociology is not a science. Psychology is. The problem with psychology is that it's still in its infancy. It didn't become a real science until the 70's.

He's under the impression that anyone anywhere can do anything if conditioned to do so, which is not the case at all.

Bullshit. Behaviorism is tge most accepted psychological among scientists.

I agree. it is all about money and reputation. there is little real science anymore. for example, is the earth really even round? bet you BELIEVE it is, but is it? Did mankind REALLY evolve from apes? or is that just an idea repeated ad nauseum based on scant material evidence from supposed bones of "missing links" which range from anything from deformed dwarfs to deformed apes?

in the end, modern science is about repeating lies, not about finding truth.

Look at it this way, the Gene Pool of a dear and a human are really different now you take them in the same enviorment(Same stimuli and all) will they behave the same? You are propably looking at a certain genetic subsets of a taxionomical group and say look now the envoirment is more important but really it was you choseing the subset makeing the Environment comperativly more important.

all this bs about "groundbreaking mathematical theorem" is just nonsense. there is nothing a formula can do to solve anything. only matter solves things. a "brilliant" equation cannot solve anything.

Yes, okay patterns of behaviour, sure.
I did not at all say blank slate, you're putting words in my mouth. I simply stated that a *vast majority* of human behaviours are learned. Or are you implying that typing on a WSAD keyboard is basically instinctive?

>Overwhelmingly different types of behaviour
Yep thats right

>But mating
Thats not different to deer

>Mate guarding
Not different to deer

>Religion
Thats grouping behaviour..not different to deer.

So lets look at the "overwhelmingly different" behaviours

>Civil engineering
Oh.. well shit. I don't think I need to go on.

We're relatively speaking a blank slate. There is a ton of research on language learning- if you're not fluent and literate in one language by age 7 or 8 you're basically fucked. Sure you can still eat/ fuck whatever, but as far as any higher cognition goes there is nothing you can really do.

Individual differences do not disprove behaviourism, which is what you're trying to do.

Even someone really stupid can still be operant conditioned. Some of the most successful programs for the mentally disabled are pure operant conditioning (eg, training them to go to the laundromat and do their own laundry).

I'm not disagreeing with the concept of epigenetics I think it is a completely valid field of study.

I think it is a very bold claim to state it has more impact than genetics itself. It is already a contentious idea that environmental impacts of all types (not just including epigenetics) outweighs genetics.

One of the problems behind epigenetics being lauded as an explanation to everything is that several biased interests are jumping on the bandwagon, e.g. trans-generational epigenetic emotional injury from the Holocaust, genocides - general theories of cultural and racial marxism, proponents of socialism and wealth redistribution.

In every context I've seen epigenetics discussed, I feel as though its importance is always overexaggerated beyond the ability of evidence based studies to back up the claims.

I would also classify depression as a diagnosis, a mental disorder rather than a behaviour.

This. Because of the implications of psychological findings, lots of studies essentially get buried. You can get them published, but they'll be attacked relentlessly by people in and out of the field who think that because it violates a commonly accepted ideology, it must be wrong. I can't tell you how true this is. People literally use "it goes against everything we believe!" as "evidence" that an uncomfortable truth must be wrong.