Are all social sciences bullshit ?

[Walker]

but with these informations, my recent read about taleb and your responses is making me think that a distinction must be made between these studies with a physical effect and the bull shit social science could be like with ur second response : the face recognition with social worth seems to be more linked to stereotype and influenced by reflexion or even manipulation by external sources like medias, which can be different to every humans. but not necessarely false but not universal.

China’s social credit system
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-s ... ned-2018-4

In China your social credit score, which is your worth to the government, will display in response to the facial recognition.

There are rewards and punishments involved.

Determining your worth is calculated with social science, and you don't get to set the parameters.

[Inkthing]

China’s social credit system
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-s ... ned-2018-4

In China your social credit score, which is your worth to the government, will display in response to the facial recognition.

There are rewards and punishments involved.

Determining your worth is calculated with social science, and you don't get to set the parameters.

wow.

Definitely impact the real world. conditioning on another level.

We are becoming dogs trained to sit down with doggy biscuits.

If u have others examples of this kind of conditioning by society except social media and laws i'd be happy to know them.
edit: and gambling of course.

[Greta]

The social sciences can be interesting and illuminating. Flawed as they are, they are better than rank guesswork or unaccountable edicts from authority figures, and thus do have some influence on public and private policies and case law.

Social scientists have the same problem as medical practitioners, only worse, in that everything to do with human beings is messy and complicated. Nature is often complex and and does not always give up her secrets easily, which is why exceptionally intelligent people are needed for research, but atoms, molecules, compounds and mixtures are still much more reliable and predictable than human brains and societies. As a famous anon once said, 'Never bet on anything with two legs' for a reason.

Due to complexity, what works for population A may not work for population B because of:

• level of development
• history
• culture
• geography
• local climate
• climate change prospects
• industry focus
• infrastructure
• skills available in workforce

and so forth. So I'd be leery of one-size-fits-all or magic bullet solutions in any of the soft sciences.

[Greta]

China’s social credit system
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-s ... ned-2018-4

In China your social credit score, which is your worth to the government, will display in response to the facial recognition.

There are rewards and punishments involved.

Determining your worth is calculated with social science, and you don't get to set the parameters.

wow.

Definitely impact the real world. conditioning on another level.

We are becoming dogs trained to sit down with doggy biscuits.

This is the result of population pressure. After a certain level of development more people equals more controls, which equals less freedoms.

For instance, I have an old, gentle dog who totters along with me in sparsely populated spots, perfectly trained and doesn't need a leash. I rarely had an issue before but increasingly "Keepers of the Order" are telling me - making a demand of a stranger - that I put the dog on a lead.

So it's not necessary to do harm to be prosecuted or threatened with prosecution any more. All you need do is break a rule that's limited by economics to being based on the lowest common denominator and not applied with detail and care.

That is, simple, brutal and unbending adherence to all rules is cheaper to administer than to take natural justice into account - to perhaps consider if a nerdy old dog, slowly toddling on her arthritic ankles and obsessed with sniffing and analysing urine patches is worth taking a "heroic" stand against. Is this for the public good?

The government cannot afford to test each dog and owner and register responsible owners as safe and there's no political pressure, so it's easier and cheaper to treat responsible dog owners with well trained dogs as if they are neglectful owners with untrained and vicious, wild beasts.

Of course, to the small-minded and officious who thrive on trying to feel important, such clumsy and arbitrary laws are an opportunity to play cop on those who appear meek and harmless. These are the true agents of oppression and who make totalitarianism possible - those who would betray obviously harmless neighbours to please Big Brother.

[Inkthing]

yeah, I think you have described the situation very well. It's all stereotypes and labels on people to simplify control. the problem is that people ARE conditioned and with time, I see an inevitable increased standardization/conformisation of people, way of thinking,... On all fronts, not only political : See social medias, likes give pleasure to people, the more they get likes, the more they get pleasure. the worst is when people are always posting, then it becomes a random rewards when the rat don't stop push the button/post something to get rewards, these are the more addict and this is the goal of social medias but what, I think, doesnt really matter to SM is that it is others people who give likes. Then users are conditioned to behaviour in a way the most possible people will agree with them..

[Walker]

China’s social credit system
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-s ... ned-2018-4

In China your social credit score, which is your worth to the government, will display in response to the facial recognition.

There are rewards and punishments involved.

Determining your worth is calculated with social science, and you don't get to set the parameters.

wow.

Definitely impact the real world. conditioning on another level.

We are becoming dogs trained to sit down with doggy biscuits.

This is the result of population pressure. After a certain level of development more people equals more controls, which equals less freedoms.

For instance, I have an old, gentle dog who totters along with me in sparsely populated spots, perfectly trained and doesn't need a leash. I rarely had an issue before but increasingly "Keepers of the Order" are telling me - making a demand of a stranger - that I put the dog on a lead.

So it's not necessary to do harm to be prosecuted or threatened with prosecution any more. All you need do is break a rule that's limited by economics to being based on the lowest common denominator and not applied with detail and care.

That is, simple, brutal and unbending adherence to all rules is cheaper to administer than to take natural justice into account - to perhaps consider if a nerdy old dog, slowly toddling on her arthritic ankles and obsessed with sniffing and analysing urine patches is worth taking a "heroic" stand against. Is this for the public good?

The government cannot afford to test each dog and owner and register responsible owners as safe and there's no political pressure, so it's easier and cheaper to treat responsible dog owners with well trained dogs as if they are neglectful owners with untrained and vicious, wild beasts.

Of course, to the small-minded and officious who thrive on trying to feel important, such clumsy and arbitrary laws are an opportunity to play cop on those who appear meek and harmless. These are the true agents of oppression and who make totalitarianism possible - those who would betray obviously harmless neighbours to please Big Brother.

The officials passing judgment on your dog may have lost, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”
(Italicized quote from the first sentence.)

This is actually why Trump was elected POTUS.

His opponent was perceived to be a continuation of oppressive regulations that exist apart from a decent respect to the opinions of the people, such as regulations boastfully designed to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.

This lack of decent respect to the people, and to the opinions of mankind, was also shown in the way that government control of the population, via health-care financing, was railroaded through Congress without debate, without deliberation, and without a single vote from a Republican representative of the people.

[Walker]

If u have others examples of this kind of conditioning by society except social media and laws i'd be happy to know them.
edit: and gambling of course.

You can't really make laws an exception when considering society. Tort reform is the most important of the least discussed topics in public debate. A conditioned reverence for personal, subjective, and perhaps erroneous interpretations of objective science as principle is what allows social science to be an authoritative source, for legal control of individual behavior.

REPORT
Overcriminalizing America: An Overview and Model Legislation for States
James R. Copland Rafael Mangual
August 8, 2018
Legal ReformOvercriminalization

"American law today has a way of making criminals out of ordinary citizens and small business owners:"
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/htm ... 11399.html

[Inkthing]

If u have others examples of this kind of conditioning by society except social media and laws i'd be happy to know them.
edit: and gambling of course.

You can't really make laws an exception when considering society.

what I meant by "except" was that I already noticed these were using conditioning to fulfill their goals.

[Walker]

If u have others examples of this kind of conditioning by society except social media and laws i'd be happy to know them.
edit: and gambling of course.

You can't really make laws an exception when considering society.

what I meant by "except" was that I already noticed these were using conditioning to fulfill their goals.

The conditioning created by China’s coupling of facial recognition and totalitarian database is a comfort for many, and as Greta notes there are many in China.

I think a corralary premise derived from your OP is interesting, namely:

Technology has advanced and swallowed up the social sciences into a method of controlling the populace … for reasons named throughout your perceptive thread.

Technology has also redefined populations beyond the limitations of geography, creating new voices that affect the topics that are considered to be social sciences, new topics such as women’s studies, which apparently and expensively qualifies one to do nothing other than teach the subject if staying within whatever learned discipline such a study confers.

[Greta]

Walker, I'm thoroughly in favour of putting coal miners out of business by taking the advantages in subsidies they have always enjoyed and passing them to renewable energy sources. The Chinese, who have always had a keen nose for a bargain, are increasingly seeing renewable energy for what it is - a potential cash cow that generates far fewer cleanup costs than mined fuels.

Providing healthcare to the poor is also not an example of increased control.

Examples of increased control would be excessive use of incarceration and other extreme forms of punishment, the "war on drugs", controlling home renovations, demanding that even safe dogs must be on leads at all times, etc.

[Walker]

Walker, I'm thoroughly in favour of putting coal miners out of business by taking the advantages in subsidies they have always enjoyed and passing them to renewable energy sources. The Chinese, who have always had a keen nose for a bargain, are increasingly seeing renewable energy for what it is - a potential cash cow that generates far fewer cleanup costs than mined fuels.

Providing healthcare to the poor is also not an example of increased control.

Examples of increased control would be excessive use of incarceration and other extreme forms of punishment, the "war on drugs", controlling home renovations, demanding that even safe dogs must be on leads at all times, etc.

Your concerns over coal are misplaced.

US environmental polices, of which coal has always been a part, is what made the US the industrial world leader in quality control of the environment long before affordable shale oil and natural gas.

Health care? Be rational. Controlling access to anything affecting health, including access to modern medical care, controls the population.

Do you think that the poor in China will be awarded sufficient social credits to receive access to modern medical health care?

[FlashDangerpants]

The ablity to confirm and disprove are only part of the matter. If you have a burning desire for the precise expulsion of doubt, then there are no social sciences that will suit your purpose because that is entirely the province of the hard sciences.

Are u saying that the human mind will never be understood ? Why the doubt couldnt disapear more and more with time till his extinction? then the "pseudo-science" would become an hard science but I see no other way to understand the mind without making assumption. It's not like observe matter. the evolutionary psychology is trying to understand why the mind is like it is now from an evolutionary point of view because our animals ancestors didnt have a prefrontal cortex which make us able to think like we are doing right now. that's biological. So the answer is in the evolution. no other way. it isnt stupid.

The human jawbone can be properly understood in evolutionary terms (whether it is or not is beside the point) by virtue of surviving fossils. Well preserved relatively aubundant fossils are considered reasonably direct evidence. The human elbow can also be observed through time in this manner. Evolutionary psychology cannot. No matter how furiously you like the claims the subject makes, much of the data, really the majority in fact, is inferred via very indirect sources.

Asking on a philosophy forum whether the human mind will ever be fully understood via science or any other method is an odd choice. We're sort of contractually obliged to ask you what that question could possibly even mean. Only if you can find a scientific answer to this question is it worth pursuing the other one.

[Inkthing]

The human jawbone can be properly understood in evolutionary terms (whether it is or not is beside the point) by virtue of surviving fossils. Well preserved relatively aubundant fossils are considered reasonably direct evidence. The human elbow can also be observed through time in this manner. Evolutionary psychology cannot. No matter how furiously you like the claims the subject makes, much of the data, really the majority in fact, is inferred via very indirect sources.

Asking on a philosophy forum whether the human mind will ever be fully understood via science or any other method is an odd choice. We're sort of contractually obliged to ask you what that question could possibly even mean. Only if you can find a scientific answer to this question is it worth pursuing the other one.

Of course, it seems to be difficult to find fossilised behaviour..

Don't change my words. I was asking you what u meant by your statement because you seems to think that since we can't observe the mind like we do to hard science( find fossilised behaviour), we should give up to try to understand it. So what ? let s place people in asylum when we find them a little too much crazy and hope some spiritual entity will help ?

the lack of data doesnt mean we can't thinking about it to figure out how it's work. Sure it won't be the right precise truth because it is fundamentally not the same method as the real scientific method which is designed to exclude de doubt but the fundamental difference of the field need a different approach, but it doesent mean we can't TEND TO the truth. social sciences are finding correlation and i dont think we should ignore them and categorize them just because it doesnt follow the scientific method.

but you have the point of view ,and this is the kind of debate, I was precisely looking for. I think Taleb is thinking all of social science are bullshit for the same reason so what is your reponse to that ? Should we give up ? Do u think all the psychology is bullshit ? really serious questions.

[Greta]

Walker, if you are going to deny the problems with climate change and what needs to be done for the sake of the next generation then there's not much point interacting at all.

Sheesh. The rank denial these days is getting beyond bizarre. It's basic physics and the data is in. There can be no logical climate denial now, that's pure political tribalism without even a skerrick of logic or science to it.

[FlashDangerpants]

The human jawbone can be properly understood in evolutionary terms (whether it is or not is beside the point) by virtue of surviving fossils. Well preserved relatively aubundant fossils are considered reasonably direct evidence. The human elbow can also be observed through time in this manner. Evolutionary psychology cannot. No matter how furiously you like the claims the subject makes, much of the data, really the majority in fact, is inferred via very indirect sources.

Asking on a philosophy forum whether the human mind will ever be fully understood via science or any other method is an odd choice. We're sort of contractually obliged to ask you what that question could possibly even mean. Only if you can find a scientific answer to this question is it worth pursuing the other one.

Of course, it seems to be difficult to find fossilised behaviour..

Don't change my words. I was asking you what u meant by your statement because you seems to think that since we can't observe the mind like we do to hard science( find fossilised behaviour), we should give up to try to understand it. So what ? let s place people in asylum when we find them a little too much crazy and hope some spiritual entity will help ?

I'm not sure you ought to change my words straight after getting grumpy at me about that sort of thing.

I have no idea where you got the notion that I don't believe we can ever understand the mind. I made what I consider a clear enough point about the limitations of the methods we can use to do so might be. I gave no cause that I can see to suppose this means that only a hard science can provide knowledge, so this only amounts to acknowledging that there is a differenece between the social and the hard sciences, and that this has a knock on effect to the certainty with which a particular science can establish a particular proposition within its given sphere.

the lack of data doesnt mean we can't thinking about it to figure out how it's work. Sure it won't be the right precise truth because it is fundamentally not the same method as the real scientific method which is designed to exclude de doubt but the fundamental difference of the field need a different approach, but it doesent mean we can't TEND TO the truth.

I don't know where you are going with this. It seems to mirror my previous point about precise expulsion of doubt. But you rejected that, so I don't get where we're going here?

but you have the point of view ,and this is the kind of debate, I was precisely looking for. I think Taleb is thinking all of social science are bullshit for the same reason so what is your reponse to that ? Should we give up ? Do u think all the psychology is bullshit ? really serious questions.

I haven't read Taleb, but I'm not impressed much by his reputation. Probably the only social science I can discuss in any detail is Economics, and even then only portions, and only up to a point. That is because any decent economist definitely knows a shit load of stuff I don't, and a lot of it is good stuff.

I understand that Taleb thinks economics is entirely BS, and I don't care, because I don't honestly believe he understands it, and I would never accept some one-size-fits-all argument for the worthlessness of all social science. I think he formed a relatively uninformed opinion on the matter and then justified that with a BS rationale. I haven't sufficient leisure time to read his work properly and attempt to establish that though, so this will have to remain supposition for quite a long time.