[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
Sociologist believe stupid things, like all gender differences are a result of socialization, despite studies showing that given the choice, male baboons like boys’ toys and female baboons like girls’ toys, or that female newborns’ pupils dilate when looking at a human face while male newborns’ pupils do not.
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Biologists believe stupid things, like that society/culture hasn’t played a massive part in everything they’ve ever thought, done, or believed.
[quote]FlavaDave wrote:
el0gic wrote:
Useless.
Hard sciences develop theory that actually let you make predictions about the real world.
Why are they only useful if they allow you to make predictions? I’m not saying they don’t, but why do you think this?
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I’m making the assertion that a theory is only useful if it lets you make accurate predictions. I just can’t see how theory can be useful if you can’t do something with it.
We use theories to simply explain things all the time. It doesn’t have to predict anything.
[quote]el0gic wrote:
FlavaDave wrote:
el0gic wrote:
Useless.
Hard sciences develop theory that actually let you make predictions about the real world.
Why are they only useful if they allow you to make predictions? I’m not saying they don’t, but why do you think this?
I’m making the assertion that a theory is only useful if it lets you make accurate predictions. I just can’t see how theory can be useful if you can’t do something with it.
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Again, sociologists and psychologists working in business derive theories and apply them to solve problems all the time.
[quote]FlavaDave wrote:
By the same token you could argue that hard sciences completely ignore the “nurture” factor of human behavior and therefore are completely useless.[/quote]
Which is why I clearly advocate for the Bio-Psycho-Social model above all else.
You could have read what I wrote, but it seems you wanted to go off on a series of angry rants instead.
What kind of social scientist falls into a black-and-white thinking trap anyway?
– ElbowStrike
[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
FlavaDave wrote:
By the same token you could argue that hard sciences completely ignore the “nurture” factor of human behavior and therefore are completely useless.
Which is why I clearly advocate for the Bio-Psycho-Social model above all else.
You could have read what I wrote, but it seems you wanted to go off on a series of angry rants instead.
What kind of social scientist falls into a black-and-white thinking trap anyway?
– ElbowStrike[/quote]
You advocate a Bio-Psycho-Social model such as the one that biology has?
I simply said that if Social Science is useless because it doesn’t follow this model, then biology is similarly useless. Seems like you’re the one creating a strawman here.
i think i would agree with what someone said before that social sciences aren’t inherently useless but in many these courses are just taught in a manner thats almost a joke
i personally like psychology but all the classes ive taken have been pitifully easy and i even took what some ppl consider to be the “difficult” psych classes
but somehow even though these classes only gave very easy multiple choice tests numerous ppl in the class still did very poorly despite the fact that many of them were pysch majors
i think psych/soc just draw a generally less intelligent demographic and the courses naturally morph to an extent to fit those needs
[quote]el0gic wrote:
Useless.
Hard sciences develop theory that actually let you make predictions about the real world.
Social sciences seem to either a) try and make up theory based on assumptions about very complex phenomena or b) use statistics to try and establish links between variables.
So, I don’t really see what social sciences achieve, if the predictions they make are based on statistics anyway. I think social academics are barking up the wrong tree when they try and make theory. They would be much better placed trying to find mathematical descriptions of processes based on massive statistical analysis. In this second case, there is no such thing as a social scientist, merely a statistician who analyses social phenomena.[/quote]
The hard sciences had ascertained at one point that the world was flat.
[quote]FlavaDave wrote:
I would go so far as to say that economics is a social science. I don’t know/care what it is technically classified. It’s still a field that studies behavior.[/quote]
Exactly.
Economics is very much a “soft” science compared to physics and chemistry, yet still avoids the “social science” stigma. Economics is largely theoretical with no scientific means other than statistics to measure its various theories.It is hardly cut and dry.
[quote]abcd1234 wrote:
FlavaDave wrote:
I would go so far as to say that economics is a social science. I don’t know/care what it is technically classified. It’s still a field that studies behavior.
Exactly.
Economics is very much a “soft” science compared to physics and chemistry, yet still avoids the “social science” stigma. Economics is largely theoretical with no scientific means other than statistics to measure its various theories.It is hardly cut and dry.
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?
[quote]HotCarl28 wrote:
i think i would agree with what someone said before that social sciences aren’t inherently useless but in many these courses are just taught in a manner thats almost a joke
i personally like psychology but all the classes ive taken have been pitifully easy and i even took what some ppl consider to be the “difficult” psych classes
but somehow even though these classes only gave very easy multiple choice tests numerous ppl in the class still did very poorly despite the fact that many of them were pysch majors
i think psych/soc just draw a generally less intelligent demographic and the courses naturally morph to an extent to fit those needs[/quote]
This is only applicable to undergraduate studies. Psych/soc are popular majors, no doubt. But saying that the fields themselves attract stupid people is absurd. The field does not encompass undergraduate students, but rather those who’ve earned graduate degrees and contribute to research. Graduate schools for psychology are extremely competitive and I bet most of the applicants that have a fighting chance weren’t the psych majors who were bombing multiple choice tests. They were probably actively engaging in the discipline via internships, honors programs, senior theses or research projects and the like.
I’ll grant you that they are popular majors and attract people with less direction/motivation who likely would not fit into math and science pathways, but the fields themselves don’t attract the same type.
I’m a term away from graduating with a major in Linguistics and a minor in Latin, and I’m tempted to give a cynical, ‘yes’, just because I’m frustrated right now with some of the stuff I have to do. I really think that there are a lot of very useful lessons in history, and that studies in things like sociology and psych can lead to many useful conclusions, but many times these ‘studies’ border on the ridiculous.
I recently went to a lecture about ancient Greek pederastic elegies by a guy whose whole field was in ancient sexuality and such. He was also excited about publishing an upcoming book that consists of homosexual and pederastic images in Greek art. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to apply his lessons.
I understand a little about looking at other peoples views about things like sexuality so that you can make educated decisions about your own choices and judgements, but you can also take it too far with the analysis to the extent that it loses its usefulness.
I always thought psychology was pretty worthless. There are an awful lot of clinical psychologists practicing today who don’t know shit from drywall so it’s obvious to me that the academic programs are deficient at best.
Define “useless.” Personally, I chose history as an area of study because I find it interesting and think a knowledge of it is vitally important. I didn’t choose it because I thought it was going to make me rich or any other reason that might make something “useful” in the way a pencil is said to be useful.
Last I checked, the University was never intended to be a trade school. There’s nothing wrong with choosing an area of study that has direct and very specific career applications, but it’s a mistake to think that ought to be the only consideration.
Education is largely what you make it. If you find it just so damn easy that you get A’s thrown at you as you wake up from your lecture-nap, I suggest you put a little more effort into educating yourself. There’s a canyon between being educated and receiving a 3.9. If you don’t feel like you’ve learned anything, that’s your fault.
If you feel you aren’t being challenged, challenge yourself. Being at a University, even a bad one, offers countless opportunities: enter an honors program; hook up with a professor and offer to help out with some research; apply for undergrad research grants, do your own project and submit it to your department; hell, spend some time in the library just because!
All this really sounds like to me is “hey, look at me, I’ve got a 3.9 and it was easy! Aren’t I smart!”
[quote]Charlemagne wrote:
I have been coming closer and closer to the conclusion that social sciences (anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminal justice, etc.) and in particular any class that ends with the word “Studies” is a pretty useless field of study. Now before anyone cries foul I must tell you that I myself am finishing up my BA in Criminal Justice.
Except for a few useful tidbits that I have picked up along the way, most of the stuff that I have “learned” is common sense. Alot of it just seems to be some social scientists attempt to legitimize these fields as an actual science.
I barely put any effort into this degree and am still going to graduate with above a 3.9 GPA. I don’t feel that I have learned a whole lot that has do to with my career. (I am a cop).
For my next degree I think I am going to try something that is actually very challenging like math or computer engineering. I am not trying to insult any social scientists out there but these are my conclusions. Any thoughts?[/quote]
A BA in Criminal Justice shouldn’t be making generalizations about social sciences as a whole, unless he has studied its other fields extensively.
[quote]el0gic wrote:
Useless.
Hard sciences develop theory that actually let you make predictions about the real world.[/quote]
So is economics useless?
[quote]FlavaDave wrote:
I would go so far as to say that economics is a social science. I don’t know/care what it is technically classified. It’s still a field that studies behavior.[/quote]
Yes, it IS a social science.
Just to be clear, I did my undergrad in psych, but it was a BSc, not a BA. What I did was almost a behavioral neuroscience degree (I was missing 1 advanced calculus class, and 1 physiology class). In the process, I did some chemistry, and an awful lot of biology (I could have declared it as my minor). I also did a business minor, and was only a couple of courses short of turning it into a psych/business double major.
Want to know a secret? The hard science and business courses were MUCH easier than any of my psych courses.
If you want to compare the difficulty of various programs, make an apples to apples comparison. It doesn’t make sense to compare intro to psych to 4th year hard science courses.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Your lack of respect for the field is quite amusing given your slavish devotion to Austrian economics which is social science applied to economics.[/quote]
I have a very high regard for all branches of knowledge in general. I was being facetious. However, I am not being facetious about the use of the the term science when talking about sociology or economics.
Economics is not a science. It is part of a branch of knowledge called praxeology. History also falls under this branch of knowledge.
Economics seeks to understand human action of the future. History seeks to understand human action of the past. All sciences have at least one historical analog. For example, physics has cosmology and geology; biology has evolutionary biology, etc.
All fields of knowledge tend toward asking either question:
What will happen or what has happened? Understanding “why” is what praxeology attempts to explain viz. human action. Praxeology is the basis for all “social sciences”.
As a doctor, I appreciate the value of the social sciences especially when it comes to public health.