I didn’t say that only hard science is worth considering. In fact, the “hard science” / “soft science” distinction functions to marginalize subjects like history, sociology, and anthropology.
What I said was that that rigorous science is worth taking seriously. With the implication that there’s a fair amount of normative pressure for certain fields to sacrifice rigor in order to produce the “correct” results. Particularly in popularization, both evo. psych and anthropology are at terrible risk for this sort of bias.
Social sciences generally cannot run double blind studies, especially in subjects like history, economics, and anthropology. Further, being a participant in the observation adds all sorts of risks of biasing the data. And general motivated cognition creates a risk that one’s data will only reflect one’s preconceived beliefs.
Nonetheless,
(1) The experts are well aware of these difficulties. (2) The results those fields produce often are sufficiently rigorous to be worth taking seriously. To the extent our interlocutor says differently, he is wrong.
I would add than a narrow focus on quantifiable data can be limiting, especially when you are researching culture and doing content analysis. Coding is a way to convert that content into numbers—counting mentions of words or themes—but that requires a lot of qualitative analysis to begin with and certain aspects are often lost in translation. Any social scientist worth their salt will take into account as many biases as they can and devise an experimental design to control for them as much as possible. But again, you have to be prepared to defend why you did what you did and human nature is complicated.
Having said that, I think a mixed qual/ quant designs are pretty great, especially when you have meta analyses to back you up.
I didn’t say the humanities shouldn’t be taken seriously (I hate the term “soft sciences”). The humanities study fields where scientific evidence is generally not available, thus they have to rely on other kinds of evidence. Unfortunately, this makes it easier to get away with sloppy work, BS, or even outright lies in those fields. This should be taken into account when assigning probability values to various statements.
You’re misunderstanding Julian’s claim, albeit I think for reasons of inferential distance rather than deliberate misreading. The claim was not that anthropology/Sinister Cathedral Orthodoxy endorses inborn gender identity, despite its being wrong, for its political utility to trans rights. Such Orthodoxy is precisely the basis on which he thinks it is wrong. The claim was that activists endorse this false belief for its political utility, and that he and other Sinister Cathedral Agents don’t feel particularly obliged to go out of their way to correct it (although doing so was precisely what he did in that post.) If there was a widespread belief that washing your hands protected you from demons, I would not fault epidemiologists for failing to prioritize disabusing the public of this. Nor does it strike me as an affront to science that epidemiologists, as a general rule, have normative commitments that extend beyond scientific inquiry and on to the belief that health is better than sickness.
The claim was not that anthropology/Sinister Cathedral Orthodoxy endorses inborn gender identity, despite its being wrong, for its political utility to trans rights. Such Orthodoxy is precisely the basis on which he thinks it is wrong. The claim was that activists endorse this false belief for its political utility, and that he and other Sinister Cathedral Agents don’t feel particularly obliged to go out of their way to correct it (although doing so was precisely what he did in that post.)
My point is that one way or another the claim obtains the official stamp of approval as being the “scientific” and that this is an argument to be highly skeptical of anthropological claims with this approval.
The claim was not that anthropology/Sinister Cathedral Orthodoxy endorses inborn gender identity, despite its being wrong, for its political utility to trans rights.
Of course not. Her claim is the the great and noble anthropologists are deceiving the public for the greater good.
I don’t believe so. At least I can’t see where your position differs from mine. The difference is you object to my formulation her position in a way that doesn’t make anthropology look good.
First, let’s taboo “humanities.” No disrespect for the literature professors, but the type of analysis aimed at determining whether Hamlet is really insane, or pretending so for political / social advantage . . . is not what we are talking about in the conversation.
Instead, we are trying to talk about academic fields that are attempting to examine human beings and human societies in order to make useful and falsifaible statements about them. We are also talking about philosophy-of-science, particularly analytical, conceptual, and methodological considerations for the human-studying field.
Because random controlled trials (RCTs) are impossible or unethical in these fields, the quality of the data is much poorer than in fields where RCTs are practically possible. And quality of data is an important bulwark against nonsense, particularly politically motivated nonsense. That still does not justify claiming that entire fields are filled with liars. To make an equally ridiculous claim, the so-called harder sciences are filled with liars because fraudulent retractions are commonplace.
Anthropology results should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. But you argue the stronger claim that anthropology is worthless, through and through. Regardless of some folks here announcing a willingness to stretch to make a point, that doesn’t prove the experts in the field are doing misleading things. Stick your neck out—tell us what evidence would make you believe that heteronormativity exists. (I can easily list facts that would make me doubt the phenomena of heteronormativity).
The humanities study fields where scientific evidence is generally not available, thus they have to rely on other kinds of evidence.
I don’t understand your reference to this article. To quote it:
The question “Is it really science?” is ill-formed.
To the extent Eliezar asserts that there is empirical, but non-scientific evidence, I reject the usefulness of the distinction.
First, let’s taboo “humanities.” No disrespect for the literature professors, but the type of analysis aimed at determining whether Hamlet is really insane, or pretending so for political / social advantage . . . is not what we are talking about in the conversation.
My central example of “humanities” are things like history and philosophy.
Because random controlled trials (RCTs) are impossible or unethical in these fields, the quality of the data is much poorer than in fields where RCTs are practically possible. And quality of data is an important bulwark against nonsense, particularly politically motivated nonsense. That still does not justify claiming that entire fields are filled with liars.
No, the justification for claiming anthropology is filled with liars is that they don’t make strong attempts to hide this. Or as they’d prefer to call it they pursue goals other than pure truth-seeking.
To make an equally ridiculous claim, the so-called harder sciences are filled with liars because fraudulent retractions are commonplace.
The difference is that in the hard sciences people who commit fraud or otherwise lie are made pariahs, in the “soft sciences” it is frequently the people who refuse to go along with the official lie of the moment who are made pariahs.
Anthropology results should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. But you argue the stronger claim that anthropology is worthless, through and through.
There is no a priori reason why anthropology should be completely worthless, it’s just that the people who are currently in it are more interested in pursuing a political agenda than truth seeking.
Regardless of some folks here announcing a willingness to stretch to make a point, that doesn’t prove the experts in the field are doing misleading things.
It’s not just a few folks doing misleading things. It’s that the official “scientific” results, i.e., the things that will get you dismissed as a crank of you question them, are based on such “stretchings”.
To the extent Eliezar asserts that there is empirical, but non-scientific evidence, I reject the usefulness of the distinction.
Experience and some theoretical arguments have shown that when humans restrict to using scientific evidence they are less likely to fall into various collective failure modes.
First, no commentator in this venue is a leading researcher in sociology or anthropology, so anything said is incredibly weak evidence for your strong claim that researchers / academics “who are currently in [those fields] are more interested in pursuing a political agenda than truth seeking.”
Second, you have not stated what evidence you could see that would make you believe the sociological / anthropological theories are true. An outside observer could think that your assertions about misconduct in these fields exist to justify your disbelief in the substantive results. If Omega (who is always right) told you that anthropology is not more politically driven than physics, would you accept anthropological theories?
First, no commentator in this venue is an leading researcher in sociology or anthropology, so anything said is incredibly weak evidence for your strong claim that researchers / academics “who are currently in [those fields] are more interested in pursuing a political agenda than truth seeking.”
FWIW, I recently saw the thesis talks of a few graduands in social psychology, and they seemed to me qualitatively different from those of physicists: in the former, the professor who introduces the graduand to the audience will spew out lots of applause lights (e.g. “Ms So-and-so is going to speak about $topic, which is such a big problem nowadays that affects so many people”), professors will occasionally interrupt the graduand with comments like “yes, this is a great idea, I hope to see more of this in the next years”, and after the talk they will ask stuff like “why did you choose this particular topic” (trying to elicit applause lights from the graduand themselves); in the latter, the introduction will be limited to “Mr So-and-so is going to speak about $topic”, full stop (even when they could in principle mention how graphene is such a revolutionary material or whatever—they just don’t), no-one will interrupt the graduand unless they say something unclear, questions at the end will be strictly technical (or occasionally “what applications can this have”), and there are hardly any applause lights except trivial ones such as “thank you for your attention”.
BTW, while I’m not familiar with linguistics except through the internet, ISTM that it is seen as a hard science (for the purposes of what’s being discussed in this subthread) by insiders but as a soft science by most outsiders, and as a result once in a while a non-linguist will be disappointed when a linguist refuses to espouse boo lights about non-standard language usage (e.g.).
Just to confirm: you’re proposing that when linguists refuse to condemn non-standard language usage, that’s an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights, rather than an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage?
Not quite—more like, what the linguists say is “an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage”, but what the non-linguists asked them and what they will think when they hear the answer is “an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights” to some extent—but for some reason I don’t terribly like this way of putting it.
WRT the second quote… in what way do you dislike it? E.g., does it seem that I’ve factually misrepresented the position, or that I’ve framed it negatively, or...?
Second, you have not stated what evidence you could see that would make you believe the sociological / anthropological theories are true.
Consilience, i.e., independent verification of their claims by people from other fields and few instances of refutations of their claims.
If Omega (who is always right) told you that anthropology is not more politically driven than physics, would you accept anthropological theories?
I would mostly update in the direction of him not being Omega. Now if he made a claim that was at least plausible, like anthropological theories having some political drivers but not enough to overwhelm the science that would be another story.
I don’t expect every claim to be independently verified. What I do look for is that the claims that can be independently tested will be confirmed rather than refuted.
I wonder how much difference the grammar/typographical error made to perceptions of this comment. For some reason that trivial little ‘n’ acts like a speed bump/interrupt for my brain and it kicks me out of the flow of the argument.
I didn’t say that only hard science is worth considering. In fact, the “hard science” / “soft science” distinction functions to marginalize subjects like history, sociology, and anthropology.
What I said was that that rigorous science is worth taking seriously. With the implication that there’s a fair amount of normative pressure for certain fields to sacrifice rigor in order to produce the “correct” results. Particularly in popularization, both evo. psych and anthropology are at terrible risk for this sort of bias.
Social sciences generally cannot run double blind studies, especially in subjects like history, economics, and anthropology. Further, being a participant in the observation adds all sorts of risks of biasing the data. And general motivated cognition creates a risk that one’s data will only reflect one’s preconceived beliefs.
Nonetheless,
(1) The experts are well aware of these difficulties.
(2) The results those fields produce often are sufficiently rigorous to be worth taking seriously. To the extent our interlocutor says differently, he is wrong.
I would add than a narrow focus on quantifiable data can be limiting, especially when you are researching culture and doing content analysis. Coding is a way to convert that content into numbers—counting mentions of words or themes—but that requires a lot of qualitative analysis to begin with and certain aspects are often lost in translation. Any social scientist worth their salt will take into account as many biases as they can and devise an experimental design to control for them as much as possible. But again, you have to be prepared to defend why you did what you did and human nature is complicated.
Having said that, I think a mixed qual/ quant designs are pretty great, especially when you have meta analyses to back you up.
I didn’t say the humanities shouldn’t be taken seriously (I hate the term “soft sciences”). The humanities study fields where scientific evidence is generally not available, thus they have to rely on other kinds of evidence. Unfortunately, this makes it easier to get away with sloppy work, BS, or even outright lies in those fields. This should be taken into account when assigning probability values to various statements.
You’re misunderstanding Julian’s claim, albeit I think for reasons of inferential distance rather than deliberate misreading. The claim was not that anthropology/Sinister Cathedral Orthodoxy endorses inborn gender identity, despite its being wrong, for its political utility to trans rights. Such Orthodoxy is precisely the basis on which he thinks it is wrong. The claim was that activists endorse this false belief for its political utility, and that he and other Sinister Cathedral Agents don’t feel particularly obliged to go out of their way to correct it (although doing so was precisely what he did in that post.) If there was a widespread belief that washing your hands protected you from demons, I would not fault epidemiologists for failing to prioritize disabusing the public of this. Nor does it strike me as an affront to science that epidemiologists, as a general rule, have normative commitments that extend beyond scientific inquiry and on to the belief that health is better than sickness.
My point is that one way or another the claim obtains the official stamp of approval as being the “scientific” and that this is an argument to be highly skeptical of anthropological claims with this approval.
Which claim? The one that anthropologists are endorsing is not the one that’s politically convenient to them.
Of course not. Her claim is the the great and noble anthropologists are deceiving the public for the greater good.
Okay, so at this point we’re basically disagreeing over what someone intended by what they say. Unless Julian wants to clarify I’m going to tap out.
I don’t believe so. At least I can’t see where your position differs from mine. The difference is you object to my formulation her position in a way that doesn’t make anthropology look good.
First, let’s taboo “humanities.” No disrespect for the literature professors, but the type of analysis aimed at determining whether Hamlet is really insane, or pretending so for political / social advantage . . . is not what we are talking about in the conversation.
Instead, we are trying to talk about academic fields that are attempting to examine human beings and human societies in order to make useful and falsifaible statements about them. We are also talking about philosophy-of-science, particularly analytical, conceptual, and methodological considerations for the human-studying field.
Because random controlled trials (RCTs) are impossible or unethical in these fields, the quality of the data is much poorer than in fields where RCTs are practically possible. And quality of data is an important bulwark against nonsense, particularly politically motivated nonsense. That still does not justify claiming that entire fields are filled with liars. To make an equally ridiculous claim, the so-called harder sciences are filled with liars because fraudulent retractions are commonplace.
Anthropology results should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. But you argue the stronger claim that anthropology is worthless, through and through. Regardless of some folks here announcing a willingness to stretch to make a point, that doesn’t prove the experts in the field are doing misleading things. Stick your neck out—tell us what evidence would make you believe that heteronormativity exists. (I can easily list facts that would make me doubt the phenomena of heteronormativity).
I don’t understand your reference to this article. To quote it:
To the extent Eliezar asserts that there is empirical, but non-scientific evidence, I reject the usefulness of the distinction.
My central example of “humanities” are things like history and philosophy.
No, the justification for claiming anthropology is filled with liars is that they don’t make strong attempts to hide this. Or as they’d prefer to call it they pursue goals other than pure truth-seeking.
The difference is that in the hard sciences people who commit fraud or otherwise lie are made pariahs, in the “soft sciences” it is frequently the people who refuse to go along with the official lie of the moment who are made pariahs.
There is no a priori reason why anthropology should be completely worthless, it’s just that the people who are currently in it are more interested in pursuing a political agenda than truth seeking.
It’s not just a few folks doing misleading things. It’s that the official “scientific” results, i.e., the things that will get you dismissed as a crank of you question them, are based on such “stretchings”.
Experience and some theoretical arguments have shown that when humans restrict to using scientific evidence they are less likely to fall into various collective failure modes.
First, no commentator in this venue is a leading researcher in sociology or anthropology, so anything said is incredibly weak evidence for your strong claim that researchers / academics “who are currently in [those fields] are more interested in pursuing a political agenda than truth seeking.”
Second, you have not stated what evidence you could see that would make you believe the sociological / anthropological theories are true. An outside observer could think that your assertions about misconduct in these fields exist to justify your disbelief in the substantive results. If Omega (who is always right) told you that anthropology is not more politically driven than physics, would you accept anthropological theories?
FWIW, I recently saw the thesis talks of a few graduands in social psychology, and they seemed to me qualitatively different from those of physicists: in the former, the professor who introduces the graduand to the audience will spew out lots of applause lights (e.g. “Ms So-and-so is going to speak about $topic, which is such a big problem nowadays that affects so many people”), professors will occasionally interrupt the graduand with comments like “yes, this is a great idea, I hope to see more of this in the next years”, and after the talk they will ask stuff like “why did you choose this particular topic” (trying to elicit applause lights from the graduand themselves); in the latter, the introduction will be limited to “Mr So-and-so is going to speak about $topic”, full stop (even when they could in principle mention how graphene is such a revolutionary material or whatever—they just don’t), no-one will interrupt the graduand unless they say something unclear, questions at the end will be strictly technical (or occasionally “what applications can this have”), and there are hardly any applause lights except trivial ones such as “thank you for your attention”.
BTW, while I’m not familiar with linguistics except through the internet, ISTM that it is seen as a hard science (for the purposes of what’s being discussed in this subthread) by insiders but as a soft science by most outsiders, and as a result once in a while a non-linguist will be disappointed when a linguist refuses to espouse boo lights about non-standard language usage (e.g.).
Just to confirm: you’re proposing that when linguists refuse to condemn non-standard language usage, that’s an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights, rather than an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage?
Not quite—more like, what the linguists say is “an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage”, but what the non-linguists asked them and what they will think when they hear the answer is “an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights” to some extent—but for some reason I don’t terribly like this way of putting it.
Ah, OK. Thanks for clarifying.
WRT the second quote… in what way do you dislike it? E.g., does it seem that I’ve factually misrepresented the position, or that I’ve framed it negatively, or...?
Weird… On reading it again it no longer sounds that bad to me, and I can’t quite remember why it did.
If you have any insights as to what caused either the initial reaction or its termination, I’m interested.
I think I might have been primed to think of the phrase “boo light” as a boo light. My inner Hofstadter is laughing.
Consilience, i.e., independent verification of their claims by people from other fields and few instances of refutations of their claims.
I would mostly update in the direction of him not being Omega. Now if he made a claim that was at least plausible, like anthropological theories having some political drivers but not enough to overwhelm the science that would be another story.
Er… why? You wouldn’t expect the proof of the Poincaré conjecture to be independently verified by phoneticians, would you?
I don’t expect every claim to be independently verified. What I do look for is that the claims that can be independently tested will be confirmed rather than refuted.
I wonder how much difference the grammar/typographical error made to perceptions of this comment. For some reason that trivial little ‘n’ acts like a speed bump/interrupt for my brain and it kicks me out of the flow of the argument.
Edited, thanks.
It’s interesting the different tolerances various folks have to typographical mistakes.