Note: I do find it plausible that doing STEM in undergrad is a good way to train oneself to think, and the best combo might be a STEM undergrad and a social science grad degree. You could do your undergrad in statistics, since statistics is key to social science, and try to become the next Andrew Gelman.
As advice for others like me, this is good. For me personally it doesn’t work too well; my A level subjects mean that I won’t be able to take a STEM subject at a good university. I can’t do statistics, because I dropped maths last year. The only STEM A level I’m taking is CompSci, and good universities require maths for CompSci degrees. I could probably get into a good degree course for Linguistics, but it isn’t a passionate adoration for linguistics that gets me up in the mornings. I adore human and social sciences.
I don’t plan to be completely devoid of STEM education; the subject I actually want to take is quite hard-science-ish for a social science. If I get in, I want to do biological anthropology and archaeology papers, which involve digging up skeletons and chemically analysing them and looking at primate behaviour and early stone tools. It would be pretty cool to do some kind of PhD involving human evolution. From what I’ve seen, if I get onto the course I want to get onto, it’ll teach me a lot of biology and evolutionary psychology and maybe some biochemistry and linguistics.
I want to do biological anthropology and archaeology papers, which involve digging up skeletons and chemically analysing them and looking at primate behaviour and early stone tools.
While archaeology certainly seems fun, do you think it will help you understand how to build a better world?
But to an extent, the biggest problems—coordination problems, how-do-we-build-a-half-decent-state problems—have been around since the very beginning.
No. The problem of building a state out of 10,000 people who’s fasted way of transport is the horse and who have no math is remarkably different from the problem of building a state of tens of millions of people in the age of the internet, cellphones fast airplanes and cars that allow people to travel fast.
The Ancient Egyptians didn’t have the math to even think about running a randomized trial to find out whether a certain policy will work.
Studying them doesn’t tell you anything about how to get our current political system to be more open to make policy based on scientific research.
Evolutionary psychology is incredibly useful for understanding our own biases and fallacies.
I think cognitive psychologists who actually did well controlled experiments were a lot more useful for learning about biases and fallacies than evolutionary psychology.
rather than just carrying my magnifying glass straight over to political science and becoming the three gazillionth and fourth person to ever look for a better more ideal way to do politics.
Most people in political science don’t do it well. I don’t know of a single student body that changed to a new political system in the last decade.
I did study at the Free University of Berlin which has a very interesting political structure that came out of 68′s. At the time there was a rejection of representative democracy and thus even through the government of Berlin wants the student bodies of universities in Berlin to be organised according to representative democracy, out university effectively isn’t.
Politics students thought really hard around 68 about how to create a more soviet style democracy and the system is still in operation today.
Compared to designing a system like that today’s politics students are slacking. The aren’t practically oriented.
I’m interested in doing work on rationality problems and cooperation problems, and looking at the origins of the problems and how our current solutions came into being over the course of human history seems worthwhile as part of understanding the problems and figuring out more/better solutions.
If you are interested in rationality problems, there the field of decision science. It’s likely more yielding then anthropology.
Having a good grasp of academic decision science would be helpful when it comes to designing political systems and likely not enough people in political science deal with that subject.
Are you aware that the American Anthropological Association dropped science from their long-range plan 5 years ago?
No, that’s not the meaning of the word soviet. Soviet translates into something like “counsel” in English.
Reducing elections to a single candidate also wouldn’t fly legally. You can’t just forbid people from being a candidate without producing a legal attack surface.
As I said, it’s actually a complex political system that need smart people to set up.
It’s like British Democracy also happens to “democracy” where there a queen and the prime minister went to Eton and Oxford and wants to introduce barrier on free communication that are is some way more totalitarian than what the Chinese government dares to do.
Democracy always get’s complicated if it comes to the details ;).
No, that’s not the meaning of the word soviet. Soviet translates into something like “counsel” in English.
In English, “Soviet” is the adjectival form of “USSR”.
Never mind the word. What is the actual structure at the Free University of Berlin that you’re referring to? And in 1968, did they believe that this was how things were done in the USSR?
In English, “Soviet” is the adjectival form of “USSR”.
Because Soviets are a central part of how the USSR was organised.
And in 1968, did they believe that this was how things were done in the USSR?
Copying on things were in the USSR wasn’t the point. The point are certain Marxist ideas about the value of Soviets for political organisation.
What is the actual structure at the Free University of Berlin (FU) that you’re referring to?
A system of of soviets, as I said above.
There a lot of ideas involved. On the left you had a split between people who believe in social democracy and people who are Marxists. The FU Asta is Marxist.
The people sitting in it are still Marxist even through the majority of the student population of the FU isn’t and they don’t have a problem with that as they don’t believe in representative democracy. They also defend their right to use their printing press to print whatever they want by not disclosing what they are printing. By law they are only allowed to print for university purposes and not for general political activism.
The problem of studying people in the first villages is not only that their problems don’t map directly to today. It’s also that it’s get’s really hard to get concrete data. It’s much easier to do good science when you have good reliable data.
With 10,000 people you can solve a lot via tribal bonds and clans. Families stick together. You can also do a bit of religion and everyone follows the wise local priest. Those solutions don’t scale well.
It seems mostly irrelevant to me though, since I am aware that rubbish social scientists exist and I just want to try and improve and be a good social scientist.
You are likely becoming like the people that surround you when you go into university. You also build relationships with them.
Going to Cambridge is good. Cambridge draws a lot of intelligent people together and also provides you with very useful contacts for a political career.
On the other hand that means that you have to go to those place in Cambridge where the relevant people are.
Find out which professors at Cambridge actually do good social science. Then go to their classes.
Just make sure that you don’t get lost and go on a career of digging up old stuff and not affecting the real world. A lot of smart people get lost in programs like that. It’s like smart people who get lost in theoretical physics.
I think cognitive psychologists who actually did well controlled experiments were a lot more useful for learning about biases and fallacies than evolutionary psychology.
Note: I do find it plausible that doing STEM in undergrad is a good way to train oneself to think, and the best combo might be a STEM undergrad and a social science grad degree. You could do your undergrad in statistics, since statistics is key to social science, and try to become the next Andrew Gelman.
As advice for others like me, this is good. For me personally it doesn’t work too well; my A level subjects mean that I won’t be able to take a STEM subject at a good university. I can’t do statistics, because I dropped maths last year. The only STEM A level I’m taking is CompSci, and good universities require maths for CompSci degrees. I could probably get into a good degree course for Linguistics, but it isn’t a passionate adoration for linguistics that gets me up in the mornings. I adore human and social sciences.
I don’t plan to be completely devoid of STEM education; the subject I actually want to take is quite hard-science-ish for a social science. If I get in, I want to do biological anthropology and archaeology papers, which involve digging up skeletons and chemically analysing them and looking at primate behaviour and early stone tools. It would be pretty cool to do some kind of PhD involving human evolution. From what I’ve seen, if I get onto the course I want to get onto, it’ll teach me a lot of biology and evolutionary psychology and maybe some biochemistry and linguistics.
While archaeology certainly seems fun, do you think it will help you understand how to build a better world?
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No. The problem of building a state out of 10,000 people who’s fasted way of transport is the horse and who have no math is remarkably different from the problem of building a state of tens of millions of people in the age of the internet, cellphones fast airplanes and cars that allow people to travel fast.
The Ancient Egyptians didn’t have the math to even think about running a randomized trial to find out whether a certain policy will work. Studying them doesn’t tell you anything about how to get our current political system to be more open to make policy based on scientific research.
I think cognitive psychologists who actually did well controlled experiments were a lot more useful for learning about biases and fallacies than evolutionary psychology.
Most people in political science don’t do it well. I don’t know of a single student body that changed to a new political system in the last decade.
I did study at the Free University of Berlin which has a very interesting political structure that came out of 68′s. At the time there was a rejection of representative democracy and thus even through the government of Berlin wants the student bodies of universities in Berlin to be organised according to representative democracy, out university effectively isn’t. Politics students thought really hard around 68 about how to create a more soviet style democracy and the system is still in operation today.
Compared to designing a system like that today’s politics students are slacking. The aren’t practically oriented.
If you are interested in rationality problems, there the field of decision science. It’s likely more yielding then anthropology. Having a good grasp of academic decision science would be helpful when it comes to designing political systems and likely not enough people in political science deal with that subject.
Are you aware that the American Anthropological Association dropped science from their long-range plan 5 years ago?
Is that the system where everyone can vote, but there’s only one candidate?
No, that’s not the meaning of the word soviet. Soviet translates into something like “counsel” in English.
Reducing elections to a single candidate also wouldn’t fly legally. You can’t just forbid people from being a candidate without producing a legal attack surface.
As I said, it’s actually a complex political system that need smart people to set up.
It’s like British Democracy also happens to “democracy” where there a queen and the prime minister went to Eton and Oxford and wants to introduce barrier on free communication that are is some way more totalitarian than what the Chinese government dares to do.
Democracy always get’s complicated if it comes to the details ;).
In English, “Soviet” is the adjectival form of “USSR”.
Never mind the word. What is the actual structure at the Free University of Berlin that you’re referring to? And in 1968, did they believe that this was how things were done in the USSR?
Because Soviets are a central part of how the USSR was organised.
Copying on things were in the USSR wasn’t the point. The point are certain Marxist ideas about the value of Soviets for political organisation.
A system of of soviets, as I said above. There a lot of ideas involved. On the left you had a split between people who believe in social democracy and people who are Marxists. The FU Asta is Marxist.
The people sitting in it are still Marxist even through the majority of the student population of the FU isn’t and they don’t have a problem with that as they don’t believe in representative democracy. They also defend their right to use their printing press to print whatever they want by not disclosing what they are printing. By law they are only allowed to print for university purposes and not for general political activism.
--
The problem of studying people in the first villages is not only that their problems don’t map directly to today. It’s also that it’s get’s really hard to get concrete data. It’s much easier to do good science when you have good reliable data.
With 10,000 people you can solve a lot via tribal bonds and clans. Families stick together. You can also do a bit of religion and everyone follows the wise local priest. Those solutions don’t scale well.
You are likely becoming like the people that surround you when you go into university. You also build relationships with them.
Going to Cambridge is good. Cambridge draws a lot of intelligent people together and also provides you with very useful contacts for a political career. On the other hand that means that you have to go to those place in Cambridge where the relevant people are. Find out which professors at Cambridge actually do good social science. Then go to their classes.
Just make sure that you don’t get lost and go on a career of digging up old stuff and not affecting the real world. A lot of smart people get lost in programs like that. It’s like smart people who get lost in theoretical physics.
The two are not mutually exclusive.