That's what chemicals can do - Comments

Katherine: Psychological Science

nospam@example.com (Katherine) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:52:01 -0400

OK, I can definitely be with you on that.

greg: Psychological Science

nospam@example.com (greg) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:59:43 -0400

I completely agree that many of the problems in the social sciences are extremely important (e.g. racism, sexism, poverty, war). I'm not sure whether Gelman considers himself a social scientist, but he does specifically work on social science topics.

What I'm concerned about is what is not whether social science presents a range of interesting topics but how good the research is on those topics.

Take housing segregation. It's been long known that housing segregation can develop with extremely little prejudice. This can happen because of how simple non-racist interactions can build up dramatically in a short time. But to research this (and many other cool questions) you need to know how people interact in real life situations and model the evolution of such systems explicitly.

Instead in many labs the approach is to have college students fill out paper and pencil or computer tasks on stereotyping. But there is no attempt to show that the individual behavior observed in the lab matters in every day behavior.

Quantitative models are making dramatic headway on understanding important problems like racism, the stock market, the flow of panicking crowds, the structure of terrorist organizations and more.

From these studies, real practical solutions are being derived.
For example, the military is taking social network research from computer science and physics very seriously and has established an Office of Force Transformation. When I suggested to my advisors that social network research could be used to reduce casualties in war (a well-known application in many fields) I was told that that was absurd.

It just seems to me that social science has yet to commit to quantitative descriptions of behavior. Instead many psychologists insist on talking about qualitative things like representations and the evolutionary origins of representations and behaviors. Yet it's not clear that this approach has yielded an objective progress in their fields of study.

Katherine: Psychological Science

nospam@example.com (Katherine) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:35:55 -0400

"Andrew Gelman has this nice post about social science, which explains that while social scientists know many things they have not done much that they can objectively claim to have solved or that has practical import."

When I saw this I got annoyed, so I jumped over to his post. Andrew is not categorically critical of social science. However, he does place value on something that's subjective. There is no question that hard sciences produce more products, but social sciences point out things that are going on in society. He said this is not important. I personally think it's important to realize the problems with racism and sexism and that they are both very pervasive. I also think it's important to inform curricula and law. Cognitive psychology can contribute to products (human/computer interaction, etc) and treating diseases, but yes I realize it is not the main contribution of psychology. I just think it depends on whether you value learning about and improving upon society's problems, vs products. I think both are very important, but sometimes I think the first is much more critical these days. As much as psychological research can be considered a waste of time, I think it's also a waste of time to develop new models of cell phones that don't really add value to people's lives. When Andrew said that there is less that social science can point to as "we did that", I wonder whether he means fewer actual objects (like a cloned sheep) or whether he is simply unaware of some of the things that social science has done.

I agree with some of your other criticisms of psychology, though, especially that replication example. There is some really mushy stuff out there that gets published.

Heather: Do Elections Behave Like Magnets?

nospam@example.com (Heather) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:34:58 -0500

Alabama remains consistently red for all but one election.

You were right about it being rather hypnotizing.

Heather: Help?

nospam@example.com (Heather) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:31:21 -0500

I'll give comments if it's not too late.

Chris Brody: DO NOT CITE OR CIRCULATE WITHOUT AUTHOR'S PERMISSION

nospam@example.com (Chris Brody) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:12:53 -0500

I'm guessing that mainly you lose the respect and goodwill of those within the profession who find out you did it. I can dimly imagine that under some circumstances it might even be possible to be sued for it, but I don't know of that ever happening.

A notice like that on a paper posted on one's website strikes me as silly -- it's freely available. No reasonable person would do that without any expectation that it will begin to be disseminated here and there in that way. It's a different matter when you receive something by private communication (email etc.), as I often have.

It seems to me that in the humanities in particular, articles are considered to be, in part, actual literary products of the author, in a manner separate from whatever the argument or findings of the paper might be. I'm guessing that is true only to an extremely limited sense in the physical sciences, math, etc. So, I'm far more sympathetic to someone in the humanities who wants to circulate a draft of a paper for commentary without having to stand behind it just yet as the final version.

Katherine: DO NOT CITE OR CIRCULATE WITHOUT AUTHOR'S PERMISSION

nospam@example.com (Katherine) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:32:59 -0500

I do not know what happens legally, but I would say it still makes sense to respect the author's wishes until something is in fact in print. I realize that can be frustrating, though, when people sit on some really great data for a long time.

Jordan DeLange: DO NOT CITE OR CIRCULATE WITHOUT AUTHOR'S PERMISSION

nospam@example.com (Jordan DeLange) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:57:35 -0500

They had a discussion of this on Thoughts, Arguments and Rants in regard to philosophy a while ago here.

Not sure what actually happens if you violate such a request, though.

Heather G.: Strings Etc.

nospam@example.com (Heather G.) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:52:21 -0500

String theory can go wherever you want it to. A friend and I used it to try to disprove the existance of "time" for a philosophy paper on proving whether or not we truly have free will. This was back in '02, so I can't remember all of it.

Post updates on your studies of it though. I'm interested as well.

greg: Sharing data in psychology

nospam@example.com (greg) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:02:35 -0400

They weren't taught to do science as children either. They can learn says I!

Heather G.: Sharing data in psychology

nospam@example.com (Heather G.) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:19:18 -0400

Some people weren't taught to share as children.

Heather G.: Personal Update - Yalesville

nospam@example.com (Heather G.) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:17:59 -0400

Are you serious about the drunken Yale students? That's strange. I guess I'm used to straight-laced Samford where nothing ever goes wrong.

The mall opens the day after Thanksgiving at midnight though and everyone comes out drunk and in their pajamas as if it's a huge party.

greg: Personal Update - Yalesville

nospam@example.com (greg) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:52:10 -0400

1) I don't particularly care about the Ivy League. I think it's almost entirely useless, except as a concept to relate all the schools that are stereotypically schools for old money. That's why it's good to make fun of them.

2) I can't imagine why anybody would have built CCL, nor why anyone would choose to study there. It wasn't grungy per se, but it was just kind of depressing. It felt grungy even if it really wasn't.

3) I know, but I already get a bunch of junk from the mailing lists I'm currently on. Maybe a clever use of sorting filters will make it easier to go through all the junk.

Katherine: Personal Update - Yalesville

nospam@example.com (Katherine) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:34:44 -0400

1) Yeah, ivygate is funny, but it's also fun to make fun of its existence in the first place...why do we care about the ivy league so much?
2) My dad just told me last night about the library. I can't wait to see it! I have lots of memories of CCL back from the 90s, and I can only imagine it got even grungier since then.
3-4) You should put yourself on the e-mailing lists from those depts. I agree that it would be much better if there were a central website you could just check, though. We had that at Penn (sort of), but it doesn't exist at Michigan and that's such a pain.

Heather: Personal Update (Zombies and Mutts)

nospam@example.com (Heather) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:31:26 -0400

I'm fascinated by your third point.

1. Odd-ordered zombie bites/"zombifies" a 0, which is a normal human. - You have said that the normal human would become a first-order zombie.

2. After all normal humans have been zombified into first-orders, we will start to see the second-order of zombies when the first-orders begin to bite/eat each other.

3. Second-orders are now conscious. Does this mean that they will be aware of their actions? If so, they would have to choose whether or not to bite back/eat their friends. Then we have to wonder what would result of the mixing of orders:

a. first-order bites second-order
b. second-order bites first-order
c. second-order bites second-order

Would these all become third-orders? Plus, if they're having to eat each other to survive, wouldn't this eventually destroy the zombie race altogether?