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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:30 pm
Quote: The problem with the social sciences is also with our culture, not with the subject. Academically, social sciences are fine other than that there is a lot of posturing by undereducated people. They deal with subjects that cannot be dealt with theoretically rigorously. This is precisely the suffering I'm talking about; because of the way it's presented to outsiders, people outside social science don't believe that social scientists actually can make rigorous statements. You dismiss it automatically. But have you actually read any papers on it? Or are you going by the rehashes that you read in the news? As for advertising, I'm not going to say that it's impossible, but it certainly is not in any sense easy to get correct information "immediately" regarding high-level mathematics and physics. Statements in mathematics and physics carry so much information in them, and deal with things so far from the average layperson's experience and intuition, that you'd have to write a book to translate into what a layperson can immediately grasp. This is not the fault of mathematicians or physicists. See the thread I wrote about complicated theories; it's a situation intrinsic to academic progress.
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:40 pm
Most of the "news" I follow is not national, actually. I read a local paper which puts human interest pieces on the front page lot of the time.
Actually, I think our disagreement is about definitions. And I used the word rigorously incorrectly. What I was trying to suggest is that social science done scientifically cannot be done with the precision physics is because there are too many variables.
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:53 pm
That doesn't stop biology or chemistry. There are plenty of unfortunate variables in those fields, but results can still be obtained by being careful. Similarly with the social sciences. The statistical precision might be a bit lower, but that's a quantitative difference, and as methodology gets better and accessible data sets get larger, that difference will decrease. There is no significant qualitative difference.
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 7:05 pm
Ok, I guess it's one less thing to read anyway. XD But I like them sometimes because I think they remind me of what the rest of the world is doing. The non-scientific world that is pretending to know science. (/slightly sarcastic*)
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 7:32 pm
*I still don't believe I am motivated enough to say that I honestly feel that way. -_- Plus, I think it sounds too arrogant and it's better to not say things like that. I think it is always best to try to explain things to people in the easiest way to understand. It may be difficult to think of how, but I think it's possible to be accurate and concise with just words and use a combination of examples, pictures and things that people won't understand immediately. To do this takes some work and it shouldn't be dismissed lightly.
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 5:00 am
Mecill Ok, I guess it's one less thing to read anyway. XD But I like them sometimes because I think they remind me of what the rest of the world is doing. The non-scientific world that is pretending to know science. (/slightly sarcastic*) I follow science news so that I can look up the theory's original paper and learn from it. Not all of it's interesting or even correct, but your right it does help people who want to look smart, "pretend to know science".
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 7:21 am
That is a very good point! It provides opportunities for learning outside of what may be one's main field of interest.
I think a lot of people want to pretend to know more than they do anyway, and often in some research topics the people who can publish first are rewarded although their work is less rigorous. I don't fault them because someone needs to work on those things, but I would probably like to work on something that is not in that category because the pressure sounds rough. However some people in those fields are good enough that they are able to do rigorous work and still get it first. They deserve the recognition.
(BTW publicity is also good for getting science funding, which does not always have to be used wastefully. I had a friend who was going to go into science advising in politics which is how I know a lot of this.)
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 7:48 am
speaking of science funding, anybody hear that japans planning to cut down the Japanese's science budget, so their screwed unless they get funding. So what they need to do is publish something important, either for the layman or the physicist. Though if they want government funding, it would be better to be put in layman terms. Not all politicians understand physics.
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 8:25 am
Layra-chan That doesn't stop biology or chemistry. There are plenty of unfortunate variables in those fields, but results can still be obtained by being careful. Similarly with the social sciences. The statistical precision might be a bit lower, but that's a quantitative difference, and as methodology gets better and accessible data sets get larger, that difference will decrease. There is no significant qualitative difference. Isn't a lot of physics attempting to approximate qualitative properties with quantitative ones? So is it necessary to make the distinction between qualitative and quantitative, except when you're discussing social sciences? Probably very little progress can be made in the social sciences unless you see them as distinct but in some parts of physics it's fundamentally possible to get qualitative from quantitative.
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:11 pm
By quantitative difference I meant that the margins of error in the social sciences are larger, but there is no theoretical or methodological barrier to the social sciences becoming just as precise as physics. A quantitative difference would be: your correlation is only .5, not .7 A qualitative difference would be: you haven't actually defined any of the terms you're working with.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 10:51 am
I see your point, but that doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it, despite some of the major errors they make, they can be helpful.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:36 pm
Different fields use different definitions, but it doesn't mean their system is wrong - usually it was developed for efficiency more than precision. It's like they're speaking a different language and reading those things can help you learn how things are defined.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:58 pm
I learned a lot about physics, not by reading complex equations, and problems, Though they are helpful, I prefer explanations and diagrams, they make things easier to understand.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:28 pm
Yes. I like explanations and diagrams too. ^^
But to really deal with physics numerically you *need* equations. It's very important to be able to read and write them easily to be able to communicate with mathematicians and other people!
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:31 pm
I know, the diagrams explain them, and the equations show us why it happens, or how it's like it is.
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