Psychology, a Failed Discipline: Flawed Paradigms, Methodology, and Epistemology
unfashionable.blog
unfashionable.blog
Not that it's specific to the software world, but definitely pervasive in it. Even as someone who spent half of their adult life as a developer, I'm frequently astonished by the false confidence many developers have about their understanding of unrelated disciplines. I can't tell you how many developers have tried to explain both design and cooking to me even when they know I'm an experienced and educated designer, and a classically trained former chef. It's not even like they're just trying to confidently wield the knowledge they have-- it's DK all the way.
I've taken my car into the mechanic before only to be told the problem isn't reproducible so then I eliminate variables to figure it out myself and essentially do their job for them. Once I enumerate exactly how to reproduce, it's all but clear what the problem is and then they can replace the part.
I'm positive it wasn't intentional, but you've done a fine job buttressing my argument.
So then the problem may be that average software developers overestimate their own ability ;)
Some really good evidence that the answer is "false" is that developers who think it's true will use a handful of personal experiences to levy sweeping judgements about millions of people in a vast array of disciplines, many of which tackle some of the hardest problems humanity has ever undertaken in fields that dwarf the complexity of computer science immeasurably.
And I say this as an above average software developer (which sounds stupidly cocky to even say).
Most of all, the actual professional - like any professional - has learned that it's unproductive to debate or educate the patient/customer; you just let them think they're smart and work around it. It's not your job to teach them the error of their ways, but to get your work done.
In IT, I've had plenty of clients tell me the most ludicrous nonsense. You just work around it; IT is your job, not theirs; don't humiliate them. Be respectful to people; they have hard days too.
I just tend to remember the times where they didn't do their job well. For example, my daughter had a rash, the doctor says to just put moisturizer on it. Doesn't seem to help so I research it for a few hours on google and conclude it's shingles. The doctor scoffs at my suggestion saying my daughter is way too young to have shingles and says to just continue with the moisturizer. We take her to a second doctor who confirms it's shingles.
So yes, I would admit my anecdotes are probably a form of survivorship bias and I'm letting a few incompetent doctors and mechanics taint the ability of their peers.
Honestly I could imagine a mechanic writing the opposite sentiment, saying they don’t respect software developers because they called a support line and the only advice was to restart the computer and then to reinstall it from scratch.
Coming from working class social/work/familial environments, I know this archetype well: John Ratzenberger's "Cliff Clavin" from Cheers. It's a dated reference, but it fits really well. The stereotype involves carrying large rings of keys on their belts, showing that they're entrusted with many valuable things, and frequently interjecting others conversations with things like "let me show you out to use that thing [blue smoke]" and "no no no you got it all wrong. What you gotta do is..."
In fact, I knew a particularly untalented auto mechanic who insisted that his capability was equivalent to a mechanical engineer when sadly, it wasn't even equivalent to most mechanics. None of us perfectly gauges our capabilities relative others, but some are so very much worse at it.
The whole edifice of "social media", with it's collateral damage of depressed and suicidal kids, is just a great experiment for the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.
Nobody in nervous "academia" can get away with even the most gentle experiments now the ethical guardrails are in place (and mostly for good). But set up a "SV start-up" and you can do what you like with the data of billions, influence, propaganda, whatever...
Obviously, they always do: Arrogance requires ignorance in equal proportion: If you actually understand the complexity and uncertainty of reality, and then of your perception and thought about it, you can't be arrogant. The more arrogance, the more ignorance is needed. The cure for arrogance (and I know from personal experience!) is knowledge.
The ignorance of the humanities and social sciences leads to the absurdity of their megalomania, arrogance, and policies. I used to think they knew better, and could only guess why they did what they did. Then I realized I was overlooking the more simple, obvious solution that was staring me in the face, that is staring all of us in the face: They are just ignorant; they really don't know these things.
It's not true of all STEM, etc. but I had STEM-studying friends who brag that they never read a book. Many SV leaders and participants are from that crowd, apparently enough for it to be a powerful culture. They deride education, humanities, and social sciences, a parody of the ignorant that's been used in much of the literature (that they haven't read).
And more sad, is that people I know that do know better, people with even PhDs in humanities and social sciences, have followed the lead of the ignorant, rather than vice-versa. Rather than educating the world, they buy into the ignorance and worship of it.
The humanities and social sciences provide centuries of answers to the problems of today - not every answer, but we can certainly avoid this stupidity. We have everything we need, we just need to wake up to it.
> ignorance is something that can be fought with education and patient, sincere messaging.
Indeed. Hopelessness is our only obstacle, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I sincerely believe that.
On the other hand, I'm baffled by the how the author reaches the conclusion that 90% of psychologic research is trash; they cherry pick some flawed, weak research and conclude from that all the body of research has to be thrown out of the window. That's simply dishonest and wrong; there's a solid body of research in experimental psychology that has been replicated (think psychology of memory, or psychology of perception, or psychology of learning).
In doing so, the author reminds me of another anti-psychology evangelist, Paul Lutus, who also had a keen interest in debunking psychotherapy and psychiatry (you can Google him, he's all over Internet forums). As the next post of the author will be about psychiatric diagnosis, I guess he'll follow a similar direction. It's clever, really: discredit psychology from the root so that you can discredit your diagnosis.
I think the quality of psychology research is actually a bimodal distribution. In one mode, you have solid, replicable, serious science. In the other mode (like the priming studies), 90% trash might actually be a generous estimate
I think probably the major challenge for the social sciences is the nature of the phenomena under study. Psychologists, sociologists, and economists aren't studying physical quantities that can easily be measured. Instead, they typically study abstract and intangible variables. Measuring these accurately is very difficult.
That tells us a lot both ways. Also, while they are valuable, the error could be in the replication study.
Discomfort
You can agree, and accept the evidence of something. And yet still say in good faith that you don't "go along" with that. My favourite idiom is when French people say "Sure, But that's not my philosophy". Personal philosophy is considered of equal importance to "scientific"/observed truth and expressing discomfort is okay. An example might be "AI being able to write poems as well as people". Even if a study shows that nobody can tell the machine from the poet, one can still say "I am not okay with that fact". The discontent makes no effort to challenge, except maybe personal withdrawal or denial.
Scepticism
This is healthy. Indeed it's part of the scientific method. We should always tolerate and maybe encourage sceptical thinking. The sceptic debates and disputes. But the sceptic is still open to being won over by arguments. The sceptic is expressive of her disagreement.
Cynicism
When we see again and again that a group or an idea is wrong, or persistently deceptive, the focus shifts from the ideas to the identity of the group. Nothing said by <psychologists or economists or politicians> or whatever can be trusted. A cynic can be healed, but often only by overwhelming new evidence or a deep personal shift in world view.
Opposition
The opponent has already decided in their mind they cannot or will not accept some ideas. The good opponent sets up an alternative hypothesis and engages in research to find new truths that will hopefully displace the old ones. The negative opponent spends time only on discrediting others.
Iconoclasm and Vendettas
This is the height of unreason. Being stuck in a black and white world, split over good and evil in which the opposition must be completely eradicated. I see this more and more in the world now. People, like the "internet campaigners" you mention make a career out of aggressive iconoclasm. They engage in "wars on..." and talk of "zero tolerance".
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Not sure I want to attach moral value judgement to any of these "levels", I'm sure I can be capable of all. Some things are clearly rotten in the world and people are tepidly accepting of them, whereas other things absolutely need consigning to history. But there's a lot of ugliness in the last two categories even if they are morally justified.
I like to ask, "what evidence would change your mind?" to suss this out. Usually I get no response and the conversation dies. The other response is a standard of evidence unattainable - another way of justifying a trapped priors. If the evidence required outside of the realm of possibility, it's effectively the same thing.
Very interesting. Never heard of that. Thank you. Looking now.
I'll add an old quote attributed to Voltaire:
"Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one."
I also believe psychology has significant issues. I do wish to see good writeups and efforts to better explain its problems. Yet...
If the article claims to debunk a whole field, but starts by trowing shots at one of its weakest links, then I'm sorry. You do not deserve my time and effort to read the whole thing.
SE is an amazing aspiration, but I often think we've seen half a century where it's impact has been negligible outside a handful of high stakes safety critical systems (and not even there these days: Boeing etc)
Challenge the real meat of the field of psychology: Attention. Perception. Memory. And if stuck on biases: Biases im Attention, Perception, and Memory.
otherwise, this article and others like it are and will continue to be utter click-bait trash.
It's a serious problem depending on the subject: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5176168/
It is generally understood that samples - especially those accrued on college campuses - fit into this category. It is a well understood flaw, generally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
Turns out college students looking for beer money don't accurately represent humanity as a whole.
I don't agree that this "appears almost ridiculous." When weighing two options that seem fairly equal, it seems that the style of advertising can possibly push it one direction or the other based on emotion.
When I'm picking a beer at the store, I have a different emotional impression of the different beers probably due to a wide variety of things (past experiences if any, coloring+style of labeling, etc.), but advertising imagery+content could possibly be one of those things, for me I know I am sometimes conscious of some of the advertising in that moment.
It would probably require some science to determine whether it does have an impact, how often and to what degree. But the author seems to want to discard a possible effect without any data.
I am of the age where more and more aspects of society become laid bare, I'm a bit slower than most. So I'm not sure if higher ed was always this nakedly bankrupt due to bad incentives, or if it has genuinely degraded substantially.
I tend to think, as with most things, a bit of both. MBAs have invaded the university managerial class for the unquestioned negative effects, and financialization has reached the ivory tower, but these similar "drive to publish/grant" has been referenced by my direct or tangentially related close relatives for decades who worked in higher ed (one long term evolutionary psych tenured, one tenured physicist, two as adjuncts/grad students/researchers that left to be IT people). 5-7 people or so? I meet the minimum sample size for a psych paper! (ducks the incoming rain of shoes from psychologists)
But I think there's value even in specious science. At least they are turning over the rocks, even if it's shadowed in bad statistics atop surveys. Each social discipline has a different angle into social studies that I find useful in some manner, a sort of zeitgeist long-run calculus that may drive us forward.
Do I hate "universities" or badmouth them? Absolutely not. I wish I knew how to repair and rescue these treasured institutions. As for fringe sciences, I always believed that institutions like universities are precisely responsible for protecting humanities and marginal discourse. Fat chance these days :)
How did the MBAs turn these non-profit institutions, with missions to develop and disseminate knowledge, into seeming profit-seeking organizations? What do they say the point of the revenue is? What is their argument for it?
I think about Heidegger (of whom I'm a reader), and Chomsky (who infuriates me, but I like).
Was Martin Heidegger a Nazi? How could such deep and valuable philosophy come from someone who was aligned with a bunch of genocidal bourgeois thugs?
Noam Chomsky told us the answer. Academics and intellectuals are the worst of cowards, says Chomsky. They will always side with power in the end. Heidegger chose self preservation. He wanted to stay in his job and be able to write philosophy, nothing more.
Some of the people I was a freshman with are now deans and vice-chancellors. Those I'm still friends with say they wish they could be like me - crazy and authentic but poor. I tell them to their faces that they sold out, but I'd love their salary. They say, it's not worth it. At least we can still laugh together.
What happened over the decades between 1990 and now is that, one by one, good people caved in to what they believed was "inevitable". They were browbeaten or manipulated into the rationale of "markets and industry". They put aside the effort of real thought, principles and taking the harder road. They gave up on the students.
Each time I walk back into a university it feels a little colder. A bit more Fascist. More fear and loathing. Not sure what I am saying really, other than intelligence is not enough to resist evil.
You're the first person I've found who has given me an inside view and some explanation. How hearbreaking. But our ideas are better ideas - there is no comparison; theirs are almost childish. Look at the societies built by them and by ignorance. We have the power, we just need to use it.
If you don't mind me asking, a related issue weighs heavily: What happened to postmodernism in academia? I know it was politicized in the broader world (by people not knowing what it meant and using postmodern arguments), but I assumed enough in academia would know better. But it doesn't seem that way. Several years ago I ate lunch with a few faculty from various schools and was talking to one whose dissertation had been on an iconic postmodern writer. I mentioned reading one of that writer's books recently; my friend formed an embarassed expression and said quietly to me, 'I don't read that kind of thing anymore'. :o (Nothing of that writer could offend contemporary sensibilities.)
It's important to me because, it seems to me, postmodernism provides almost everything needed for these contemporary problems - distrust of power, ultimate distrust of ego and megalomania, the tools, etc. I've made an effort to remove myself from the madness and, using those tools, it all seems straightforward and transparent to me. Yet even postmodernism's strongest proponants seem to have abandoned it; why? They have unilaterially disarmed - and what have they replaced it with? Have we simply laid down our arms, as encouraged by an enemy as they march forward?
Edit: I should say that I am reaching just a little in my knowledge of postmodernism, which I never specifically studied (I never read a History of Postmodern Thought, etc.). So hopefully I'm not misapplying it in places.
In academia I never actually encountered these mythical "post-modernists" responsible for the "ruin of reason".
This [0] may not be to your taste (or say anything helpful), Peterson always being a wildcard, but this conversation with Camille Paglia sticks with me. For her the whole thing was phoney. At least in US America pomo was akin to a "red scare".
I suspect she's partially right. Pomo was cool when it was cool for loafers, and then suddenly... hey iPhones! and then books by traumatised Jews weren't cool.
Maybe it's neither; you're assuming the degradation is not a matter of perception, but some underlying reality. Cui bono - who benefits from that perception? It seems to me, the same people who benefit from destroying every institution that stands in their way - education, all scholarship, government, journalism, etc.
In fact, if we apply the tools we learn in higher education, IMHO the situation is clearly a matter of perception.
(All human institutions are flawed; a common approach of sophists is just to find the flaws in the institution they want to tear down.)
You just cannot really run rigorous experiments that isolate explicit features you want to investigate.
No two people have exactly the same experience. And you cannot repeat experiences. The fact that you've gone through an experience once informs you on the second trial. Watching something from 2 meters to the left is not the same experience as the person on your right. You will see slightly different things, hear slightly different things.
And that's not even getting into all the years of upbringing everyone brings to the table before you even start.
We can infer things from statistics, but that only takes us so far. Because of all the things that could influence those statistics.
For instance, we've all seen the study that people who drink moderately often have better health outcomes that both those that abuse alcohol and those that completely abstain. Which kind of flies in the face of the medical/biological facts which show that any alcohol is technically bad for us. However, when you peel that study back, you see that the amount of alcohol consumed is often related to the income level of the person.
People in poverty are more likely to both abstain and abuse. Either they use their money for things other than luxuries like alcohol or they've essentially given up and spend all of their money on alcohol. These same people often have worse healthcare options and thus worse health outcomes overall. So basically, the people who drink moderately have access to better health outcomes because they can afford it. Alcohol and health are completely unrelated, they are both dependent on a third variable.
Now imagine that most of your studies have these hidden variables. And that you couldn't even know for sure that two things are correlated or coincidental because they are related to another or multiple other variables.
I can imagine that being rather difficult. And not really a field for those who like to study and apply knowledge. Which I know sounds weird. But, for instance, medicine and law are both fields where you can study known facts and apply that knowledge in trade. As a doctor, you never have to advance the field yourself, it is not expected. Same with law. It seems that in psychology, you have to be comfortable with a degree of ambivalence.
Of course, that same ambivalence and uncertainty allow a lot of people to peddle trash. But I don't have an answer for that, much less a good one.
Psychology also has many successes - including some incredible ones for people I know, whose lives have been changed. It can provide great insight into the world.
An easy target is that social science results are not as reliable as natural science results, but that's not apples-to-apples at all:
Natural sciences' domain of problems is those that can be solved using the scientific method; if you can't gather objective, falsifiable, reproducible, etc. data, you don't do it.
Social sciences' domain of problems is those that need to be solved, no matter what: People are sick; we must come up with the best solution we can, using the scientific method as far as possible. What social sciences study - humanity - is far more challenging than, for example, fluid movement. There is not always objective, falsifiable, reproducible, etc. data to be had, so you do the best you can and, using your gathered data and expertise, provide the best known solution.
Social scientists should know their place and avoid making specific recommendations until they are really, really sure.
Social scientists actually have data and deep expertise. Every recommendation should be examined critically, but why should we distrust social science recommendations more than those without data (and often without expertise)? What other basis is there that you trust?
And is there any basis for your very broad generalization? You criticize social scientists for misinformation; what should we think of your comment? It looks like you are just repeating commonplace biases; is that the basis?
Pedagogist: Hold my Kool-aid.
(And sure, there is psych research which has nothing to do with therapeutic methods, but why is that considered important? That's like a mathematician saying they're a physicist just because physicists use math!)
Was it ever a useful tool? Here and there maybe.
Has it had a massive infuence on culture and the world? Absolutely.
So I was chatting with a clinical psych/therapist recently who said "Since it could only be validated from the _inside_ wouldn't it be hilarious if advances in AI validated Freud?" Like GPT10 comes on and says " I want to kill my father and fuck mum, pass me the cocaine!"
What makes you quantify it like that? I'm not sure I could quantify it, but it's certainly been used, directly and indirectly, extraordinarily widely.
Anyone going through an undergrad psych program comes out the other side with the feeling you described. It's exactly like how people coming out of a csci program has an understanding that "they once programmed on punch cards and it was bad".
What is more serious than helping people find outlets for their violent and self-destructive fantasies? Or do therapists do something different nowadays...
But I guess, to play devils advocate, some sorts of people are too infrequent to contribute to a body of knowledge (and may not always be able to, or realise there is a difference) about their own type of being, most experts will be an outsider looking in and can't always get it exactly right. And I would've said the same thing about 99% of the population, if we flipped the pancake and the studied did the studying. I've genuinely asked myself, the same concept, don't they understand others? They can't put themselves in our heads? They can't because we're too infrequent and there's scarcely an opportunity to even find out there's a whole different island of experiencing life, and economically what is rare is expensive to accommodate, I certainly if I was born with a normal brain wouldn't stop in my tracks and analyse my neural functions and assume it could be different and weigh that in when reading other people, going to the low level sensory layers and philosophising if that was this other way how would I act and so on, it's too distracting, rare and expensive to think about I know lol.
This may seem like a lot of rambling about a barely related issue, but it's important because despite being 1% of people, autistic people have a very high compared suicide rate, suffering and so on. Generalising, meaning that the common knowledge psychological (or other fields concerning social stuff) concepts as created by the "normal experts" let's say, for all sorts of mental states or genetic or physical conditions not described by someone directly experiencing it themselves, this "common knowledge" may through it's authority and eventual long tail of flaws invite epistemic injustice and "othering". I only mentioned the example I've recently been bickering about to myself lol, I know just as little about eventual other epistemic injustices.
Isn't that beautiful. The ultimate inviolability of mind and consciousness is both absolute loneliness, and simultaneously a great safety.
On the contrary, many old-timer traditional literature-focused e.g. Object Relational psychology schools are having a heyday having their insights shown to align with reality using all the bleeding-edge genetics and AI-powered data going around.
Every time this comes up, it feels like a fake controversy manufactured by people who are tech-savy enough to know how to find scientific papers on Google Scholar, but, curiously, have yet to discover the library, or the conference or... the college lecture hall. You know, places where people discuss literature?
Yes, psychology is just a literature, and... I'm not sure anyone seriously disagrees? Perhaps this is just the natural conclusion to having a field swamped by well-meaning but misplaced industry funds, laypeople can't cut through the bullshit on Google Scholar or find a librarian.
Do you have a link, this smells like bullshit too. In fact i'd put a lot of money on it being just as much bullshit as the research supporting drug prescriptions or talk therapy. Why am i so confident? We live in crazy times and no amount of "science" can control for this short of changing social, political, or economic structures themselves.
I know some, and I think we could find some who write publicly.
I will say though that psychology/neurosciences are more in the 'mapping out the problem' stage, due to the considerable complexity of the subject, and sources of variability. There is a difference between 'its serious science' and 'I take my finding seriously'. A healthy dose of skepticism is neccessary in your own research due to sampling heterogeneity.
I really like that turn of phrase...I tend to think we're still in that phase for most of the sciences as well. Be it medicine, physics, astronomy, mathematics(?) - we seem to think we have answers when we're still trying to figure out what questions to ask..
hell - just in my lifetime we've had quantum physics, black holes, gut flora, the sun is the power source for all life and god knows what else :-)
Its really interesting to see how things develop and as a lay person, it makes it a really interesting time to be alive :-)