I’m most excited about fundamental research in the behavioral sciences, just ideally done much better. I think the work of people like Joseph Henrick/David Graeber/Robin Hanson was useful and revealing. It seems to me like right now our general state of understanding is quite poor, so what I imagine as minor improvements in particular areas feel less impactful than just better overall understanding.
It has been very frustrating sitting in Psychology seminars led by big prestigious professors, listening to them spout absolute nonsense completely unsupported by quantitative analysis. So I feel your pain for sure!
Digging up one of my old tweets: Social Psych talk: no error bars, description of stats, or listing size of subject groups. p values displayed as p=0. This is accepted?
I’ve done a bit of thinking on this topic, main post here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vCQpJLNFpDdHyikFy/are-the-social-sciences-challenging-because-of-fundamental
I’m most excited about fundamental research in the behavioral sciences, just ideally done much better. I think the work of people like Joseph Henrick/David Graeber/Robin Hanson was useful and revealing. It seems to me like right now our general state of understanding is quite poor, so what I imagine as minor improvements in particular areas feel less impactful than just better overall understanding.
It has been very frustrating sitting in Psychology seminars led by big prestigious professors, listening to them spout absolute nonsense completely unsupported by quantitative analysis. So I feel your pain for sure!
Digging up one of my old tweets: Social Psych talk: no error bars, description of stats, or listing size of subject groups. p values displayed as p=0. This is accepted?