"The difference is on average humans have the ability to plan, use tools, and effectively modify our environment."
Chimps do all of those things. I don't understand why people need to define a special category for intelligence which basically boils down to "things humans do". We are obviously more intelligent than chimps. On the other hand, chimps are obviously more intelligent than mice. Personhood is a sliding scale, and should be treated as such.
The flaw in your thinking is that personhood is a sliding scale, it is not. Personhood, a human construct, is only applicable to human beings. Is an invalid less a person than an athlete? No, they are both equal persons, but they have different capabilities. Society may value those capabilities differently, but it doesn't change the personhood.
People trying to elevate lower species to persons rely on things like intelligence, or sentience and the like. If that is the case, then all of us, if we are asleep or unconscious, cease to be persons. A person in a coma is still a person even if at that moment is less intelligent or sentient than a chimpanzee or dolphin. What makes a person a person is not their intellectual ability or any other ability. It is an inherent trait of being a human being.
As such, personhood is not subjective, it is an absolute, yes or no. All human beings are persons. All persons are human beings. There is no gray area or sliding scale. It is as simple as that.
To bad you got modded down as a troll because actually you are more or less correct - they are comparing chimp captivity to slavery. From a summary about the case:
n each case, NhRP is petitioning judges with a writ of habeas corpus, which allows a person being held captive to have a say in court. In a famous 1772 case, an English judge allowed such a writ for a black slave named James Somerset, tacitly acknowledging that he was a person—not a piece of property—and subsequently freed him. The case helped spark the eventual abolition of slavery in England and the United States. Wise is hoping for something similar for the captive chimps.
The irony is that their proposed solution, if they win is to house the chimps in a preserve in Florida. The claim it would be like the Native American reservations. However, there people are free to come and go, but the chimps would not have that right, so effectively, they would still be captives. They would just have different masters/caretakers.
I guess for the NhRP different classes of persons are entitled to different rights. Then again, that is pretty much what slave owners thought, too.
Actually, the pedophilia would work. If chimps are deemed persons, then in the US, they would be required to abide by the laws of this country. In the US, the age of consent would still apply and since laws regarding pedophilia are age based, even if chimps are sexually mature, they would still be guilty of it. If you enact legislation permitting it for chimps, then you open up equal protection suits for human pedophiles as the two classes of person would be treated different under the law.
More likely what would happen if chimps were granted personhood would be that they are deemed incapable of caring for themselves in society and have to be institutionalized, just as they are now. I'm sure the group pushing for this would want them to be returned to the wild, however, as persons, here, but not there, they have no citizenship abroad for us to deport them. In addition, any of them born here, as persons, would be US citizens and could not be deported.
In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution. The appellate process will find the same thing.
I post anonymous because I don't have, nor want, a traceable account.
Off Topic, but what makes you think posting anonymously actually keeps your from being traceable? Thinking you can't be traced because/. or any other webpage calls you anonymous is really poor security. Same with using incognito mode in a browser.
You shouldn't have posted anonymous because you nailed it with the first post. This NIH syndrome they've developed will ultimately be the end of Canonical. In the long run they can't sustain the independent development on all these separate and diverse features, not unless Shutleworth is going to continue to fund this with millions of his own money in perpetuity.
Actually, most people see this as a positive step. For instance, if one wanted to run pure Gnome 3 on an Ubuntu base, all of the various patches that Canonical have made to various Gnome pieces, such as the control center, get in the way. By Canonical forking the gnome-control-center, one can choose to use Canonical's modifications or not.
That is a big step forward compared to the current situation of modifying Gnome components to make them work with Unity. That's not NIH, but being responsible as it keeps from borking Gnome just for the sake of Unity.
All you post tells me is tat you don't know what science is; or possible, but unlikely, what religion is..
Actually, for most lay people, science and religion are very similar as they both require one to accept things on the faith or testimony of others. Very few people have actually done the calculations or proofs or expirments themself, instead relying on what has been passed down to them by the high priests. That is just as true for science as religion, with the exception that when dealing with science we don't use the term "high priests," but instead some other term, but the process is the same. Those with special insight pass on the belief system to the next generation.
Not all religions have a deity, but all religions have a belief system. So, too, does science.
One can manipulate math to to describe or answer pretty much anything you want. Just because the equations match what's happening does not mean they describe what's going on.
Who cares? As long as the equations match what's happening (and what's going to happen), does it matter what's "really" going on? We've been doing quantum mechanics for almost a century now, and still no one actually knows what it all means - but we're perfectly happy to take advantage of QM in our technology.
Yes, it really matters. In the middle ages, there were mathematical formulas which described the planets and sun revolving around the earth. The math worked very well even though the theory was proven to be very wrong.
Math, particularly when used as a language, can be used to describe all sorts of things. As with the spoken language, one can create a sentence that is technically and grammatically correct, but still is nonsense. The whole purpose of langauge, any language, even mathematics is to convey ideas. So, yes, it really does matter what's going on. That's the whole point of using a precision language, like math, in the first place.
This must be more of that new math. For the only planet that we know that has life, ours, it has been here for 2.7B years out of the 4.5B years the planet has been around. That means it took 1.8B years to form and even if that is off by 1/2, that means 900M years. It seems like a reach to expect that all of the right conditions would have been present in the 15M years available by the new calculations to allow life to form in that very narow window.
I have cerebral palsy and epilepsy and there description is the before and after of how it feels for me with seizures. Just like some of Hollywood's special effects especially from the 80's on. Some of us were tortured and bled, so other children who couldn't walk now can. Then the technology evolves and other people only see it as mere enjoyment. We'll I commend them for their bravery and what they have given up. Just to help improve the human condition and maybe 1 day a child will not have suffer from cp or seizures. But you who make jokes will probably think I'm a jerk or worse and then go out and buy a mind controlled video game for your enjoyment. I'm glad to see there a few people left who will sacrifice there we'll being at a chance to cure themselves and others
The sad reality is that if this research truly is valid, it is more likely to be used for mind controlled video games than curing people. In a capitalist society, even one with a for profit health care system like the US (where corporations make big money from people being sick), there is far more profit to be had from the next generation xbox than the limited pool of suffers with conditions like yours. More likely than either a consumer product or a medical treatment, however, will be a militarized application.
From the article, we have two individuals with obviously abnormal brain function (uncontrolled seizures) that when an electrical charge is introduced in a specific area, it causes them to increase their perseverance (which is somewhat subjective in its measure). Extrapolating those results to a normally functioning brain seems somewhat of a leap. While the research is interesting, it doesn't really prove anything because of the extremely small sample sized, no control group and abnormal brain function to begin with.
It's generally accepted that human beings (homo sapiens) are no more than 200,000 years old. So unless the researchers are proposing their data shows that humans are a lot older than originally thought, the title and summary are flawed. Not that the research isn't interesting, but one would hope that scientists would know the difference between the species involved and not misinform the public.
That's from the maternal line. It's the DNA that's directly passed down only from the mother. Just because no maternal Neanderthals DNA is present doesn't mean there isn't Neanderthals DNA present from Neanderthal fathers. I'm not arguing that this is the answer, only that the findings above don't prohibit this from being true.
Besides, we all know those Neanderthals mean were the one's hitting our ancestral women on the heads, dragging them back their caves, and spreading their DNA.:P
What you say is true, but it doesn't mean anything. You could also just as validly state Just because no maternal Martian DNA is present doesn't mean there isn't Martian DNA present from Martian fathers. The point being that science should talk about what the data does show, not speculate about all of the possibilities that data doesn't support.
One minute of using an automated tool is apparently a worse offense than crashing the economy.
So your defense is that breaking the law, or at least causing a DDos attack is okay, because it isn't as bad as something else? Where is the logic in that?
Think of it this way, the kid that drove the get away car from the robbery at the local 7-11 still gets charged, even though they didn't take the money. This guy's action caused a disruption to service and a subsequent financial loss, even if he only did it for 1 minute, why should he be let off the hook?
Really, a smaller rectangular connector, as compared to the current micro-usb trapezoid connector is going to somehow make everyone dance in the streets because it is less likely to be mangled? It would seem that the problem with mangled connectors is not because of the trapezoid shape but the fact that the smaller they become, the thinner the material and therefore the more delicate they are.
This sounds more like a marketing decision to make people go out and purchase new adapters when they get new devices.
From the Vatican...eventually. Will the scientific community be more eager to do the same with LaMark?
BTW: Both Darwin and LaMark were correct. Genes' expression, dictated by experience and culture, can be passed on, activating an otherwise inactive gene in later generations.
Yes, I know you had kidding on your mind. I just wanted to get the science straight.
Did you maybe mean Galileo? I'm not sure of your point, though, because the catholics believe in evolution and even the dispute with Galileo was about politics, not science (the church actually agreed with the science in theory, but said the proof had flaws, which modern science confirms -- basically, Galileo got the right answer, but based his thesis on wrong assumptions).
If the story has been run on 60 Minutes, it's hardly "News for Nerds" any more. After it has already been disseminated to the general public through, why would it be newsworthy here? And yes, I know that not everybody is in the US, nor did they see 60 Minutes last night, but really, if CBS already ran this story, why is/. ?
People can argue all they want about Canonical and Ubuntu and whether they are in decline are on the verge of something great. It's all just words. Canonical and Ubuntu could do a lot to improve their PR, but, by one measure, they must be a great success -- there are as many anti-slashdot articles about them as there are about Microsoft and Apple.
Slashdotters only go after big (successful) tech companies as their whipping boys, so by this one very subjective measure, Canonical and Ubuntu have made it to the big time.
Good post Woodhams, I'll use an analogy I formed when discussing Psychology with my girlfriend whose been in the field a while: Psychology today is like studying Chemistry in the bronze age. Back then, they didn't have the means to understand the why of this chemical working with this chemical, they just knew it worked and did Chemistry via trial and error and guessing. Today, psychology is classifying things based on relations and forming best practices, but we don't understand why things are the way they are because of our limited understanding of the brain.
Maybe things will change in 100 years, maybe not. I think the field is worth its weight in gold though, there's a lot of good that can be/is being done and a lot of progress still to be made.
That is an extremely narrow view of psychology today and pretty much views it in terms of therapy. Let me ask you this, when Warren Buffet invests in the market using a contrarian strategy, are you stating that there is no underlying science backing him up? I ask, because he and many others seem to be quite successful at it.
Real psychology has a lot more depth than the therapist's couch. Should the determination of what is science be based on if it can fulfill the requirements of the scientific method versus preconceived notions?
Astronomy, what many would call a science, uses probability to tell us there is life on other planets in the galaxy. Psychology, what many are saying is not a science, uses the same probability to predict various behaviors. What's the difference? One has been deemed science and one has not and yet they both use similar tools to come to their results. It seems pretty subjective.
But here is the crux of the matter. The scientific method states that you first ask a question, then pose a hypothesis, then test your hypothesis, analyze your data and draw a conclusion. If a psychology experiment does all of that, how is it not science?
Psychology is a huge field. Perception, experimental analysis of animal behaviour, clinical psychology, cognitive biases etc. etc.
No, the field you're thinking of is Neuroscience and Cybernetics -- These have evidence based on observation and models which have predictive power. Psychology is just confirmation bias. You must prove the null hypothesis more implausible than the original hypothesis, yet Psychology does not do this. For every ridiculous Sexual Epistemology, there's an equally valid Scatological Epistemology.
The truth is that neurons fire in brains, and that complexity gives rise to emergent behaviours. Leaping the gulf in understanding to arrive at the explanations that Psychology and Philosophy give is akin to claiming a God in a Chariot pulls the Sun across the sky.
Your argument is only valid for recent times. For most of the history of modern psychology, there was not a separate field between neuroscience and psychology. Often in med school today, the psych departments and the neurology departments have been combined because we have found that the two are interrelated.
Since most psychological research deals with evidence based observation and models which have predictive power, what distinguishes it from the subclassification of neuroscience? It's a little bit like saying that nuclear physics is science but theoretical physics is not (particularly the whole observational part). I think the flaw in your position is that you feel that science has at it's root the desire to prove the null hypothesis as more implausible than the original hypothesis. In the hard sciences, such as chemistry and physics, that type of test would be meaningless. Just because Newton's theory of gravity has been uprooted by quantum theory, does that mean Newtonian Physics isn't science? No, of course not. That's because most science is about proving what is, not what is not.
If the measure of science is the ability to prove the null hypothesis being more implausible than the original or non-null hypothesis, then theology is a science because it is a lot more difficult to prove that a deity does not exist than it is to prove one actually does.
Psychology is a soft science because of the numerous variables that in studies are often simplified into a constant often for simplicity's sake and nothing else. Economics and politics are the same, mostly because they're based on psychology.
It's an inexact science because the human condition is imperfect. As opposed to the hard sciences, which are exact, because the universe around us is "perfect". And then, there's computer science, which is a mathematical, computational science that's absolute. It's not even "perfect" anymore; it's exactly what the maths say it is, and any failure sits between keyboard and chair.
Anyway, psychology is important, because the only way to truly understand the imperfect conditions of humans is via an inexact science. And it's something only fully understood by humans (computers can simulate the hard sciences to a calculable degree of accuracy, but they'll never be able to simulate the soft sciences in the same way), and innately at that.
The way to think about psychology is using fractals. X% | X is > statistical significance, of the population behaves in manner a. X * (100-X)% of the population behaves in manner b. X * (100 - X * (100-X))% of the population behaves in manner c. Etc. a, b, c, etc. are up to you to figure out. And when you change the test, the individual that falls into one category is not guaranteed to fall into the same category again.
Note that the human mind can comprehend infinity (poorly for most, but very possible for a few), both countable and uncountable variants, but a computer will never be able to calculate it. So the fractal analogy works really, really well.
Ironically, the same things that make psychology a soft science are the same things used by theoretical physicists. Both rely heavily on probability versus observable inputs (although for different reasons). So, I would posit that what makes psychology and the others you mentioned a soft science versus a hard science is not aobut exactitude, but semantics. That and the fact that it is was the hard sciences that created the definition in the first place.
Proof? Look at mortality rates from simple wounds prior to antibiotics.
Oh, BS. How often do you need antibiotics after a simple wound? Personally I don't think I've ever had.
It's not about the times you don't need them, but the times you do. Think of it this way, people still use condoms even though the likelihood of an unwanted pregnancy or std is low. Why? Because the consequences of not using one is great. Likewise, most minor cuts don't require an antibiotic, but depending on the situation some do and without it, the consequences are great. The fact that you haven't had to suffer those consequences doesn't change that.
I've never had to use antibiotics in maybe the last 15 years. If you always use them, your body won't build up its immune system and the critters will grow resistance.
That you are aware of. Unless you are a vegetarian and eat only organically grown food, you've had plenty of antibiotics in the last 15 years. Hell, even bandaids have neosporin and the gauze pad today.
Slashdot Mirror
"The difference is on average humans have the ability to plan, use tools, and effectively modify our environment."
Chimps do all of those things. I don't understand why people need to define a special category for intelligence which basically boils down to "things humans do". We are obviously more intelligent than chimps. On the other hand, chimps are obviously more intelligent than mice. Personhood is a sliding scale, and should be treated as such.
The flaw in your thinking is that personhood is a sliding scale, it is not. Personhood, a human construct, is only applicable to human beings. Is an invalid less a person than an athlete? No, they are both equal persons, but they have different capabilities. Society may value those capabilities differently, but it doesn't change the personhood.
People trying to elevate lower species to persons rely on things like intelligence, or sentience and the like. If that is the case, then all of us, if we are asleep or unconscious, cease to be persons. A person in a coma is still a person even if at that moment is less intelligent or sentient than a chimpanzee or dolphin. What makes a person a person is not their intellectual ability or any other ability. It is an inherent trait of being a human being.
As such, personhood is not subjective, it is an absolute, yes or no. All human beings are persons. All persons are human beings. There is no gray area or sliding scale. It is as simple as that.
To bad you got modded down as a troll because actually you are more or less correct - they are comparing chimp captivity to slavery. From a summary about the case:
n each case, NhRP is petitioning judges with a writ of habeas corpus, which allows a person being held captive to have a say in court. In a famous 1772 case, an English judge allowed such a writ for a black slave named James Somerset, tacitly acknowledging that he was a person—not a piece of property—and subsequently freed him. The case helped spark the eventual abolition of slavery in England and the United States. Wise is hoping for something similar for the captive chimps.
The irony is that their proposed solution, if they win is to house the chimps in a preserve in Florida. The claim it would be like the Native American reservations. However, there people are free to come and go, but the chimps would not have that right, so effectively, they would still be captives. They would just have different masters/caretakers.
I guess for the NhRP different classes of persons are entitled to different rights. Then again, that is pretty much what slave owners thought, too.
Actually, the pedophilia would work. If chimps are deemed persons, then in the US, they would be required to abide by the laws of this country. In the US, the age of consent would still apply and since laws regarding pedophilia are age based, even if chimps are sexually mature, they would still be guilty of it. If you enact legislation permitting it for chimps, then you open up equal protection suits for human pedophiles as the two classes of person would be treated different under the law.
More likely what would happen if chimps were granted personhood would be that they are deemed incapable of caring for themselves in society and have to be institutionalized, just as they are now. I'm sure the group pushing for this would want them to be returned to the wild, however, as persons, here, but not there, they have no citizenship abroad for us to deport them. In addition, any of them born here, as persons, would be US citizens and could not be deported.
In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution. The appellate process will find the same thing.
I post anonymous because I don't have, nor want, a traceable account.
Off Topic, but what makes you think posting anonymously actually keeps your from being traceable? Thinking you can't be traced because /. or any other webpage calls you anonymous is really poor security. Same with using incognito mode in a browser.
Mod Parent up.
You shouldn't have posted anonymous because you nailed it with the first post. This NIH syndrome they've developed will ultimately be the end of Canonical. In the long run they can't sustain the independent development on all these separate and diverse features, not unless Shutleworth is going to continue to fund this with millions of his own money in perpetuity.
Actually, most people see this as a positive step. For instance, if one wanted to run pure Gnome 3 on an Ubuntu base, all of the various patches that Canonical have made to various Gnome pieces, such as the control center, get in the way. By Canonical forking the gnome-control-center, one can choose to use Canonical's modifications or not.
That is a big step forward compared to the current situation of modifying Gnome components to make them work with Unity. That's not NIH, but being responsible as it keeps from borking Gnome just for the sake of Unity.
no, it is not. Not by any stretch.
All you post tells me is tat you don't know what science is; or possible, but unlikely, what religion is..
Actually, for most lay people, science and religion are very similar as they both require one to accept things on the faith or testimony of others. Very few people have actually done the calculations or proofs or expirments themself, instead relying on what has been passed down to them by the high priests. That is just as true for science as religion, with the exception that when dealing with science we don't use the term "high priests," but instead some other term, but the process is the same. Those with special insight pass on the belief system to the next generation.
Not all religions have a deity, but all religions have a belief system. So, too, does science.
One can manipulate math to to describe or answer pretty much anything you want. Just because the equations match what's happening does not mean they describe what's going on.
Who cares? As long as the equations match what's happening (and what's going to happen), does it matter what's "really" going on? We've been doing quantum mechanics for almost a century now, and still no one actually knows what it all means - but we're perfectly happy to take advantage of QM in our technology.
Yes, it really matters. In the middle ages, there were mathematical formulas which described the planets and sun revolving around the earth. The math worked very well even though the theory was proven to be very wrong.
Math, particularly when used as a language, can be used to describe all sorts of things. As with the spoken language, one can create a sentence that is technically and grammatically correct, but still is nonsense. The whole purpose of langauge, any language, even mathematics is to convey ideas. So, yes, it really does matter what's going on. That's the whole point of using a precision language, like math, in the first place.
This must be more of that new math. For the only planet that we know that has life, ours, it has been here for 2.7B years out of the 4.5B years the planet has been around. That means it took 1.8B years to form and even if that is off by 1/2, that means 900M years. It seems like a reach to expect that all of the right conditions would have been present in the 15M years available by the new calculations to allow life to form in that very narow window.
I stuck my finger in an electric outlet once, and my will to persevere in sticking my finger in there was reduced, not boosted.
You must have really, really small fingers.
I have cerebral palsy and epilepsy and there description is the before and after of how it feels for me with seizures. Just like some of Hollywood's special effects especially from the 80's on. Some of us were tortured and bled, so other children who couldn't walk now can. Then the technology evolves and other people only see it as mere enjoyment. We'll I commend them for their bravery and what they have given up. Just to help improve the human condition and maybe 1 day a child will not have suffer from cp or seizures. But you who make jokes will probably think I'm a jerk or worse and then go out and buy a mind controlled video game for your enjoyment. I'm glad to see there a few people left who will sacrifice there we'll being at a chance to cure themselves and others
The sad reality is that if this research truly is valid, it is more likely to be used for mind controlled video games than curing people. In a capitalist society, even one with a for profit health care system like the US (where corporations make big money from people being sick), there is far more profit to be had from the next generation xbox than the limited pool of suffers with conditions like yours. More likely than either a consumer product or a medical treatment, however, will be a militarized application.
From the article, we have two individuals with obviously abnormal brain function (uncontrolled seizures) that when an electrical charge is introduced in a specific area, it causes them to increase their perseverance (which is somewhat subjective in its measure). Extrapolating those results to a normally functioning brain seems somewhat of a leap. While the research is interesting, it doesn't really prove anything because of the extremely small sample sized, no control group and abnormal brain function to begin with.
Among the questions Markey wants answers to: What percentage of cars sold in model years 2013 and 2014 do not have any wireless entry points?
Zero, all cars have wireless entry points. They are called windows, doors and vents and probably a few others.
It's generally accepted that human beings (homo sapiens) are no more than 200,000 years old. So unless the researchers are proposing their data shows that humans are a lot older than originally thought, the title and summary are flawed. Not that the research isn't interesting, but one would hope that scientists would know the difference between the species involved and not misinform the public.
That's from the maternal line. It's the DNA that's directly passed down only from the mother. Just because no maternal Neanderthals DNA is present doesn't mean there isn't Neanderthals DNA present from Neanderthal fathers. I'm not arguing that this is the answer, only that the findings above don't prohibit this from being true.
Besides, we all know those Neanderthals mean were the one's hitting our ancestral women on the heads, dragging them back their caves, and spreading their DNA. :P
What you say is true, but it doesn't mean anything. You could also just as validly state Just because no maternal Martian DNA is present doesn't mean there isn't Martian DNA present from Martian fathers. The point being that science should talk about what the data does show, not speculate about all of the possibilities that data doesn't support.
no one trusts the "justice" system anymore.
One minute of using an automated tool is apparently a worse offense than crashing the economy.
So your defense is that breaking the law, or at least causing a DDos attack is okay, because it isn't as bad as something else? Where is the logic in that?
Think of it this way, the kid that drove the get away car from the robbery at the local 7-11 still gets charged, even though they didn't take the money. This guy's action caused a disruption to service and a subsequent financial loss, even if he only did it for 1 minute, why should he be let off the hook?
Really, a smaller rectangular connector, as compared to the current micro-usb trapezoid connector is going to somehow make everyone dance in the streets because it is less likely to be mangled? It would seem that the problem with mangled connectors is not because of the trapezoid shape but the fact that the smaller they become, the thinner the material and therefore the more delicate they are.
This sounds more like a marketing decision to make people go out and purchase new adapters when they get new devices.
From the Vatican...eventually. Will the scientific community be more eager to do the same with LaMark?
BTW: Both Darwin and LaMark were correct. Genes' expression, dictated by experience and culture, can be passed on, activating an otherwise inactive gene in later generations.
Yes, I know you had kidding on your mind. I just wanted to get the science straight.
Did you maybe mean Galileo? I'm not sure of your point, though, because the catholics believe in evolution and even the dispute with Galileo was about politics, not science (the church actually agreed with the science in theory, but said the proof had flaws, which modern science confirms -- basically, Galileo got the right answer, but based his thesis on wrong assumptions).
If the story has been run on 60 Minutes, it's hardly "News for Nerds" any more. After it has already been disseminated to the general public through, why would it be newsworthy here? And yes, I know that not everybody is in the US, nor did they see 60 Minutes last night, but really, if CBS already ran this story, why is /. ?
No we should all go to Linux Mint which will then make a minty fresh Debian version of what Ubuntu Desktop should have been by now,
Of course, as long as Mint uses Ubuntu to cover most of its development infrastructure, if Ubuntu goes, there is no Mint. Just saying.
People can argue all they want about Canonical and Ubuntu and whether they are in decline are on the verge of something great. It's all just words. Canonical and Ubuntu could do a lot to improve their PR, but, by one measure, they must be a great success -- there are as many anti-slashdot articles about them as there are about Microsoft and Apple.
Slashdotters only go after big (successful) tech companies as their whipping boys, so by this one very subjective measure, Canonical and Ubuntu have made it to the big time.
Good post Woodhams, I'll use an analogy I formed when discussing Psychology with my girlfriend whose been in the field a while: Psychology today is like studying Chemistry in the bronze age. Back then, they didn't have the means to understand the why of this chemical working with this chemical, they just knew it worked and did Chemistry via trial and error and guessing. Today, psychology is classifying things based on relations and forming best practices, but we don't understand why things are the way they are because of our limited understanding of the brain.
Maybe things will change in 100 years, maybe not. I think the field is worth its weight in gold though, there's a lot of good that can be/is being done and a lot of progress still to be made.
That is an extremely narrow view of psychology today and pretty much views it in terms of therapy. Let me ask you this, when Warren Buffet invests in the market using a contrarian strategy, are you stating that there is no underlying science backing him up? I ask, because he and many others seem to be quite successful at it.
Real psychology has a lot more depth than the therapist's couch. Should the determination of what is science be based on if it can fulfill the requirements of the scientific method versus preconceived notions?
Astronomy, what many would call a science, uses probability to tell us there is life on other planets in the galaxy. Psychology, what many are saying is not a science, uses the same probability to predict various behaviors. What's the difference? One has been deemed science and one has not and yet they both use similar tools to come to their results. It seems pretty subjective.
But here is the crux of the matter. The scientific method states that you first ask a question, then pose a hypothesis, then test your hypothesis, analyze your data and draw a conclusion. If a psychology experiment does all of that, how is it not science?
Psychology is a huge field. Perception, experimental analysis of animal behaviour, clinical psychology, cognitive biases etc. etc.
No, the field you're thinking of is Neuroscience and Cybernetics -- These have evidence based on observation and models which have predictive power. Psychology is just confirmation bias. You must prove the null hypothesis more implausible than the original hypothesis, yet Psychology does not do this. For every ridiculous Sexual Epistemology, there's an equally valid Scatological Epistemology.
The truth is that neurons fire in brains, and that complexity gives rise to emergent behaviours. Leaping the gulf in understanding to arrive at the explanations that Psychology and Philosophy give is akin to claiming a God in a Chariot pulls the Sun across the sky.
Your argument is only valid for recent times. For most of the history of modern psychology, there was not a separate field between neuroscience and psychology. Often in med school today, the psych departments and the neurology departments have been combined because we have found that the two are interrelated.
Since most psychological research deals with evidence based observation and models which have predictive power, what distinguishes it from the subclassification of neuroscience? It's a little bit like saying that nuclear physics is science but theoretical physics is not (particularly the whole observational part). I think the flaw in your position is that you feel that science has at it's root the desire to prove the null hypothesis as more implausible than the original hypothesis. In the hard sciences, such as chemistry and physics, that type of test would be meaningless. Just because Newton's theory of gravity has been uprooted by quantum theory, does that mean Newtonian Physics isn't science? No, of course not. That's because most science is about proving what is, not what is not.
If the measure of science is the ability to prove the null hypothesis being more implausible than the original or non-null hypothesis, then theology is a science because it is a lot more difficult to prove that a deity does not exist than it is to prove one actually does.
Psychology is a soft science because of the numerous variables that in studies are often simplified into a constant often for simplicity's sake and nothing else. Economics and politics are the same, mostly because they're based on psychology.
It's an inexact science because the human condition is imperfect. As opposed to the hard sciences, which are exact, because the universe around us is "perfect". And then, there's computer science, which is a mathematical, computational science that's absolute. It's not even "perfect" anymore; it's exactly what the maths say it is, and any failure sits between keyboard and chair.
Anyway, psychology is important, because the only way to truly understand the imperfect conditions of humans is via an inexact science. And it's something only fully understood by humans (computers can simulate the hard sciences to a calculable degree of accuracy, but they'll never be able to simulate the soft sciences in the same way), and innately at that.
The way to think about psychology is using fractals. X% | X is > statistical significance, of the population behaves in manner a. X * (100-X)% of the population behaves in manner b. X * (100 - X * (100-X))% of the population behaves in manner c. Etc. a, b, c, etc. are up to you to figure out. And when you change the test, the individual that falls into one category is not guaranteed to fall into the same category again.
Note that the human mind can comprehend infinity (poorly for most, but very possible for a few), both countable and uncountable variants, but a computer will never be able to calculate it. So the fractal analogy works really, really well.
Ironically, the same things that make psychology a soft science are the same things used by theoretical physicists. Both rely heavily on probability versus observable inputs (although for different reasons). So, I would posit that what makes psychology and the others you mentioned a soft science versus a hard science is not aobut exactitude, but semantics. That and the fact that it is was the hard sciences that created the definition in the first place.
Proof? Look at mortality rates from simple wounds prior to antibiotics.
Oh, BS. How often do you need antibiotics after a simple wound? Personally I don't think I've ever had.
It's not about the times you don't need them, but the times you do. Think of it this way, people still use condoms even though the likelihood of an unwanted pregnancy or std is low. Why? Because the consequences of not using one is great. Likewise, most minor cuts don't require an antibiotic, but depending on the situation some do and without it, the consequences are great. The fact that you haven't had to suffer those consequences doesn't change that.
Wut?
I've never had to use antibiotics in maybe the last 15 years. If you always use them, your body won't build up its immune system and the critters will grow resistance.
That you are aware of. Unless you are a vegetarian and eat only organically grown food, you've had plenty of antibiotics in the last 15 years. Hell, even bandaids have neosporin and the gauze pad today.