/sci/ - Science & Math

They are real sciences. Deal with it.

Economics doesn't follow the scientific method so no it doesn't count. The other two do, so they are sciences, but experimentation is more difficult due to confounding factors like ethics. Still they count.

Depends on how they're done. Someone can apply scientific rigour to fuckhuge systems it's just a lot harder. But someone can also make shit up and call it sociology.

not sure about economics and sociology, but if you think psychology isn't a real science any more you're about 40 years out of date.

I wouldn't consider Sociology a science as it only deals with human constructs.

Psychology definitely is a science, it follows the scientific method and extends beyond theory to fields like neurology.

Economics deals with human constructs; However, in some parts it does use certain scientific methods.

They can be. Science is only a relation of measurements. Most words written on science books aren't science either.

Economics is as much a Science as the other on this list. Soft science does follow the same pattens as hard science and is therefore science along with many other things as science is very broad. One axis of disagreement is when variables relate to people oppose to physical forces, as people add unknowns which lowers accuracy, but does not necessitate it destruction. The reason I think many do not appreciate the similarity is the magnitude of conditional elements leads to distortions and poor application. This has led to a double standard.

Hard science typically has only a few variables and unknowns to deal with and is there for very accurate, but soft science has many variables and unknowns to deal with and is there for not as accurate. In this way upper level hard science is much like a soft science as it deals with very complex systems. However the amount of ridicule compared to complexity is not the same, despite that complexity can lead to more errors compounded by many lack of understanding and political motives.

Looking at H20, if asked what state of matter it was many would say liquid. This is of course wrong as it is conditional on temperature and other things.

Looking at supply, if asked if surplus is good one would say yes. This is of course wrong as it is conditional on overhead storage costs and other things.

The repercussions of such errors are both bad. One could get burned by steam or lose money on surplus. However if one gets burned by steam they typicality are viewed as stupid the related scientist is not blamed for the burned persons actions. If one loses money on inventory the economist is blamed no matter how hard they told the person not to make the investment.

economics is politics, is not a science.

>>5001713
No.
Economics is hijacked by politics. It in itself is non political. Much like a gun, economics is the science of how to hit targets, what target you aim it at is the political part and economic has no mechanize for target selection contrary to what many think.
And where is the all the talk of the many other sciences are hijacked all the time, it helps them to use appeal to the expert fallacy.
You seldom here of how politics perverts nutrition requirements despite the evidence from biology.
Or how ethanol addition to gasoline is bad for current infrastructure despite evidence from chemistry and thermodynamics.
Or how there no way to handle nuclear waste, neglecting the ways to recycle nuclear waste to near nothing along with all the evidence in nuclear physics.
Or ... (too many to count, and dare I mention global warming?)
Let work to protect all of science for political manipulation and not ignore all the areas that are affected, many in silence.

Sorry I meant to convey how politicians lack understanding of handling nuclear waste, as it is treated as an unsolvable problem when in reality it can easily be handled. My statement failed to convey this effectively.

>>5001816
im on board. what would you say is the most important topic to spread info on? i imagine it would be something which threatens corporate profits on the most unnecessarily destructive industries.

>>5001816
hey, you seem to know something about economics, how do you go about studying "real" economics, i dont trust textbooks or philosophers because they dont seem to be scientific sources, but if you know of some resource which lays out differing economic conditions and how they got that way non-abstractly (ie. what countries have the best condition and what social or environmental conditions explain this) i would like to know of it. im sure there are examples of economies passing financial growth directly to the people as tangible resources (like time, information, space) rather than primarily to the elite with benefit to the population as a whole only on the side if it dosent interfere with corporate profit.

>>5001927

I'm not that guy, but you got to know theory first. I don't understand your aversion to text book economic theory. As long as it isn't mingled in with politics, the books are highly technical (at least the graduate ones are). I have many technical econ books if you want them on pdf.

What you want seems to be the most non-scientific way of going about it. Like I said, with econ, theory comes first, then practicality. That's just how it works bro.

Science is just a use of inductive reasoning. We look at reality, and see if data from reality confirms or defeats hypotheses.

So I think economics, sociology, psychology count. However, a lot of these fields can be contaminated by bullshit, or just opinions, or faulty experiments.

</my opinion>

>>5002005
>placing psychology among economics and sociology
>WHY.jpg

>>5002013

Why?

There are a lot of legitimate psychologists. I know a professor who did some interesting work regarding how people track moving objects in 3D space.

If anything I feel uncomfortable listing sociology with econ and psyche. Sociology has so much bullshit. As far as I can tell its 100% bullshit unless you start using the loosest definition of "sociology"

>>5002019
I'm saying of course psychology is a science. Why are you pairing it with those other non-science fields?

>>5002022

Oh.

._.

Modern psychology could probably be combined with neurology.

>>5002019

That would be neuroscience then, no?

>>5002034

Well he is a psychologist. I dont believe he looked at the physical brain.

Here is a bunch of his work:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~mmcbeath/mcbeath.research/research.html

Psychology is a science, as long as neuro is taken into account. Experiments are carried out, there are just a shitload of confounding variables.

Sociology is something I would consider breaking into separate fields, as each one varies in its degree of rigor. On the whole, HELL NO, NOT SCIENCE. Experimentation is not prevalent, and there actually exist antipositivists within the field.

Economics can vary. In many ways, it is more a formal science like mathematics. However, it also makes use of observation, akin to astronomy. I'd say it is not a science.

But no, none of these fields are wholly invalid. You just need to add grains of salt in proportion to the lack of rigor.

Example, arbitrary, made-up scale of topics in order of decreasing scientific rigor:
>Neuroscience
>Neuropsychology
>Psychology (at this point it is a bunch of mouthshitting humanities folks pretending to be discovering the human mind).
>Experimental economics
>Neuroeconomics
>Mathematical economics
>Economics (what's going on at this point? silliness)
>Sociology (is shit tier because I don't even know what I'd break that into)

>>5002087

Psych sans prefixes and specifiers belongs on bottom/shit level, my mistake.

Techniques in psychology (particularly perceptual psychophysics) and economics (particularly microeconomics and game theory) have made the only real strides in understanding the behavioral significance of cortical and subcortical brain regions possible. Primate neurophysiology would be nothing without a psychometric function or a utility function. The random dot motion task used to study lateral intraparietal, FEF/SEF and V4? You can thank psychologists for that.

Even purely behavioral studies are useful to neuroscience. Case in point: last week's jneurosci featured a paper that predicted properties of saccades using economic intertemporal value functions. That's a paper in a (very very good) neuroscience journal that had nothing but eye position data, and used economic and psychological models to characterize it.

I have nothing to say about sociology, though.

>>5002087
This is a completely arbitrarily ranked list of vastly overlapping disciplines. Can you try to justify this, please?

Economics cannot be a science because experiments are not performed.

>>5002132
The 1950s called, they want to tell you about experimental economics.

>>5002132

Then astronomy isnt a science? Or Geology?


>>5002135

Behavioral econ seems to be getting more and more popular all the time.

>>5002132

Experiments are conducted, just in a different form. Economic experiments consist of statistical analysis.