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pepinator

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pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
I'm not saying humanity is impossible to describe (on the contrary!). your physics example is too different to what happens in social sciences, it's not a good analogy. you can largely control the conditions under which you throw the balls, while if you're, for instance, studying the recent socio political events in the USA, things are given and then you need to rely on similar past event to understand current ones. even in fields like psychology it's too difficult to even measure initial conditions and outputs. that's why you rely on qualitative analysis.
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
no, but we're talking about Europe on general. and the initial claim is surely false in countries like Spain, France, Poland and Belgium
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
I agree with what you say, but that doesn't make social sciences the same as astrology. their conclusions, even if qualitative, can be valid and useful.
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
The problem is that there are no two equal situations in social sciences, so you won't ever have the same set of initial conditions. I don't know why they call them sciences, but the scientific method is intrinsically incompatible with social phenomena.
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
I agree that a lot of people speak two languages. But man, I've lived in several countries in Europe for many years, and even the average university student doesn't really speak English (and I work at the university so I interact with many of them). Even in countries like Belgium where there're three official languages!

However, I'd agree with that the average educated person can somewhat communicate ideas in a second language. This is what polls usually show, around 30% to 50% of people.
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
> Your average European speaks at least three

ok ok I get the point but let's not exaggerate
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
how do you falsify a hypothesis in social sciences?
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
saying that social science is astrology at best is quite extremist. serious people work in those fields
pepinator
·hace 6 meses·discuss
it surprises me how many people simply don't get the point. they say "they make more money this way, so it's ok". no big picture at all.
pepinator
·hace 7 meses·discuss
mmmh I don't think so. I've read several papers on cellular automata and I don't recognize the terms