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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28305 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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A psychologist himself, Adam Mastroianni proclaims: I'm sorry for psychology's loss, whatever it is.

I found this post on the slatestarcodex subreddit. The main article discusses how the replication crisis really isn't as bad as most people think, because:

Gino's work has been cited over 33,000 times, and Ariely's work has been cited over 66,000 times. They both got tenured professorships at elite universities. They wrote books, some of which became bestsellers. They gave big TED talks and lots of people watched them. By every conventional metric of success, these folks were killing it.

Now let's imagine every allegation of fraud is true, and everything Ariely and Gino ever did gets removed from the scientific record, It's a Wonderful Life-style. (We are, I can't stress this enough, imagining this. Buzz buzz, I’m bees.) What would change?

Not much.

Basically this idea can be boiled down to 'well most modern psychologists don't do anything that's even remotely important, so why do we care if these studies don't replicate?' I'm very wary of buying this type of argument. One reason is that over $2 billion dollars went into psychology research, in the US alone, way back in 2016. I'm sure it has increased since then.

On top of that, as psychologists themselves have acknowledged, many public policies get based on psychological research. In the light of the replication crisis, this is perhaps the largest and most under-discussed mistake of the 21st century. The majority of our politicians are basing their decisions, and public justifications, on a field of science that has been proven to be mostly fake. To me, that's not something we can just throw up our hands at and say is trivial.

Another interesting point, which I won't go too far into, is that many of the replicable studies in psychology are just completely ignored. Here's a highly-upvoted comment on the SSC subreddit:

Psychology has nothing interesting left because all of the rock-solid empirical results with tremendous real-world consequences were buried due to being politically awkward.

Psychometrics, heredity of various personality traits, innate gender differences, etc.

So you're naturally left with irrelevancies (monkey prostitutes) and lies (growth mindset, power posing, priming, multiple intelligences).

It's almost enough to make me empathize with Gino and Ariely. The modern discipline is all about garbing feel-good falsehoods with vestments of science. Their only crime was taking the more direct path to that end, rather than undertaking the standard rituals of plausibly innocent methodological infirmities (p-hacking etc.)

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not Psychology deserves an equal place among the rest of the sciences.

It should feel disheartening to see this sort of brazen nihilism when it comes to error and wrong thinking. But where else can these people go? Most of them have locked themselves away from anything relevant, like the SSC comment described.

I think this sort of nihilism should be recognized for the ultimate cowardice that it is. These things, heredity, psychometrics and all the rest aren't meaningless. They are incredibly meaningful. And these people wallowing in nihilism aren't powerless, they are in fact quite powerful. But when they've already decided they wont do anything because the truth rests outside the Overton Window, the nihilism is entirely predictable and entirely self serving.

The article and the person who writes it are hiding. Cowering. Running away. Psychology's loss is the field itself and everything it impacts. The lives of tens of thousands of people who kill themselves every year after useless morons who are following 'the research' fail to help them. Millions of lives directly made worse due to policy based on fraudulent research.

It's not just that the author of the article is responsible; every social network of people who really should know better but pretend they don't due to whatever personal reasons they have are directly causing this to happen every single time they reinforce the status quo.

To see these people, the sorry state of the field and for them to shrug their shoulders as if this all just fell from the sky... What assholes. Take some responsibility. The fight for sanity has been ongoing for decades. There was nothing stopping these creatures from joining the losing side of truth to try and turn the tide. But they didn't. Instead they actively fight against it and then wonder why people laugh at them at parties when they say they're a psychologist.

No, you are not even remotely close to being a Rennaissance fair actor. They are a lot less embarrassing than you.

I think that’s a poor way of measuring impact. Given that Arely has gotten his ideas into the mainstream is a huge problem. TBH it’s my problem with the entire field (which I suspect is mostly pseudoscience). We’re using it to help people, we’re making policy decisions based on psychology. And as far as I’m concerned the obvious mental health declines in our therapeutic cultures have proven disastrous. We have more and more people, including fairly young kids, on psychiatric drugs. We have more anxiety, depression and suicide than we did 100 years ago. We have more drug use as well.

In the past, things like religion and stoic philosophy had a much better track record. They weren’t committing suicide, they weren’t too anxious and depressed to function, they didn’t do drugs to numb themselves.

In the past, things like religion and stoic philosophy had a much better track record.

Agreed. While @Nantafiria makes a good point that things have changed and we may need different answers to give people spiritual and mental health, I don't think humans have really changed all that much.

Before the last century or so, we just took the religious traditions we had and interpreted them in a new way to accomodate new environments. If that didn't work, then a messiah would come along and bring in a new religion to help cope with the societal issues of the day.

Unfortunately, the discovery of Newtonian mechanics gave us far too much hubris. We, well really a small intellectual elite, decided that humanity had learned so much we were as Gods. We no longer needed the wisdom of these ancient traditions, we didn't need any tradition of wisdom whatsover; who needs wisdom when you have 'unfathomable' power?

And now us, the descendants of these fools, are trying to pick up the pieces. I hope we can weave back together some sort of wisdom-conferring tapestry from the broken pieces before we kill ourselves on the alter of Moloch. Only time will tell.

Humanity has equated itself with the Gods since the time we've had Gods; even the Christians have to make up saints now and then when someone particularly impressive comes along. Oppenheimer famously invented power as in the Mahabharata; Borlaug shall be our Demeter, for making grain sprout where it never had before; Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, and modern man has since driven out so many predators that the list is larger than I'd know to guess at; no more women pray to Hera to save themselves and their children from gruesome death in labour, for we have usurped her power too. If we had still believed in most these Gods, we would do well to rank ourselves among them in terrible power and might. We have genuinely gotten so far that to what few people still do live in premodern conditions, we might as well be that.

But (I think) no Gods exist or have ever existed, and people still run off the same hardware that we did in the days of Cyrus and Alkibiades. And even in those ancient days, people had their upheavals! As Europe went from being ruled by freeholding farmers in tribes and city-states to being ruled by larger landowners yet, we invented Nicene Christianity. When a middle class later emerged, many countries became protestant. And now, with more changes than I care to note, many people are choosing to reject Christianity wholesale.

People in the past weren't stupid. The traditions from their day that survive by and large served them very well and don't deserve the universal scorn they receive in some atheist spaces, though even that is out of fashion. They are, even so, dated. You don't need to be Uncle Ted to notice how much industrialisation has changed society, and you don't need a fedora to wonder if a book dating to Roman times is the best we can do any more. I absolutely believe we are due a new prophet. And when he pops up, I pray we see him for what he is, too.

Incredibly well articulated. I agree with pretty much everything here, although I do hold some reservations about:

But (I think) no Gods exist or have ever existed,

Nor sure how to articulate a rebuttal myself, but personal experience has convinced me to seriously question this denial. Guess that's faith.

Perhaps when I say we don't need a new prophet, a clearer distillation of my point is that we have a lot of work to do preparing our society we recognizing and accepting a new prophets message. As we are now I fear scientific rationalism is too powerful to defeat unless we chip away at it's grip on the world.

There is nothing to defeat. The social excesses of our world are a problem, but no unprecedented one. Scientific rationalism works. It precedes the problems talked about upthread - suicide, depression, drug abuse - and it will survive them, too. @HlynkaCG has noted before that an innovation of the Enlightenment's is a general rejection of mystery, and that seems about right. I do not believe there is meaningful knowledge beyond comprehension, and I don't think people are soon going back to believing that in a world where we know what is past the sky, below the earth, down the seas, and even on the surface of the sun. We aren't going back to a world where religion is what we turn to for an explanation on these things, now or ever. That bridge has been burned, and we need to live with a world where we must solve our problems ourselves.

Yes, of course.

More comments

I personally find therapeutic culture revolting. It seems overwhelmingly coddling and feminine to me. So I am presupposed to believe it leads to bad outcomes. And from that predisposition I could make arguments that adversity leads to growth and therapy is used as an excuse to avoid adversity (eg difficult thing is bad for my mental health) thereby stunting growth making people miserable in the long run.

But is it true? Are there cultures that haven’t gone headfirst into therapy culture that haven’t seen the same deleterious outcome?

I’m not sure about any current culture, though I’d point out that there is some research on mental disorders manifesting differently or even just not existing in a given culture until widespread access to western ideas (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html). I think it’s possible and even probable that the way we talk about these illnesses, and treat everyday problems as traumatic, upsetting, and likely to cause a mental illness might very well be causing people to get these mental illnesses and making those who do get them malinger when in a “blind” state where those messages weren’t telling them that long lasting sadness is depression, depression is a brain disease that can only be treated by a psychiatrist issuing an antidepressant drug. Or when they suggest that trauma causes anxiety and then go on to tell people that everything up to and including stubbing your toe is traumatic, they might well cause anxiety simply because the public has been taught this.

I’m a bit more knowledgeable of Stoicism. And really, it’s a bit different in approach. They say that bad stuff will happen, and thus it’s better to not get attached to things being how they are right now. You might lose that house, car, even a child. You cannot control nature. Or to put it in the the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson “the universe excels at finding ways to kill you”. But what you can control is the mind. The universe is free to smash your house with an asteroid. But you are free to not let that negative even control your mind. You can accept it, you can choose to rebuild the house or move away, you can choose to build telescopes and map asteroids so that it doesn’t happen to other people. You choose your thoughts and to some degree your emotions, and as such you don’t have to be traumatized by adverse events. It just do be like that sometimes. And beyond that, you can even without the asteroid hitting the house, choose to be a moral upstanding human and be a good person. This was a pretty standard way of living for quite a long time.

Whether or not you can modernize it, I mean, probably. It was a Greco Roman Philosophy. It also sort of exists in Buddhism. There are parts of the Bible that echo the same ideas. I don’t see it as complicated to adapt, nor does the core idea need that much updating.

I’m assuming in the Biblical tradition you are referencing Job?

Also how do we disentangle western ideas from western modernism?

Doubtful on Job. He endured his first few trials without much complaint, but then had a lot of understandable anguish and despair.

I’d say stoicism is more compatible with the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. There’s just a wealth of verses about enduring suffering, exercising self control, and reasoning.

Christ himself set a stoic example in voluntarily submitting to the cross. Even as he asked God the Father to spare him that trial, he accepted his role and did not engage in self pity.

Romans 5:3-5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 - Test everything; hold on to what is good.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 - “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

Titus 2:11-12 - “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.”

2 Peter 1:5-7 - “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

James 1:2-4 - “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 - “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Timothy 2:3 - “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”

Hebrews 12:1-3 - “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

There are parts of the Bible that echo the same ideas. I don’t see it as complicated to adapt, nor does the core idea need that much updating.

I think the problem is that we don't have as much real suffering as we did in the past. It's hard to get people to follow Stoic teachings etc when their lives are relatively cushy.

You can introduce little suffering to prepare yourself. Try camping with minimal technology for a week. Take a cold shower, play a sport or work out. Sleep without a blanket in the winter. I don’t think that’s going to completely overcome our easy lifestyle, but I think it does teach you that you can actually do that and still be okay.

In the past, things like smartphones and all-encompassing corporate ads weren't yet around. People lived in spaces that were their own and that of their community; insofar they didn't, they lived in bad times that nobody wants to go back to either. I have as much contempt for psychologists insisting we listen to them despite their inability to seek the truth, but I don't know that we can attribute the current state of mental health to them. Our environment is sufficiently different from our ancestors' that things are just irrevocably different.

In all, 3.2 percent of the nation's $66.2 billion in federal research funding went to psychological research in 20161,2 (approximately $2.1 billion).

2 billion is still way too much but it's at least better than 66 billion!

I agree with your premise though. Psychology is important and it's done badly. Mental health is getting worse.

“I agree with your premise though. Psychology is important and it's done badly. Mental health is getting worse.”

Interested way to word this. It’s also the standard I have for complete abandonment of an idea. Sounds a lot like communism has never been tried etc.

"Psychology" is not analogous to "communism"; it's analogous to "politics". It doesn't make sense to say that because X theory about Y phenomenon is wrong and harmful, Y phenomenon isn't worth studying.

You think understanding the human mind is not important? Clearly there's a lot wrong with academic psychology but the very notion of understanding human behavior is not wrong.

66b is way too much.

LMAO. Thanks for the correction. Will edit.

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