Richard Feynman on Pseudoscience

I agree with you a bit. But I also think there's a danger in assuming every anecdote is a data point, which is best expressed here: [this video] (Short video with Richard Feynman)... tl;dv - it's very hard to know something and you have to be really careful that you've done the work and aren't just deluding yourself. Or, to put it differently - every anecdote is really only a data point if you understand what exactly it's measuring and what has been excluded. If you haven't taken the care necessary, then it's very easy to draw false conclusions. People are really bad witnesses and really bad at seeing what is and isn't given in the information they think they have - particularly if the anecdote is time-shifted from the point it was taken.

> In other words, the field just has very low standards for truth, in a scientific sense. The field has little to no scientific sense. It's why psychiatry/psychology is a soft science. It isn't based on the scientific method or reproducibility and testing. It's mostly based on consensus driven by a handful of powerful practitioners. [link] What sigmund freud did wasn't science. His oedipal complex theory isn't a scientific theory. There is no scientific test to refute it. You just accept it or not. The biggest problem of our generation is the conflation of science ( hard science ) with pseudoscience ( soft science ). Because both has the word science in it, people give soft sciences far more credit than it deserves. If anyone is interested, Richard Feynman had a very interesting interview about it. [this video]

Actually what most people consider science is in line with Popper's view. When most people think science, they think the "hard sciences" - physics, biology, chemistry, etc. It's fairly recently that the idea of the "soft sciences" ( sociology, economists, etc ) being real science has become popular. Richard Feynman called "soft science" a pseudoscience, which I completely agree with. [this video] Humanities departments around the country essentially appropriated the good name of science at add more legitimacy to their "soft science". It's similar to how "christian science" or "scientology" appropriated the good name of science to legitimatize themselves in the eyes of the public. Creationists have even created creationism "science" to make themselves look more legitimate.

It's in a replication crisis because pretty much none of it is science ( no replicable testing possible - hypothesis, experiment, theory ). It's why Richard Feynmann associated social science with pseudoscience. [this video] Because real science destroyed the credibility of religion and religion in much of the world is no longer a credible social control tool, the elites needed a new form of religion to control society. That new religion is social "science". Whereas religion controlled everything from economics, schooling, family, culture, society, law, etc, now they all fall under the pseudoscience/religion called social "science". --------------------------------------------- Reply to ziddoap. Considering you tossed around "illumati-esque", I doubt you are interested. I consider social science to be a pseudoscience for the same reason richard feynmann did. Did you bother watching what he had to say? Social "science" is a humanities. It belongs in the category with philosophy, ethics, literature, religion, etc. Just because I said it is a pseudoscience doesn't mean that I think it is useless or bad necessarily. No more than I think literature, ethics, philosophy or even religion is bad. I just think social "science" is a "religion" trying to latch onto the good name of real science. Just like creationism "science" or all the other fake "science" trying to gain credibility by associating itself with science.

> Then they goes on to criticize political science and psychology as their poster children for the humanities, except these are social sciences Social sciences are a humanities. The term social science was invented fairly recently by sneaky academics to leech off the credibility of actual science. > It's like the author isn't even familiar with academia. Are you? This issue with "social science" has been going on for a few decades now. Richard Feymann called social science a pseudoscience a few decades ago. [this video] The name social science was invented for the same reason creation science was invented because real science had such a good reputation and they didn't so they decided to manufacture some credibility by attaching "science" to their fields.