with regards to energy expenditure compared to return, they likely make more than Jeff, per hour. — Book273

Are you really that fucking stupid? Jeff earns about £1 billion a week. Out of work benefits are about £300.

That's a few million times more. There isn't enough energy turnover in the human body for Jeff to be working a million times harder that anyone who isn't in a coma.

I'm fascinated to know what went through your head when you wrote that? I mean, did you think it through at all? Was there even a flicker of some rational process starting before you thought "Nah, I'll just stick to parroting bits of Ayn Rand"?

If you clicked the first link, what did you hear? — bongo fury

Something about ketchup?

just sharing some lovely (perhaps inauthentic) social history.

No aspersions or barbs. — bongo fury

Cool.

What are you, as a psychologist, willing to sacrifice in order to reduce the stigma of a psychiatric diagnosis?

Answer this, and you'll have a context for the above. — baker

I'm really not sure what you think I could do. I was a researcher for most of my career. Now I mainly help organisations include human factors in their long-term risk analysis. What would you have me do differently to effect a change in the stigma associated with psychiatric diagnosis? I really would be glad to help, but I haven't a clue how.

There is a stereotype about psychologists that says that psychologists have a poor grasp of human nature. — baker

Is there? And..?

The negative reactions you often see to psychologists is when people resent the legal power that psychologists have. — baker

Really? Do we see the same with judges, barristers, solicitors, policemen, doctors, forensic lab technicians, and graphologists?

No they aren’t? If you’re wrong about something.

So for instance “I know England is gonna win tomorrow”. England loses. Now I say, “I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t”. Now the first sentence is not conserved. — khaled

I meant the the meaning of the word was conserved, not the truth of the entire proposition.

“I know England is gonna win tomorrow” is a claim - that my picture of England winning tomorrow matches the reality of tomorrow.

“I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t” retains the meaning of 'knew' (where by 'meaning' here I just mean to be synonymous). It still means 'my picture of England winning tomorrow matches the reality of tomorrow.' - if I replace it, the sentence retains its meaning.

“I thought my picture of England winning tomorrow matched the reality of tomorrow, but it didn’t”.

It seems we’re not entirely consistent in our usage. Sometimes we seem to be using a correspondence definition. Sometimes we seem to be using a degree of confidence definition. — khaled

Yes, I think that's true (by which I mean I'm quite confident - 'True' suffers from the same problem!).

I have absolutely no idea what any of that means, but I'm delighted by the complete absurdity of it all. I sincerely hope it has no connection to the OP at all and it's a masterful stroke of Dadaism, but I suspect there'll be some more tralatitious meaning...?

My problem is that I do not want to support someone that elects to do nothing. Do nothing, get nothing. — Book273

But they don't do nothing, we've just established that. They do very little, and they get very little - the exact amount determined by the organisation paying them. It's all exactly as you claim you want it to be. Value is determined by the person paying and no one gets anything for nothing. So, again, what exactly is the problem you're trying to describe?

value is set by someone other than the worker. You might have a more valuable skill than I have, ergo, you make more when you use that skill. I may work 80 hours a week, so despite you earning more each hour that you work, I may take home more each week as I work longer hours. Bob might work longer than both of us, and have amazingly valuable skills, so he makes more than both of us combined.
Whoever is paying us determines our value. — Book273

Right. So the government who pays the benefits determines the value. The five minutes of work done by those on benefits is valued by the government (the ones paying them).

So what's your problem?

Somebody wants to work hard, — Book273

It's your definition of 'work hard' that's bullshit. You're just including in that definition everything that's done under standard western capitalism and excluding stuff you don't like. There's nothing honest, down-to-earth, hard working about most corporate goings on, they do as little as possible for the maximum return. I'm asking you for clear distinction between that and a benefit recipient who's doing as little as possible (attending the benefits office) for the maximum return (benefits payment).

You've not answered the question. How are you measuring value?

Sure. Equal value. I am not seeing that in your position — Book273

You were talking about hours worked, now you're talking about value. It would help if you remained consistent. What is it that you are using to measure whether people deserve the remuneration they get hours worked or value? If the latter, then how are you measuring value?

Hardly. Let those benefit receivers get up bright and early and spend as much time lobbying for their wage as the people going to full time jobs. I am just not seeing that. Maybe that's just the locals there though. Do they spend 40 hours a week at the government offices in your area? — Book273

See my edit above. They don't need to work 40hrs a week, why would they? What is it about 40hrs that's so special? Equal value in - equal value out, that's the principle you are espousing here.

I am unclear as to how supporting those who are unwilling to support themselves is of value, end of story. — Book273

They're not unwilling to support themselves. as I've said, they vote for governments who pay them benefits, they shop for food, make dinner, attend the benefits office... You're setting an arbitrary bar for 'amount of work' that only applies to those on benefits.

Effort in, something of value in return. — Book273

As I made clear on the other thread where you're arguing the same nonsense. If Jeff Bezos can be used as an example of your 'effort in - value out' principle, then a person on benefits only needs to put in five minutes of effort in order to justify the payment they receive. This threshold is easily met by all by the comatose.

Ah, bullshit then. Thought so.

if the individual, using their own skills, manages to convince the government to increase that individuals wage, then yes, it is a skill which secures a wage by it's exercise. However, since that is very nearly never the case, as those lacking said skills are provided skilled advocates, usually on the government's dime, to lobby the government, that should not be allowed. — Book273

That's just moving the goalposts. If they didn't do the advocacy themselves, they still lobbied and voted for a government who provided them. Somehow a set of legal and organisational circumstances has come about which allows this, why is the evolution of such a set of circumstances different from the evolution of the set of circumstances which allow the working population to receive remuneration? These workers didn't bring all those circumstances about by themselves either.

Hard to support that kind of apathy, hence my position that stopping benefits to those who refuse self improvement. — Book273

What level of apathy? Are you suggesting that there's some objective relationship between work and remuneration? If Jeff Bezos works, lets be generous, a 40hr week to earn his $1.7milion at $800/hr your average benefit recipient would have to work for just 5 minutes a day. Are you suggesting they don't even do five minutes of work? If you're happy for Jeff Bezos to get $800/hr for the work he does, why not benefit recipients? Why shouldn't they earn $800/hr for the five minutes of work they do (attending the Job Centre, for example)?

Dead weight is better as simply dead. Compost has a purpose. — Book273

The government consider that a healthy workforce available for work have a purpose. Are you sufficiently qualified in economics to override their judgement?

Jeff does stuff for his money. It might not be sweeping the sidewalk, but it still amounts to doing something. — Book273

So do benefit recipients. The government pays them to keep themselves alive and available for work. They do so.

Point is, he still needs to have skills to run the company, shmooze the politicians, etc to get the results he wants. — Book273

So do benefit recipients. They successfully lobby (and vote for) governments who pay them to keep themselves alive and available for work.

I was thinking more the "I'm too good to sweep a sidewalk, and I deserve a much higher wage than that." while having no education and no motivation while getting welfare type. — Book273

I know. Hence my corrective. Those who refuse to sweep the sidewalk are of no different a type. Everyone tries to do as little unpleasant work as possible for the maximum return the current legal system will allow. All the way from your broom-averse benefit scrounger to Jeff Bezos. Maximum return legally possible, minimum investment of undesirable work.

Why focus on the small fry?

I think that, rather than stop benefits, those receiving benefits should be put to work and receive additional, functional training in order to secure a better, more suitable wage for themselves. — Book273

I agree entirely. We should start with Jeff Bezos, I think, might as well start with the biggest drain first. The benefits he receives in terms of all the infrastructure the government have built on which he bases his business, plus the legal protection he benefits from, the interest payments, government incentives and lobbied deals... If someone on a few hundred a week in benefits has to work 35hrs to earn it, poor Jeff's going to have to work 24/7 for the government to pay off even a fraction of his benefits. Still...fair's fair.

An example? — khaled

Ignore @Banno's dramatics. The problem is only a mundane linguistic one. We say "I know the capital of France is Paris", we also say "I thought I knew what the capital of France was, but I didn't".

Normal uses of the past tense conserve meaning in context. So if 'I know' were to mean something like {I'm 99% confident}, then "I knew" would mean something like {I was 99% confident}. But if you substitute those expressions into the common sentences above, they don't work. We get "I thought I was 99% confident what the capital of France was, but I wasn't". But that's not true. We were 99% confident at the time, we're just not now. So equating 'know' with confidence doesn't match our normal use, in those contexts.

In my opinion, the normal use is best matched by assuming we're referring to a correspondence theory of truth. It's more similar to "I thought I was in love but I wasn't", we're describing our state of mind, only here we're describing the degree to which it matches/matched reality. "I know X" means that the picture I have of X matches the way X really is. So 'I knew' means the picture I had of X matched the way X really was. Substitute those meanings into our tricky sentences and they are safely conserved between tenses.

Of course, whether we're right to have a picture-based correspondence theory of truth is another matter... but it seems to be what we're talking about with the word 'know' in those particular contexts.

If someone feels entitled to a higher wage, they need to develop their skills. — Kasperanza

Why is lobbying a government to pay your wage out of taxation income not allowed then? This, surely, is a 'skill' which secures a wage by its exercise?

Then like everywhere else on the net - you left wing bullies have driven out alternate opinion — counterpunch

But your opinion is still here is it not? Very much in print and in its full 'alternate' majesty. Do you notice any deletions? Nothing of alternate opinion has been lost just by you ceasing to repeat it.

I reiterate my advice to you. Time to give up. — T Clark

You're right. Nothing here but constantly shifting ground and a willful ignorance of what psychology actually entails. But the essence is this...

I use, use, use (and not alone) psychology to mean an enterprise, when being done, that is not scientific or not altogether scientific, science being the enterprise of following the scientific method. — tim wood

If you create an unusual, idiosyncratic (and self-immunised) definition of a word, then it's going to yield unusual, idiosyncratic consequences. I can't see why they'd be of any interest to anyone outside of your esoteric cabal of language users.

The wishful thinking of psychologists and some others — tim wood

Until you correct this there's no point in further discussion. Virtually every university in the world offers psychology (or some cognitive equivalent) as a bachelor of science where it is offered at all. The Royal Society lists psychology as a science. The US National Academy of Sciences list psychology as a science. The German, French and Swedish Academies all list psychology as a science (those were the one's I bothered to look up), psychology papers are published in the journal 'Science', by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, psychologists win awards for science awarded by academies to support science, I get grants from the government's science research funding...

The only relevant question for you to be asking is where your error is, not where the error is in every university, academy, research institute and funding initiative in the world. If they're all using 'science' in such a way as to include psychology, it's you who've misunderstood what the word means, not they who are remiss in not consulting you before using it.

Let's set aside for the moment the question about psychology and consider a more fundamental question: what makes something be what it is? For example, a car in a field lacking its engine can be called a car but it really isn't one, and its engine by itself isn't a car. So it's reasonable to ask - not that it comes up often - just what is the without-which-not, the sine qua non, of a car? — tim wood

Use. Use. Use. It is the threshold of where we would commonly use the word 'car' and where we would not. There's no God-given dictionary in the sky which tells us what words 'really' mean in advance of us using them. They mean exactly what they are used to mean. As above, 'science' is clearly used in such a way as to include psychology. So you're either mistaken about psychology, or mistaken about the meaning of the word 'science'.

Laws allowing corporations to be for-profit and exist in perpetuity are distortions to market structures and not inherent to a capitalist system. — Benkei

That seems like a good description of the Boulder Model, which is the basis for training "scientist-practitioners." From what I have heard from clinical psychologists, many institutions handle cases as teams, consisting of a number of disciplines to develop diagnosis and response. Taking responsibility for treatment is a demanding and complicated process. — Valentinus

An interesting connection I've not made before. There are a number of issues with the Boulder Method which I think would run counter to the model as well though, such as the slightly reductionist view of the research>practice routes, but overall, I can see the link.

Sometimes it just makes sense to give up. — T Clark

You're absolutely right, of course, but I did ask him to look at the papers (though I should not have), so feel obliged to, so...

What wild accusations? — tim wood

You claimed psychology is not a science, yes? Or did I misinterpret that? Such a claim is contrary to conclusion of almost every university in the world, The UK Royal society (the oldest scientific institution in the world), the US National Academy of Sciences, as well as those of almost every country in Europe.

So yes, it's a wild accusation. To be honest, too much time has already been spent dismissing such a ludicrous notion in the light of the disagreement of virtually every science institution in world.

Please, you're embarrassing yourself.... It's not fucking yellow either is it? Moron. — Isaac

You're the one who wrote the above. — tim wood

Seriously? "I know you are, but what am I?", might have worked if I was five. You made an analogy that because psychology mixed unscientific and scientific methods it could not be called 'scientific' (was not all blue so could not be called 'blue'). Exactly the same applies to the term unscientific. it's not all yellow so can't be called 'yellow' either. It was a stupid analogy and it's revealing of the blinding bias in your assessment that you didn't notice it. I called that out.

I have taken some care to qualify my remarks about psychology — tim wood

You've done no such thing at all. You've asserted that in order for a field to qualify as a science, every activity done under the name has to be completely scientific. You've offered us not even so much as a sentence justifying that assertion.

whatever the results, they are specific and non-replicable — tim wood

Why?

even if many studies were done on different groups, how do you control for group variability. — tim wood

Ahh, the classic - I don't understand how a thing can be done, therefore it can't be done. Shall I point you in the direction of the appropriate textbook, or are you looking to enrol on a degree course?

"These results suggest...". Plausibly. — tim wood

Have you ever read a scientific paper? You think none ever produce results which only suggest?

It's time for you to say what science is. — tim wood

Can't beat the Susan Haack definition already given (thanks @Tom Storm).

science is the application of the scientific method and where not applied, then not science. And this would seem obvious — tim wood

Ten how do you explain the position of almost every academy and school of science in the world? Are they all wrong and only you right?

If psych. is to be all science, then all of it must be science. — tim wood

Again, offered without any justification at all.

___

But as T Clark has already warned, there's little point in continuing to bang my head against blind prejudice.

The fact is that the term “science” simply has no very clear boundaries: the reference of the term is fuzzy, indeterminate and, not least, frequently contested. — Tom Storm

Exactly.

Now show how it is a science. — tim wood

Instead of making wild accusations and then expecting one's opposition to do all the legwork to prove you wrong, why don't you actually trouble to support your own position.

Here's the first five preprint papers in my review feed. Why don't you explain why their methodologies don't amount to science, then we can fully understand what you're talking about.

https://psyarxiv.com/3wg5j/
https://psyarxiv.com/c46jt/
https://psyarxiv.com/xhbty/
https://psyarxiv.com/sh3xz/
https://psyarxiv.com/eh5pb/

Are you saying functions of the mind that produce behaviour, but not strictly behaviour itself? If you are saying, as it seems, that psyche is something one theorises in others, not something one observes directly, then we are substantially in agreement. — unenlightened

Yes, that is precisely what I'm saying. Even without psychology proper (the academic field of research) we observe the behaviour of others, see how it is similar to our own, and infer the sorts of thoughts we have might motive them too. Psychology infers that the levels of consistency seem indicate that this process is amenable to modelling, at least to an extent. different schools differ as to what data points should be included in that modelling (just behaviour, behaviour and personal reports, behaviour and neurological imagery, behaviour and evolutionary function,.... and so on). But to my knowledge, there's not one school out there which thinks it can 'see' psychological processes directly, nor which assumes self-analysis provides reasonable data, so it's all about inferring and it's all about collecting data from others.

Which brings us on to...

my favourite psychological theory; it's Personal Construct Theory. — unenlightened

I have a lot of sympathy with Kelly (et al), but my issues (small as they are), is that the degree to which his psychological approach is radically different from any other, is overstated. Again, the emphasis (as it has been throughout, here) is on psychotherapy, not psychology. In the former, Kelly's approach really does stand out - it's lead to things like Person Centred Therapy, which is almost the only therapy I'd actually ever recommend. But that's not Psychology. His approach to psychology (constructivism) has been taught in mainstream degrees since I can remember (and I'm a dinosaur). It's pretty much the foundation of developmental psychology (thanks to Piaget), it's overwhelmingly the dominant theory in all forms of cognitive psychology, almost to the exclusion of anything else, psychologists like Lisa Feldman Barrett have extended it into what's left of personality psychology... basically, I think you'd struggle to find a psychologist working in research today who didn't have at least some background assumptions of constructivism, maybe a few diehard evolutionists and one or two leftover behaviourists, but I've not met any.

It at least acknowledges that the way one thinks about other people and of course oneself - ones psychological theory - is a major, crucial influence on one's behaviour. — unenlightened

Yep. Personal narratives. I've worked on little else for the last 25 years. Maybe that's given me too selective a view of psychology, maybe I've simply surrounded myself with like-minded research groups and forgotten the rest of my field, I don't know. Seems unlikely, but it's possible I suppose. From where I'm stood, most of research psychology seems that way.

That's what I do with psychologists! I poke them and watch them squirm. — unenlightened

That's what I do with everyone...is that not normal...

Now, now. You're getting all excited again. — T Clark

Or am I? We couldn't possibly infer my mental state from my actions, that'd be basically witchcraft.

I'm talking about what would justify the same great measure of legal power that they have. — baker

Let's not then. What would you replace that power with. Criminals all get treated the same regardless of their mental health? The judge just guesses? We put it to a vote? What is it you think we should be doing instead of making diagnoses based on educated guesswork?

Yeah, when psychologists say such things to people, this really helps to improve the reputation of psychology!!! — baker

Psychology could cure cancer, find the Holy Grail, and win England the World Cup and it's reputation would remain unaltered amoung the ranks of the bizarre crusade this thread is on.

If literally nothing I say is contributing to the collective thought process anyway then I might as well swear like a sailor.

When posting Cambridge University School of Psychology's definition of what psychology covers hasn't budged people an inch from their lazy, puerile assumption that psychology is "Freud 'n that init", what more could I possibly do? Lobotomy?

Get a can of blue paint, paint a wall blue and claim it's blue and the world will agree. Mix the blue with yellow, paint the wall and claim it's blue and the world will tell you it's green. Or paint it in alternate blue and yellow stripes and claim it's blue and the world will again note the error. — tim wood

Please, you're embarrassing yourself.

Blue=research with scientific methodology.
Yellow=research with unscientific methodology.
Paint the wall both yellow and blue in stripes. The wall's not blue (scientific) - genius. It's not fucking yellow either is it? Moron.

Well you are the psychologist; perhaps you should say what is the psyche. — unenlightened

Fair enough.

from my side, I would say that what one can observe is behaviour and perhaps brain imagery with equipment, and these are not psyche. Psyche is inner; psyche is the immediacy, the presence that makes the present present. — unenlightened

This is only what I would call awareness. Psyche, as far as Psychology is concerned is the entire set of functions carried out to derive behaviour from external stimuli (or internal ones, depending which school you follow). We take observations of external stimuli, observations of behaviour and then use models of psyche to make predictions about the relationship, test those predictions and refine the models accordingly. Nowadays, these models are mostly pre-refined by ensuring they fit within the confines of what neuroscience tells us is possible.

if I notice that someone is identified with 'psychology' and gets angry and defensive when it is questioned or criticised, that is an observation — unenlightened

Are anger and defensiveness not aspects of the psyche? You seem to be saying here that you can do psychology but psychologists can't. I think I understood you better before the explanation!

I must be careful here, because it is easy to misunderstand. I can make such observations of myself in memory; looking back in the thread I might see something like that, but it would not then be an insight. — unenlightened

I agree with the sentiment, it's something central to much of my work, that we only really know our own thoughts through the memory of having them (which is necessarily modulated by cultural narratives - but that's a whole other story). But the way you've phrased it here seems to leave that which you define as 'insight', very little to do. Observing the psyche of others ( or inferring it from behaviour) is not insight, neither is analysis of one's own thoughts (necessarily post hoc recollections). What's left?

I thought you meant something more like a gut feeling - 'insight' as in the building of castles in the air, hoping there's some foundations for them. That's where I see the study of psyche, a feeling about in the dark, with much speculation on the form of that which one is grasping blind. But even here, I find it hard to see how good attempts at limiting confounding factors and good statistical analysis isn't going to be at least an improvement on mere armchair speculation.

The thing about psychology (as opposed to other speculative enterprises like, say, evolutionary biology), is that one has to have a theory. We can't just postpone speculation until we've honed the method to a properly scientific one, we interact with other people all the time, we make decision which affect them. Every time we do this we do so on the basis of some theory about their psyche which dictates how we think they'll respond. So we can't do without psychology, we're all psychologists. It's just a question of whether we can do anything to even slightly improve the utility of our models.

What, generally, then, do you say is the subject matter of psychology? And how is it done scientifically? With science being understood as employing scientific method. — tim wood

As I said to @unenlightened, and have clearly evidenced using the example of Cambridge School of Psychology, psychology considers itself the study of the human psyche, including it's assumed substrate (the central nervous system). What you or I say is it's proper subject is immaterial.

As to the personality theorists, you may not consider them psychologists, but the rest of the world including psychologists consider them psychologists, and what they were doing as psychology. — tim wood

I do indeed consider them psychologists. Your claim was not that psychology has aspects which are unscientific, your claim was that the whole of psychology is unscientific, as such, seeking out what you knew in advance was a specific subset of psychology for your evidence was biased at best, if not deliberately disingenuous.

I judge psychology by the company it keeps and whom it lives with. And perhaps you judge the whole by some of its parts. — tim wood

I judge the whole by all of its parts, as would seem the rational thing to do. As such the conclusion is that psychology is a mixture of scientific and non-scientific approaches (as well as some in between). The company it keeps is irrelevant, else philosophy is damned by no less a sin.

I'm sorry, I'm too tired to search for references to that effect. — TheMadFool

If you can't be bothered to defend your defamation of an entire field of research, perhaps consider not publishing it.

Ergo, if experts don't see eye to eye on an issue, here psychology, I'm warranted to doubt the claims of psychologists that what they're doing is science. — TheMadFool

1. Quote an expert claiming that the whole of psychology is not a science and we might then have something to go off, other wise bringing up expert testimony is useless.

2. "I'm warranted to doubt the claims of psychologists that what they're doing is science" is not the same as "psychology is simply mythology in modern form" is it? Not by a very long margin.

If there were an expert in the field who claimed that the whole of psychology was not a science, then you would have cause to doubt that the whole of psychology is not a science. Since you've neither provided such an expert, not limited your claims to just doubt I can't see what relevance your little syllogism might have to the matter at hand.

I said what I wanted to say. — TheMadFool

Did you think that was in some doubt?

It's obvious that psychology is far from being a science at par with physics or even for that matter biology. Why else all the controversy surrounding its scientific status? No smoke without fire is how I see it. — TheMadFool

What an utterly stupid thing to say - your chosen side in any controversy is automatically right simply by virtue of there being a controversy.

Well said. Apart from the rather nebulous use of 'insight', I couldn't agree more.

As can be seen clearly from the research the Cambridge School of Psychology includes in its remit (cited above), Psychology studies both the psyche and its assumed substrate.

Psychology is exactly as you describe it — TheMadFool

For fuck's sake.

https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/research/research-centres

What of that list looks anything even vaguely resembling Jung and Freud.

Do you people bother to do even a shred of research before vomiting up your ad hoc reckons?