Eric,
I agree. The most sucessful psychologists ... the ones that made the big bucks
in textbooks, etc, and in circles of admiring chicks at conferences ... are the
ones who made an industry of taking conventional wisdom and repackaging it as
science. I think there is some point where I join the "hard" scientist critique
of the "soft" sciences, not because the latter not as methodologically
rigorous, but more because the questions they ask are so maleable. A social
scientist can always arrange to look like a leader by watching where the mob is
running and strolling over to be there when it arrives.
"See. I was here first. I am your leader."
But am I envious? You bet!
Nick
PS to EPC: Note the New Realist premise, here.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: ERIC P. CHARLES
To: Jochen Fromm
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 6/13/2010 9:44:38 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Time perspectives
Jochen,
It is a wonderful video, but I worry about the content.
Zimbardo's ability to mix a small amount of science with a lot of common-sense
vacuous, but appealing, bull shit, never ceases to amaze me. For example, "All
addictions are addictions of present hedonism." Really? Have we checked ALL
addictions. Do we have a good enough definition of 'addiction' to really test
the hypothesis? Is that merely true by definition? If I came up with an
alternative example, like say a compulsive collector of past-related items (old
baseball cards, records, civil war memorabilia), would you simply keep twisting
it until you could justify it in terms of your original statement. I think at
least half of the things said could be subjected to similar criticism. For
another example, as a kid I played far more than 10,000 hours of video games,
I'm not so sure there is a direct relationship between that and school/life
failure. Correlation? Maybe, but I'll bet Phil's intro stats classes mentioned
something about the relationship between correlation and causation.
And yet I maintain my faith that in subjects other than Psychology Stanford has
important people.
Eric
On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 07:01 AM, "Jochen Fromm" <[email protected]> wrote:
In this wonderfully animated video, Philip Zimbardo talks about the
geography of time, time perspectives, online gaming and sit-down family
dinershttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg-J.============================================================FRIAM
Applied Complexity Group listservMeets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's
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Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
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