Scholarly writing and how to get it done. / And a workshop for my own ideas, scholarly and poetic
I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet. The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...
Here’s my answer. We study the natural sciences because they help us understand the natural world and they also solve problems, from vaccines to the building of bridges to more efficient food production. We study the social sciences because they help us understand the social world and because, whatever we do, people will engage in social-science reasoning.
The baseball analyst Bill James once said that the alternative to good statistics is not no statistics, it’s bad statistics. Similarly, the alternative to good social science is not no social science, it’s bad social science.
The reason we do social science is because bad social science is being promulgated 24/7, all year long, all over the world. And bad social science can do damage.
In summary: the utilitarian motivation for the natural sciences is that can make us healthier, happier, and more comfortable. The utilitarian motivation for the social sciences is they can protect us from bad social-science reasoning. It’s a lesser thing, but that’s what we’ve got, and it’s not nothing.
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