If we weren’t talking about a brain, but instead a piece of computer software, neuroscience would be digging into the source code to figure out how it works. Meanwhile psychology is like watching a bunch of YouTube videos of people demonstrating the software.
One provides answers. The other provides guesses.
Computer touchers stop assuming everything in the universe is a computer program challenge. Difficulty level: actually trying to respect fields of academia that aren’t about computers.
It’s a metaphor, my god. You want a less technical version? Neurology is like a farmer analyzing his soil to figure out it’s pH and NPK content to determine what crops will go best. Psychology is studying decades worth of Farmers Almanacs. The point is, only one deals with hard, definitive numbers.
I will grant that my view is a matter of opinion, but it is my firm belief that any science that can not answer it’s own questions with solid, irrefutable, numerical answers is an undeveloped science.
You may take that as an insult, in which case 1. It’s not meant as one, and 2. Get over yourself. It’s an observation. I’m not saying these fields aren’t important and won’t eventually develop far enough to have such answers, but as they are, right now, they are filled with deficiencies.
Because there are no hard, irrefutable, numerical answers, these fields inherently invite biased studies with conclusions searching for evidence rather than the other way around. And while this may not be the norm, it absolutely exists and can be used to justify anything. Then other studies cite that study which cites that study, and on and on. And since it can’t just be disproven with an equation, its much harder to refute and correct.
It’s educated guesses. Maybe some day they won’t be guesses, just like we don’t guess that 1+1=2 or that oxygen and hydrogen can combine to make water; but for right now, they’re guesses. And no amount of saying that’s offensive to those who study it will change that.
It’s a metaphor, my god.
Nothing good is going to come after an opener like that.
Reductionism may make you feel very smart, but eliminating everything that doesn’t fit and doubling down on the belief that your hobby/specialization knows better than entire fields that are actually dedicated to the subject is sheer hubris.
And no amount of saying that’s offensive
I didn’t say that. I said the arrogance is obnoxious, because it is. And conjuring up imaginary enemies that are “offended” by your le logical factual facts is a crybully move.
Get over yourself
You first. You’re making extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence, and in the process saying that entire fields of academia are false/pointless because they’re not special Main Characters with an exclusive grasp of reality like, presumably, yourself.
The only self-described neuroscientist I’ve seen that had such open and direct hostility toward psychology, and had such “everything psychologists do is bunk, trust me bro” arrogance like yourself, was Sam Harris.
And Sam Harris is a quack and a fraud that has failed to submit even a single peer-reviewed scientific paper since his family-funded “foundation” assigned him his doctorate so he could peddle books. You’re not a Sam Harris devotee, are you?
I’d dig into you here but comrade @UlyssesT@hexbear.net managed to perfectly. You use the analogy because you believe in what the metaphor represents (that brains can be better analyzed at the level of neurons to understand what they are, while dumbass psychologists think you can get it from experiential analysis). The computers are always of course a metaphor, but you’re influenced deeply by the thought processes which arise from the simplification of human experience (or any living experience) to a mathematical basis which computers also use. There is no reason to believe this or take the analysis at that level as any more serious than experience (which we also can’t prove but I can feel something so I believe it)
