• RenegadeTwister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    Physics majors have every right to dunk on polisci. Too many majors throw around the word “science” to try to give their made-up voodoo legitimacy.

    • stufkes@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Political Science is the study of political systems and behaviours employing the scientific method. It’s a sub field of social science and a very new one, at less than 150 years old. Political philosophy is of course much older.

      • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        employing the scientific method

        Really? They have control groups? Blind and A/B testing? Hypothesis that they set out to reject?

        I’m sure they have methods but are they scientific?

        • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          The answer to all your questions are

          Yes.

          Yes.

          Yes.

          Yes - Whatever goes against my political allegiances.

          Yes - They all just have an n < 50.

          • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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            18 days ago

            The issue with considering these to be anything like the ‘hard sciences’ is that it is impossible to even try to control for all variables. Plus, whenever sociologists, for example, make a bad prediction, they just write it off as differences in personality or some other similar thing.

            God forbid they actually just falsified their hypothesis. It’s important that people understand how to think about the social sciences, don’t get me wrong, but they’re pretty overwhelmingly ineffective for creating a proper framework for understanding the world around you.

            Theories in social science and theories in hard science are totally different.

            Theories in science have a shit ton of evidence behind them and haven’t been falsified.

            Theories in social science, on the other hand, are all in competition with each other because they all have their positive and negative aspects that make them better for application in some situations than others.

            And yes I know that we still use a newtonian idea of gravity in many cases, but that’s completely different as it just tends to make the math easier in practice. It’s not that we actually still believe in newtonian ideas.

        • Donkter@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I think sociology is part of a field called “The Social Sciences” which includes sociology, psychology, polisci etc.

          • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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            18 days ago

            The issue with considering these to be anything like the ‘hard sciences’ is that it is impossible to even try to control for all variables. Plus, whenever sociologists, for example, make a bad prediction, they just write it off as differences in personality or some other similar thing.

            God forbid they actually just falsified their hypothesis. It’s important that people understand how to think about the social sciences, don’t get me wrong, but they’re pretty overwhelmingly ineffective for creating a proper framework for understanding the world around you.

            Theories in social science and theories in hard science are totally different.

            Theories in science have a shit ton of evidence behind them and haven’t been falsified.

            Theories in social science, on the other hand, are all in competition with each other because they all have their positive and negative aspects that make them better for application in some situations than others.

            And yes I know that we still use a newtonian idea of gravity in many cases, but that’s completely different as it just tends to make the math easier in practice. It’s not that we actually still believe in newtonian ideas.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        Depends. A proper computer science course is basically math with machines. At the highest level, it may have zero programming at all, and the machines in question are entirely abstract.

        Software Engineering is, well, engineering (setting aside the whole debate on what makes a “real” engineer).

        It used to be that universities crammed both under “computer science”, and you had to look at the curriculum to figure out which one they were actually teaching. They tend to separate the two more clearly these days. Neither is really “science” in the strictest sense, but the term stuck now.

      • Frogodendron@beehaw.org
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        1 month ago

        “Real” scientists try to put a spin on it akin to “You can’t properly hypothesise, reason or make predictions about anything based on a sample size of ~200 countries that are totally outside of your control and are very different from each other”. Few more arguments get thrown into a pot.

        Doesn’t stop political scientists from mostly accurately describing things, so no harm is done here. The harm lies within pushing that opinion on general public, highlighting the that “proper” scientists don’t see any value in social “sciences”, hence contributing to public ignorance about societal problems.

        And with how lousy political views of “rational”, “logical”, “critically thinking” people in STEM sometimes are, it’s awfully ironic.

        Speaking as a disgruntled Russian STEM scientist who is horrified how willingly some of his collages ate Putin’s reasons for actions both against Ukraine and within Russia, including against fellow scientists (WTF, where’s professional solidarity?!).

  • JayObey711@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    As someone who spontaneously decided to study history / political science instead of physics, although I have been preparing to be a physicist the entire time, I can proudly say: At least I am happy. I spend most of my time doing fun and fulfilling things, instead of showing up at uni at 8 in the morning and arriving home at 8 in the evening just to work on homework. All my friends went into mint and they are stressed, don’t have time to do anything and just seem the worst i have ever seen them.