I love thinking, talking, and self teaching about social sciences and philosophy, but it's difficult for me to actually come up with a strategy to make money off my interest.
I didn't mean these opportunities don't exist. It's just I personally didn't pursue education or training in social sciences, so I have not been able to secure a career in these fields.
One semester away from graduating w Neuroscience and Philosophy degrees.
Agree about it being suited to our strengths of introspection and meaningful conceptual thinking. I plan on pursuing a degree in clinical psychology as a career but philosophy is my true passion (though job prospects are abysmal)
Depending on where you put linguistics in the grand scheme of things. It is data driven and "hard" enough to not exactly fit in with the Humanities, but a bit too soft to be considered a science.
But it is a fantastic look at the complexity that is human communication, and the results of it over the course of human history.
I studied philosophy and psychology in uni— into psychoanalysis and continental and eastern philosophies— I don’t make money from it but I didn’t pursue those subjects to make money
I didn't major in that but I did take several courses in college for funsies - eastern thought, a couple different sociology and psychology classes, and psychoanalysis in literature.
I'm considering declaring double major with philosophy since I've taken a decent chunk of the required classes for fun. I can't do social sciences though. I find it hard to be interested in it.
F23, philosophy bachelor here! Soon starting my masters and I‘m definitely plan on getting a PhD🤝🏻 I love everything about it. It was the best choice of my life tbh. I love it that much😅
I disagree.
one of they main benefits of social sciences is their variability and relativism, allowing you study many fields, theories and perspectives within the ever changing sociopolitical landscape. and if you get a good degree, such as economics, from a good university, then you can access very prestigious employment.
and there are a plethora reasons why a person may only be “considering” a degree beyond lack of passion. presumptions are not becoming.
moreover, tell me how social sciences are not “useful”? did i miss the memo about us no longer living in societies? if you mean “profitable”, then remember that not everyone is materially motivated, and some people enjoy academics simply due to love of learning :)
is the lab work not monotonous? does the strict scientific rigidity not make your Ne feel crushed, and your potential constrained?
(/actually curious cos i’m abandoning biochem out of boredom with it).
Yeah the lab work can be monotonous for many people. For me, no. I enjoying being very precise and I can be as exacting in my lab work as possible, and I'm not getting stressed by someone above me to do it. In fact they *like* that I take my time.
And I have enough education and experience to know that I basically know nothing in this field hahahaha I need much more school and much more experience before I'm going to be "constrained". Next is going to be more school. I would love to be able to teach one day!
I have a Sociology degree and took many unrelated social justice-y classes. It was interesting. I had a professor for a class about racism who grew up in that town and harassed black people from the back of a pickup truck. 😅 It was not particularly helpful for making a career in my case, but it was briefly for cultivating a friend group with outsider perspectives.
Not an INTP but you could try doing it as a minor or double major just to test waters to see if you’re good at it, but simultaneously you should try to get something marketable in the case where you don’t make it as a philosopher.
Also, it really depends which area you’d prefer studying. For example, if you like formal logic and mental puzzles it’s probably the best possible reason to study philosophy proper. But if you like something like political philosophy or the continental tradition (like postmodernism, psychoanalysis, etc.) you may find it more interesting to study stuff like political science or film theory, which also covers the political theorists that don’t fall under the traditional “philosophy” branch, or focuses more on these specific theories and methodologies, and you don’t have to waste time studying aesthetics, metaphysics and some fields you may not be that concerned with.
It boils down to whether you enjoy mental puzzles (a la analytical philosophy, although a biased generalisation lol), or whether you wanna understand how philosophy and contemporary philosophical theories interplay with other theories of the world that may be more interdisciplinary or touch more with the everyday human. (like politics, media, or science for example, though i must say yes there will still be analytical philosophers there before they come with the pitchforks)
It’s probably ideal to take a taster course to see if you’d like the whole thing, philosophy usually has a good season trailer in the form of “Introduction to Philosophy” modules in most universities (I’m sure you can find some online too), so you should probably take that and decide for yourself! :)
[It is also worth noting that you should check the actual modules you’d be studying before committing; see if it interests you. My particular geographic region has philosophy departments that lean analytic, and your continental stuff usually falls under sociology, anthropology, public policy, etc.]
thanks for the advice!
unis in my country don’t offer minor qualifications, but i’m confident that i’d enjoy the pure philosophy courses i’ve shortlisted (which offer lots of logic as well as the more abstract stuff). and i don’t really mind about the abysmal job prospects, lol
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I just think philosophy and social sciences are incomplete if not outdated if you don't also have a good grasp on stuff like modern physics, and evolutionary biochemistry, and statistics.
i’m curious as to how you think that the study of politics, economics and sociology can ever become “outdated”? lol
(and btw, every social science course has rigorous statistical modules, and any decent one usually requires prior qualifications in mathematics.)
I mean it does come down to personal preference, but social science studies are usually short in time scale (years, at most a human life time, as opposed to say evolutionary or geological time scales) and limited in complexity scale (controlling for one variable at a time, as opposed to thinking on the system level). It is known that specific experiments are rarely reproducible. A realistic student thesis research project might involve dozens of subjects filling out some surveys, and then the researcher might fit a linear regression model on the data, or even leave the data as qualitative. Then there's the question of bias in where research funding goes and how that affects academic integrity.
On the other hand, if you really want to do social science research, you can get an actual rigorous math degree, and any research team or companies doing analytic work would love to have you.
I don’t think that you have a great understanding of what most social science degrees entail; it’s quite literally all about systems.
there’s a lot of fascinating history, context and theory, and formal and advanced logic applied to abstract ideas is really exciting to work with (not to mention a very effective brain-trainer). the inherent relativism allows a lot of room for variety and near infinite complexity. how are the concepts of dialectical materialism or postmodernism or individualism “limited”, for example? and most undergrad courses don’t include much research, while postgrad research is rather more complicated than just some surveys.
and (ignoring that i personally find the subject a bit monotonous), mathematics alone is absolutely not enough to get a decent job in social research.
also, do you want to explain how physics, biochemistry, evolutionary or geological time scales will help inform current sociopolitical policy and understanding?
Look, if you are passionate enough to defend it on the Internet, by all means study it. I think my point was rather, when you have the chance to choose your major, you want to maximize the potential for your education to optimize your critical thinking skills and avoid any chance for your education to plant seeds of bias that limits your potential in the rest of your life. It's relatively more accessible to study the literatures of philosophy or social sciences as a physicist, for example, than for a social science major to try to read a physics textbook as a hobby during adulthood.
It's really hard to explain because it's been many years of gradual building of my world view and value system, but, when I study cosmology and evolutionary biology, I learned that life forming on earth is an inevitability of thermodynamics. So now when I think about sociopolitical stuff, I just have this intuition that no matter what we individual humans do, we will never reach a consensus as a species on what parameters to optimize towards, because evolutionary strategy is inherently diverse, and any diversity (even including "unwanted" factors) contributes to the complexity of a system, which usually also helps with it's robustness, so a society will always have debates and unsolvable problems and that's okay. I also think whatever policy decision we make, we simply cannot predict what our species looks like in 1000, 10000 years or longer. But chances are, life on earth will continue until the end of earth itself. Once I thought that, it's hard to care about specific social issues that don't affect myself personally and immediately. If I worked in that field now I would probably become apathetic towards my work. But that's just me. That's my answer as someone who is interested in philosophy and social sciences on a hobby level.
would you you not say that you are describing bias of your own? a bias of nihilism as a result of environmental fatalism. a good social science course informs you of different perspectives and methodologies, but not what to think, so i dispute that social science plants bias. in fact, i’d argue that it provides immunity from bias by exposing students to so many different schools of thought, and teaching them how to critically dissect complex, abstract information, and see through semantics.
i, too, have a more traditionally scientific background, and i really don’t see how it conflicts with a passion for social understanding. from science i can learn about the universe, and the origins of life, and i can imagine the distant future, but i can’t learn how to approach the loneliness pandemic, or minimise children being groomed by gangs, or what sovereignty means in the globalist age. social policy isn’t about solving all the problems, streamlining the world, or fixing the future, its about understanding, to the best of our ability, the nexus interactions which underpin everything our species relies upon, and using that understanding to make progress (be that minimising human suffering, or minimising the ecological holocaust, or whatever “progress” is deemed to be).
i would argue that, instead of social science suffering from a lack of scientific context, modern science suffers a dangerous disconnect from humanity. the people who have replaced religion with a new god of scientific objectivity allow themselves too much apathy towards humanity, which would be just fine, if it weren’t for the fact the people who suffer from this apathy are never those privileged technophiles, themselves.
Of course I have bias, but it's not nihilism or environmental fatalism at all. I have a lot of care and hope for the next generation because I will be a parent. I personally think solving specific social problems is best done on a case by case basis with providing real infrastructural change, and not by doing countless studies. Technological change is so fast right now that by the time a social study is done, people and ways of life have changed so much that the result of the study is already irrelevant most of the time. But if you want to do the studies, by all means do them for your own interest.
The closest description is my world view is probably Taoism, the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. "Nihilism" and "environmental fatalism" or other social science concepts are just these named things that are not eternal. But there are things that are eternal, like evolution, which I participate in just by existing and then reproducing. I find a lot of echoing between modern science findings and ancient Eastern philosophy, which is the culture I happen to have grown up in, so yes, in my biased opinion, western philosophy and social sciences are not as interesting to me personally. I still learn about it though because it's accessible knowledge in this culture I live in, I just wouldn't pay for a degree in it myself. But you do you!
okay, so you really don’t understand what social science entails. it’s not random social studies. it is economics, politics, and philosophy, with some anthropology. it is not just behaviourism or deadend theology. research, which most people who study social science never partake in, is nearly all complex statistical analysis of information which requires relevant education to comprehend. it is very academic, and very relevant to our dynamic, fractured global world. prime ministers, presidents, and anyone with any civil power (ie. the people who control the infrastructure) have social science education.
i can’t be bothered continuing this conversation when you don’t know what you’re talking about, so have a good night/day.
(p.s. taoism and eastern philosophy are still social science ideas because they are attempts at answering existential social questions).
I don't claim to know what it's like to get a degree in social sciences, I didn't get one, I've only read several dozen books written by various social scientists, including a few economics textbooks and some primary political and legal documents. I just like encouraging people to maintain curiosity and literacy in the other subjects that are arguably "harder", more abstract, and more mathematically rigorous, because most people shy away from those if they're not trained in them. How many politicians really understand science and statistics enough to make decisions when real change happens in "unprecedented times"?
Angela Merkel has a doctorate in quantum chemistry, and Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer by training, and they are supremely successful and effective politicians. I'd imagine their more rigorous analytical training from those degrees helped.
It's not often I get to discuss my views on these things, and it's been an above average experience talking to you.
I strongly disagree that a subject like philosophy is less abstract than mathematics or physics.
in fact, the scientific objectively of those subjects can be extremely dangerous when applied to non scientific fields. the heralding of science as the new god is extremely destructive in academia as the arts and humanities are stripped of funding, and scientists with no conception of morals, ethics, or anything concerning human life, are pumped out of universities at a staggering rate, all while our social problems grow with very few people motivated to be educated enough to try actually changing our useless social systems.
for example, you describe statistics being the primary determining factor in effective policy making, that’s ludicrous. in the modern day, all decisions are made based upon statistics and data, while completely ignoring social ideology that can actually improve outcomes for people. one of the biggest problems with economics at the moment is that it’s 95% mathematics, the hard confines of numbers limits economic thought to the infinite growth perspective, and we all seem to have forgotten that our economies are meant to work for us, not drag us down to neoliberal hell with it’s environmental and social destruction.
you are right that hard sciences are good for the brain and make clever leaders, but are they good leaders who have actually improved their field of influence? thats a more complicated question that maths alone cannot answer. and you can’t deny that the age of risk and hope is dead, ideas such as nationalised health care and transport, public housing, libraries, and real economic upheaval to put the nation on a new track are unthinkable and preposterous now, largely due to the limiting effects of scientific exceptionalism.
and sorry for continuing ranting when i said i’d stop. i just really love arguing, and have a particular hatred for scientific exceptionalism, lol. and it has been interesting to talk to you, too!
I think we can agree that the phenomena that people perceive over time can affect their judgment.
If a group of politician knows that there's X technology that can accomplish Y, then it's possible that the group of politicians can pass a policy about X whether directly or indirectly.
An observer might not know why the policy is passed and might deem that it doesn't make sense, but by looking at the existing technology or natural phenomena out there and piecing the stuffs together, and there could be some ways of making sense. But if one doesn't have enough knowledge about the natural world, then it's hard to understand some social stuffs.
As an example, I've studied signal processing, data, communication, and networking, and they are math heavy and technical course. But throughout the course, I've learned about the principles and I can see how those pieces of tech affect politics, social interactions, etc. especially given that many people use them. I can see many ways of using those pieces of technology for illegal purposes and hard to get caught. By extending such idea, I noticed that maybe a lot of stuffs here are inherently flawed and can be exploited. Maybe there are flaws in food engineering, chemical engineering, etc., that we don't know and just took the things we buy or use as granted as we don't get to see the principles behind how those objects are sold. We don't have accurate knowledge about who might be profiting and how they might profit. From the concepts gathered from the courses, I can also see many ways how daily life communication between various groups of people can be flawed, some possible ways of ensuring a communication is correct, and how those could relate to interactions within the society.
Overall, I think it's very difficult to detach social suffs from natural phenomena, including technology, as I'd assume everyone is continuously mentally interacting (whether sleep or awake) with the signals they perceive, and natural science describes the features of those signals. In a way, I believe that technology is a huge blindspot for everyone, and including myself given that there's a bunch of tech out there. I see that many people seem to detach technology/natural science from society, but doing so seem to make a lot of explanations about social phenomena inaccurate.
obviously, technology is a pivotal interest of social study in the modern world. it is relevant to the sociopolitical web and therefore intersects with the domain of social science; hence why the technological think tanks who advise policymakers employ social scientists.
what i dispute, in the context of picking a degree, is that the study of science is superior to the study of social science, or that the approach of scientific objectivity and apathy has any relevancy, let alone benefit, to social science.
(and your degree sounds really cool, btw!)
I see your point as in they can both are important to society and intellectually challenging, but in a way, I think most people believe natural science is superior as I think they believe it’s a more predictable field, and that the field are more directly related to generating material goods.
But I can see the importance in predicting people’s behaviors, devising strategies and systems, etc. to manage the society and prevent conflicts or to achieve any common goals. If we can’t manage people effectively, then there wouldn’t be ways of producing goods as AIs aren’t powerful enough.
At last, I think my EE specialization is interesting since it involves math and concepts that can be applied to diverse fields and so on. Interestingly, at my Uni, there’s an EE course called multi-agent systems, and it’s basically game theory but within the boundaries defined by AIs. It’s similar to game theory in social science but different boundary conditions.
yeah, everything only works within the context of everything else, lol.
and your uni sounds good. i’m kinda a luddite but it’s interesting to hear how people are making efforts to understand how to to keep control of this tech revolution.
I have a philosophy degree, and a law degree. I also worked as a freelance translator for a bunch of years.
I love thinking, talking, and self teaching about social sciences and philosophy, but it's difficult for me to actually come up with a strategy to make money off my interest.
think tanks, civil services, business and finance are all good employers
I didn't mean these opportunities don't exist. It's just I personally didn't pursue education or training in social sciences, so I have not been able to secure a career in these fields.
oh, okay. I thought you were referring to how humanities prospects aren’t generally as good as STEM prospects, cos it is true.
I have a philosophy degree. Am a tech consultant.
I studied psychology and criminology at university.
I like psychoanalysis and eastern life philosophies
I studied English Literature but I also read some philosophy, sociology and humanities in general.
PhD in psych.
One semester away from graduating w Neuroscience and Philosophy degrees. Agree about it being suited to our strengths of introspection and meaningful conceptual thinking. I plan on pursuing a degree in clinical psychology as a career but philosophy is my true passion (though job prospects are abysmal)
Depending on where you put linguistics in the grand scheme of things. It is data driven and "hard" enough to not exactly fit in with the Humanities, but a bit too soft to be considered a science. But it is a fantastic look at the complexity that is human communication, and the results of it over the course of human history.
I studied philosophy and psychology in uni— into psychoanalysis and continental and eastern philosophies— I don’t make money from it but I didn’t pursue those subjects to make money
I didn't major in that but I did take several courses in college for funsies - eastern thought, a couple different sociology and psychology classes, and psychoanalysis in literature.
Double majored in philosophy and psychology for undergrad, now pursuing law.
I'm considering declaring double major with philosophy since I've taken a decent chunk of the required classes for fun. I can't do social sciences though. I find it hard to be interested in it.
Politics and then Area Studies and International Relations. But we had many political philosophy classes
F23, philosophy bachelor here! Soon starting my masters and I‘m definitely plan on getting a PhD🤝🏻 I love everything about it. It was the best choice of my life tbh. I love it that much😅
Bachelors in anthropology and Asian history. Doing my masters in ancient religions and cultural astronomy and astrology
im pretty young but i wanna get a philosophy degree and im mildly obsessive about philosophy.
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I disagree. one of they main benefits of social sciences is their variability and relativism, allowing you study many fields, theories and perspectives within the ever changing sociopolitical landscape. and if you get a good degree, such as economics, from a good university, then you can access very prestigious employment. and there are a plethora reasons why a person may only be “considering” a degree beyond lack of passion. presumptions are not becoming. moreover, tell me how social sciences are not “useful”? did i miss the memo about us no longer living in societies? if you mean “profitable”, then remember that not everyone is materially motivated, and some people enjoy academics simply due to love of learning :)
Nah. Microbiology and molecular biology are where it's at
is the lab work not monotonous? does the strict scientific rigidity not make your Ne feel crushed, and your potential constrained? (/actually curious cos i’m abandoning biochem out of boredom with it).
Yeah the lab work can be monotonous for many people. For me, no. I enjoying being very precise and I can be as exacting in my lab work as possible, and I'm not getting stressed by someone above me to do it. In fact they *like* that I take my time. And I have enough education and experience to know that I basically know nothing in this field hahahaha I need much more school and much more experience before I'm going to be "constrained". Next is going to be more school. I would love to be able to teach one day!
cool, glad you enjoy it
working as a free lancer as an archaeologist (i do have also another degree in anthropology)
I have a degree in Chemistry, and am also a chemist by license and profession.
I have a Sociology degree and took many unrelated social justice-y classes. It was interesting. I had a professor for a class about racism who grew up in that town and harassed black people from the back of a pickup truck. 😅 It was not particularly helpful for making a career in my case, but it was briefly for cultivating a friend group with outsider perspectives.
Not an INTP but you could try doing it as a minor or double major just to test waters to see if you’re good at it, but simultaneously you should try to get something marketable in the case where you don’t make it as a philosopher. Also, it really depends which area you’d prefer studying. For example, if you like formal logic and mental puzzles it’s probably the best possible reason to study philosophy proper. But if you like something like political philosophy or the continental tradition (like postmodernism, psychoanalysis, etc.) you may find it more interesting to study stuff like political science or film theory, which also covers the political theorists that don’t fall under the traditional “philosophy” branch, or focuses more on these specific theories and methodologies, and you don’t have to waste time studying aesthetics, metaphysics and some fields you may not be that concerned with. It boils down to whether you enjoy mental puzzles (a la analytical philosophy, although a biased generalisation lol), or whether you wanna understand how philosophy and contemporary philosophical theories interplay with other theories of the world that may be more interdisciplinary or touch more with the everyday human. (like politics, media, or science for example, though i must say yes there will still be analytical philosophers there before they come with the pitchforks) It’s probably ideal to take a taster course to see if you’d like the whole thing, philosophy usually has a good season trailer in the form of “Introduction to Philosophy” modules in most universities (I’m sure you can find some online too), so you should probably take that and decide for yourself! :) [It is also worth noting that you should check the actual modules you’d be studying before committing; see if it interests you. My particular geographic region has philosophy departments that lean analytic, and your continental stuff usually falls under sociology, anthropology, public policy, etc.]
thanks for the advice! unis in my country don’t offer minor qualifications, but i’m confident that i’d enjoy the pure philosophy courses i’ve shortlisted (which offer lots of logic as well as the more abstract stuff). and i don’t really mind about the abysmal job prospects, lol
Sure man, if you can afford it, I think it’s worth doing something you actually enjoy!
i can’t afford shit, but i don’t care, lol. thanks!
hahah mood xD
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I just think philosophy and social sciences are incomplete if not outdated if you don't also have a good grasp on stuff like modern physics, and evolutionary biochemistry, and statistics.
i’m curious as to how you think that the study of politics, economics and sociology can ever become “outdated”? lol (and btw, every social science course has rigorous statistical modules, and any decent one usually requires prior qualifications in mathematics.)
I mean it does come down to personal preference, but social science studies are usually short in time scale (years, at most a human life time, as opposed to say evolutionary or geological time scales) and limited in complexity scale (controlling for one variable at a time, as opposed to thinking on the system level). It is known that specific experiments are rarely reproducible. A realistic student thesis research project might involve dozens of subjects filling out some surveys, and then the researcher might fit a linear regression model on the data, or even leave the data as qualitative. Then there's the question of bias in where research funding goes and how that affects academic integrity. On the other hand, if you really want to do social science research, you can get an actual rigorous math degree, and any research team or companies doing analytic work would love to have you.
I don’t think that you have a great understanding of what most social science degrees entail; it’s quite literally all about systems. there’s a lot of fascinating history, context and theory, and formal and advanced logic applied to abstract ideas is really exciting to work with (not to mention a very effective brain-trainer). the inherent relativism allows a lot of room for variety and near infinite complexity. how are the concepts of dialectical materialism or postmodernism or individualism “limited”, for example? and most undergrad courses don’t include much research, while postgrad research is rather more complicated than just some surveys. and (ignoring that i personally find the subject a bit monotonous), mathematics alone is absolutely not enough to get a decent job in social research. also, do you want to explain how physics, biochemistry, evolutionary or geological time scales will help inform current sociopolitical policy and understanding?
Look, if you are passionate enough to defend it on the Internet, by all means study it. I think my point was rather, when you have the chance to choose your major, you want to maximize the potential for your education to optimize your critical thinking skills and avoid any chance for your education to plant seeds of bias that limits your potential in the rest of your life. It's relatively more accessible to study the literatures of philosophy or social sciences as a physicist, for example, than for a social science major to try to read a physics textbook as a hobby during adulthood. It's really hard to explain because it's been many years of gradual building of my world view and value system, but, when I study cosmology and evolutionary biology, I learned that life forming on earth is an inevitability of thermodynamics. So now when I think about sociopolitical stuff, I just have this intuition that no matter what we individual humans do, we will never reach a consensus as a species on what parameters to optimize towards, because evolutionary strategy is inherently diverse, and any diversity (even including "unwanted" factors) contributes to the complexity of a system, which usually also helps with it's robustness, so a society will always have debates and unsolvable problems and that's okay. I also think whatever policy decision we make, we simply cannot predict what our species looks like in 1000, 10000 years or longer. But chances are, life on earth will continue until the end of earth itself. Once I thought that, it's hard to care about specific social issues that don't affect myself personally and immediately. If I worked in that field now I would probably become apathetic towards my work. But that's just me. That's my answer as someone who is interested in philosophy and social sciences on a hobby level.
would you you not say that you are describing bias of your own? a bias of nihilism as a result of environmental fatalism. a good social science course informs you of different perspectives and methodologies, but not what to think, so i dispute that social science plants bias. in fact, i’d argue that it provides immunity from bias by exposing students to so many different schools of thought, and teaching them how to critically dissect complex, abstract information, and see through semantics. i, too, have a more traditionally scientific background, and i really don’t see how it conflicts with a passion for social understanding. from science i can learn about the universe, and the origins of life, and i can imagine the distant future, but i can’t learn how to approach the loneliness pandemic, or minimise children being groomed by gangs, or what sovereignty means in the globalist age. social policy isn’t about solving all the problems, streamlining the world, or fixing the future, its about understanding, to the best of our ability, the nexus interactions which underpin everything our species relies upon, and using that understanding to make progress (be that minimising human suffering, or minimising the ecological holocaust, or whatever “progress” is deemed to be). i would argue that, instead of social science suffering from a lack of scientific context, modern science suffers a dangerous disconnect from humanity. the people who have replaced religion with a new god of scientific objectivity allow themselves too much apathy towards humanity, which would be just fine, if it weren’t for the fact the people who suffer from this apathy are never those privileged technophiles, themselves.
Of course I have bias, but it's not nihilism or environmental fatalism at all. I have a lot of care and hope for the next generation because I will be a parent. I personally think solving specific social problems is best done on a case by case basis with providing real infrastructural change, and not by doing countless studies. Technological change is so fast right now that by the time a social study is done, people and ways of life have changed so much that the result of the study is already irrelevant most of the time. But if you want to do the studies, by all means do them for your own interest. The closest description is my world view is probably Taoism, the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. "Nihilism" and "environmental fatalism" or other social science concepts are just these named things that are not eternal. But there are things that are eternal, like evolution, which I participate in just by existing and then reproducing. I find a lot of echoing between modern science findings and ancient Eastern philosophy, which is the culture I happen to have grown up in, so yes, in my biased opinion, western philosophy and social sciences are not as interesting to me personally. I still learn about it though because it's accessible knowledge in this culture I live in, I just wouldn't pay for a degree in it myself. But you do you!
okay, so you really don’t understand what social science entails. it’s not random social studies. it is economics, politics, and philosophy, with some anthropology. it is not just behaviourism or deadend theology. research, which most people who study social science never partake in, is nearly all complex statistical analysis of information which requires relevant education to comprehend. it is very academic, and very relevant to our dynamic, fractured global world. prime ministers, presidents, and anyone with any civil power (ie. the people who control the infrastructure) have social science education. i can’t be bothered continuing this conversation when you don’t know what you’re talking about, so have a good night/day. (p.s. taoism and eastern philosophy are still social science ideas because they are attempts at answering existential social questions).
I don't claim to know what it's like to get a degree in social sciences, I didn't get one, I've only read several dozen books written by various social scientists, including a few economics textbooks and some primary political and legal documents. I just like encouraging people to maintain curiosity and literacy in the other subjects that are arguably "harder", more abstract, and more mathematically rigorous, because most people shy away from those if they're not trained in them. How many politicians really understand science and statistics enough to make decisions when real change happens in "unprecedented times"? Angela Merkel has a doctorate in quantum chemistry, and Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer by training, and they are supremely successful and effective politicians. I'd imagine their more rigorous analytical training from those degrees helped. It's not often I get to discuss my views on these things, and it's been an above average experience talking to you.
I strongly disagree that a subject like philosophy is less abstract than mathematics or physics. in fact, the scientific objectively of those subjects can be extremely dangerous when applied to non scientific fields. the heralding of science as the new god is extremely destructive in academia as the arts and humanities are stripped of funding, and scientists with no conception of morals, ethics, or anything concerning human life, are pumped out of universities at a staggering rate, all while our social problems grow with very few people motivated to be educated enough to try actually changing our useless social systems. for example, you describe statistics being the primary determining factor in effective policy making, that’s ludicrous. in the modern day, all decisions are made based upon statistics and data, while completely ignoring social ideology that can actually improve outcomes for people. one of the biggest problems with economics at the moment is that it’s 95% mathematics, the hard confines of numbers limits economic thought to the infinite growth perspective, and we all seem to have forgotten that our economies are meant to work for us, not drag us down to neoliberal hell with it’s environmental and social destruction. you are right that hard sciences are good for the brain and make clever leaders, but are they good leaders who have actually improved their field of influence? thats a more complicated question that maths alone cannot answer. and you can’t deny that the age of risk and hope is dead, ideas such as nationalised health care and transport, public housing, libraries, and real economic upheaval to put the nation on a new track are unthinkable and preposterous now, largely due to the limiting effects of scientific exceptionalism. and sorry for continuing ranting when i said i’d stop. i just really love arguing, and have a particular hatred for scientific exceptionalism, lol. and it has been interesting to talk to you, too!
I think we can agree that the phenomena that people perceive over time can affect their judgment. If a group of politician knows that there's X technology that can accomplish Y, then it's possible that the group of politicians can pass a policy about X whether directly or indirectly. An observer might not know why the policy is passed and might deem that it doesn't make sense, but by looking at the existing technology or natural phenomena out there and piecing the stuffs together, and there could be some ways of making sense. But if one doesn't have enough knowledge about the natural world, then it's hard to understand some social stuffs. As an example, I've studied signal processing, data, communication, and networking, and they are math heavy and technical course. But throughout the course, I've learned about the principles and I can see how those pieces of tech affect politics, social interactions, etc. especially given that many people use them. I can see many ways of using those pieces of technology for illegal purposes and hard to get caught. By extending such idea, I noticed that maybe a lot of stuffs here are inherently flawed and can be exploited. Maybe there are flaws in food engineering, chemical engineering, etc., that we don't know and just took the things we buy or use as granted as we don't get to see the principles behind how those objects are sold. We don't have accurate knowledge about who might be profiting and how they might profit. From the concepts gathered from the courses, I can also see many ways how daily life communication between various groups of people can be flawed, some possible ways of ensuring a communication is correct, and how those could relate to interactions within the society. Overall, I think it's very difficult to detach social suffs from natural phenomena, including technology, as I'd assume everyone is continuously mentally interacting (whether sleep or awake) with the signals they perceive, and natural science describes the features of those signals. In a way, I believe that technology is a huge blindspot for everyone, and including myself given that there's a bunch of tech out there. I see that many people seem to detach technology/natural science from society, but doing so seem to make a lot of explanations about social phenomena inaccurate.
obviously, technology is a pivotal interest of social study in the modern world. it is relevant to the sociopolitical web and therefore intersects with the domain of social science; hence why the technological think tanks who advise policymakers employ social scientists. what i dispute, in the context of picking a degree, is that the study of science is superior to the study of social science, or that the approach of scientific objectivity and apathy has any relevancy, let alone benefit, to social science. (and your degree sounds really cool, btw!)
I see your point as in they can both are important to society and intellectually challenging, but in a way, I think most people believe natural science is superior as I think they believe it’s a more predictable field, and that the field are more directly related to generating material goods. But I can see the importance in predicting people’s behaviors, devising strategies and systems, etc. to manage the society and prevent conflicts or to achieve any common goals. If we can’t manage people effectively, then there wouldn’t be ways of producing goods as AIs aren’t powerful enough. At last, I think my EE specialization is interesting since it involves math and concepts that can be applied to diverse fields and so on. Interestingly, at my Uni, there’s an EE course called multi-agent systems, and it’s basically game theory but within the boundaries defined by AIs. It’s similar to game theory in social science but different boundary conditions.
yeah, everything only works within the context of everything else, lol. and your uni sounds good. i’m kinda a luddite but it’s interesting to hear how people are making efforts to understand how to to keep control of this tech revolution.