> not sure people need to know about details of Skinner's studies or the history of that debate.
One thing physicists have going for us - I didn't see a single mention of Aristotle in all of grad school. It would help Psychology a lot as a discipline if everybody could finally just walk away from Skinner, Jung, and Freud.
Perhaps they don’t need to mention Aristotle in grad school because he gets mentioned in high school or college physics, in passing. Physics has lots of recent, true stuff to tell you about so they don’t need to go back that far in high level classes. Maybe psychology has so little history they keep telling you about it all the way up.
That's a bit confusing! You start by referring to references to Aristotle, implying that they are bad in the context of physics, and then cite three people who are an important part of the history of psychology and indeed modern society but were certainly more wrong than right.
And yet! Psychologists _should_ learn about both: Taleb is not wrong about Aristotle, and one can surely function better as psychologist today knowing the core ideas of at least Freud and Jung than not.
And yet! Whilst physics may be an exception to what I'm going to say, the "hard" sciences are also very good at believing their own shit. Civil engineers for example would do well (and some have) to better study what we once learnt to do rather than just assume we will do better from first principles. The recent advances in understanding roman concrete are a good case in point.
> not sure people need to know about details of Skinner's studies or the history of that debate.
One thing physicists have going for us - I didn't see a single mention of Aristotle in all of grad school. It would help Psychology a lot as a discipline if everybody could finally just walk away from Skinner, Jung, and Freud.
Scientific fields that are strongly concerned with history are stagnant fields.
Should we really put skinner in the same box with freud and jung? At least his studies were experimental.
Without concerning ourselves with history we’re likely to repeat many of academic Psychology’s mistakes, just in other guises.
Perhaps they don’t need to mention Aristotle in grad school because he gets mentioned in high school or college physics, in passing. Physics has lots of recent, true stuff to tell you about so they don’t need to go back that far in high level classes. Maybe psychology has so little history they keep telling you about it all the way up.
That's a bit confusing! You start by referring to references to Aristotle, implying that they are bad in the context of physics, and then cite three people who are an important part of the history of psychology and indeed modern society but were certainly more wrong than right.
And yet! Psychologists _should_ learn about both: Taleb is not wrong about Aristotle, and one can surely function better as psychologist today knowing the core ideas of at least Freud and Jung than not.
And yet! Whilst physics may be an exception to what I'm going to say, the "hard" sciences are also very good at believing their own shit. Civil engineers for example would do well (and some have) to better study what we once learnt to do rather than just assume we will do better from first principles. The recent advances in understanding roman concrete are a good case in point.
Last paragraph
"I don't think psychologists should be writing books dubious research like that. "
Missing word I think
Great review. Being a layman I have never known quite what to make of Paul Bloom. Now I have a better idea.
He's better than a lot of other people, but someone please tell these famous professors to stop citing p = .03 bullshit.