Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2017 - 04:19pm PT
|
Could help control world population growth. A course like that is bound to make sex more confused and guilt ridden for participants.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 26, 2017 - 08:00am PT
|
Jgill: [Summary of . . . ] FEMGEN 107S: Barbie Girls vs Sea Monsters: Gender, Sexuality, & Identity in American Culture
This could be a very interesting course if its participants were older and more mature than that of undergrads only. The views on sexuality could be greatly expanded. (Such views would seem to be generational, as well.) Ditto for “romance,” coupling, and what constitutes healthy “long-term relationship.” Add-in older folks’ views on divorce (and experiences and understanding), and one could have some really interesting conversations.
"On the edge of the abyss?"
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 26, 2017 - 11:28am PT
|
OK for a community college, perhaps. BS for an elite university. IMHO
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 26, 2017 - 08:18pm PT
|
"On the edge of the abyss?"
Interesting example of the American quotation mark rules. It makes it appear as if I posed a question. Whereas, 'On the edge of the abyss'? would have conveyed the correct interpretation.
My sister graduated with a womens' studies degree from Stanford in the 80s then on to medical school.
Did she pick up organic chemistry as an elective?
(edit: sycorax deleted her post in which she defended the Barbie course and told of her sister becoming an MD specializing in women's issues.)
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Jul 27, 2017 - 08:31am PT
|
Return to Meaning: A Social Science with Something to Say
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/return-to-meaning-9780198787099?cc=no&lang=en&
This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but the proliferation of meaningless research, of no value to society, and modest value to its authors - apart from securing employment and promotion.
The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, more significant contributions are easily neglected, as the premium is to write and publish, not read and learn. The result is a widespread cynicism among academics on the value of academic research, sometimes including their own. Publishing comes to be seen as a game of hits and misses, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value, and of no wider social uses whatsoever. Academics do research in order to get published, not to say something socially meaningful. This is what we view as the rise of nonsense in academic research, which represents a serious social problem. It undermines the very point of social science.
This problem is far from 'academic'. It affects many areas of social and political life entailing extensive waste of resources and inflated student fees as well as costs to tax-payers. Part two of the book offers a range of proposals aimed at restoring meaning at the heart of social research and drawing social science back address the major problems and issues that face our societies.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Jul 27, 2017 - 08:39am PT
|
On Betrayal by the Left – Talking with Ex-Muslim Sarah Haider
http://quillette.com/2017/03/16/on-betrayal-by-the-left-talking-with-ex-muslim-sarah-haider/
"That the rightwing media do at times report about them only leads to EXMNA being (wrongly) associated with the right.
The left’s rejection hurts all the more since the most menaced former Muslims are women. Female apostates, she tells me, face ostracism, beatings, harassment and threats from their families and communities, forced travel back to home countries to pry them free of Western influence, and forced marriage."
"It’s time for the illiberal left to sober up, take an honest look at and speak frankly about Islam, and start treating Haider and her freethinking fellows as cherished allies. After all, they have ditched a regressive, misogynistic ideology for a rational, evidence-based secular worldview, often at great risk to themselves. They are people who have the courage to act on their convictions. They are taking a brave stand for the truth and Enlightenment values in the darkest time in recent decades... They are heroes."
...
Trump and Co draining the energy from the Energy Department...
http://thebulletin.org/trump-and-co-draining-energy-energy-department10972#.WXkcfhAl67Q.twitter
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 27, 2017 - 10:17am PT
|
MH2:
I have no beef with what you’ve posted, but the writing can be interpreted without a context that would be misleading.
Alvesson may have published the book, “Return to Meaning: A Social Science with Something to Say” (with someone’s summary as posted above), but he and Kaj Skoldberg also wrote and published “Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research,” which includes many postmodern and postmodern’ish / post-structuralist research methodologies that almost all readers of this thread would abhor or refer to as nonsensical or “woo.” Reflexive Methology is very thoughtful and serious book that seriously articulates viewpoints that typical naive-realists would call to arms with the very words that the summary of “Return to meaning” employed above.
The point here is that without a somewhat in-depth understanding of the philosophical issues that underlie “research,” one doesn’t what they hell the issues are or how to talk about them with other knowledgeable people intelligently. To converse intelligently invariably implies being tentative, questioning, in-doubt, generally skeptical, and oriented to specifics rather than to categories or labels.
“If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on.”
(Jack Welch)
Putting people or ideas into connotative categorical boxes like, “left,” “muslim,” “postmodernist,” “traditional,” “significant,” “woo,” etc. all seem to be hasty generalizations without in-depth dialogues (that tend to be ignored here). People just throw words, concepts, and categorizations around willy nilly. It seems to make them feel sure they know what’s going on.
I have great regard for Alvesson.
Be well.
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Jul 27, 2017 - 10:23am PT
|
MikeL
Regarding Alvesson and Reflexive Methodology we're on common ground. That's a true banality.
All the best!
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 27, 2017 - 02:43pm PT
|
Oh gosh, my mistake. It was you that made the post, Marlow, not MH2. Apologies. (I'm distracted after having a cactus spine go through the sole of my running shoe deep into my foot a couple of days ago.)
I'm not completely sure I know what you mean about banality, though.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 27, 2017 - 08:01pm PT
|
"The authors provide balanced reviews and critiques of the major schools of grounded theory, ethnography, hermeneutics, critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, discourse analysis, genealogy, and feminism"
At $80 for a paperback and $180 for a hardcover edition it hardly seems worth it in mathematics research. Maybe better for physicists.
;>)
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 28, 2017 - 10:02am PT
|
Alas, John, academic books can be especially pricey, all the more so if they are used in graduate studies programs. Even the price of undergraduate textbooks can be shocking. The textbook I used in my strategy course for seniors in business management was about $240. Thankfully, students can either rent them, buy and sell them back used, or download digital copies (the last for about $45). The costs to higher education has become embarrassing. Some undergraduate programs can easily cost a quarter of a million dollars, all expenses considered.
Marlow,
Your comment about banality bounced around in my head like a BB in a box car. ;-D It brought to mind ideas that Hannah Arendt had written about while reporting the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker. She had coined the phrase, “the banality of evil,” and claimed that what was true and right must be both profound and radical. Her ideas can be used to explain recent corporate scandals, like Enron. For her, evil is a consequence of thoughtlessness from following orders and conforming to the consensual opinion of the masses.
It’s quite challenging to be an independent thinker and think for oneself. It’s lonely and difficult, and it often means becoming a social and political pariah—just as Arendt had become to critical Jewish leaders in her time.
It is this very notion that I was referring to with reading Alvesson. Aside, it’s also a complaint that I’ve made about how people here think that science and its proponents are pure, unbiased, non-political, and non-dogmatic.
Be well.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jul 28, 2017 - 10:27am PT
|
On the edge of the abyss . . .
Traditional heterosexual marriage
"The probability that they would make it 20 years was 52% for women and 56% for men"
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jul 28, 2017 - 10:28am PT
|
Aside, it’s also a complaint that I’ve made about how people here think that science and its proponents are pure, unbiased, non-political, and non-dogmatic.
That's not true, they're just less prone to magical thinking.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jul 28, 2017 - 11:39am PT
|
Without the soul nothing can even begin .....
waiting for the boob and Healy .... hahhaha
hint .... don't even bother ......
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 28, 2017 - 06:55pm PT
|
Mike, here's one I have as hardcover in my library. Bought it many years ago. This is the paperback.
Applied Computational Complex Analysis
One time when I taught complex variable theory as a senior-level course I used Schaum's Outline as text. Cost: $17.00. But I got mixed comments about its use after the course concluded. It did spur me to be a better teacher and present the historical and technical narratives to my class. Sometimes a professor gets lazy if the text is too good.
One of the standard reference books in my former area of expertise was $495 a few years ago.
Don't get me started on professional refereed journals.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 29, 2017 - 07:23am PT
|
DMT: That's a load of crap.
After years on this thread, that’s not my experience. The derisive comments made about areas of study that cannot be empirically verified have never been so pervasively applied to those areas that can be empirically verified. For a participant on the poorer end of the conversation in a thread of “Religion Vs Science,” I’d suggest you have a selective memory—which is a solid indication of bias, dogma, and a sense of purity. Ever use the word “woo” here?
Jgill: Don't get me started on professional refereed journals.
Ditto. I remember in graduate school at the U of I that we had access to printed journals across the world. Over time, libraries just could not afford to keep up with the prices (and the proliferation of journals). I believe this is another indication of what’s oftentimes really going on in research. It’s just a business, nothing anymore noble or righteous than anything else one sees.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 29, 2017 - 11:08am PT
|
I highly recommend the National Geographic channel's series on Albert Einstein: Genius
Especially interesting is the devastating impact of politics on science in Germany, coupled with envy and slander between scientists, during the first half of the 20th century. That's not entirely absent in today's world.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 29, 2017 - 08:50pm PT
|
DMT: Which is a load of crap.
Well, you've said it twice now. It must be true.
Great argument. Go to the head of your class.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2017 - 08:30am PT
|
Moose:
(You must have interesting conversations with your daughter if this is the kind of articles that she’s sending to you.)
I must be careful not to overwrite here. There could be so much to say / speculate. The topic looks like science (metrics), but it is also philosophy.
As my wife says, “change one thing and everything changes.” Changing standards especially has been shown to have far-reaching effects (look at technology, for example). (The supply of research studies might decline, but I’m unsure how the demand would be effected. If the change becomes pervasive in social science, then many practices and considerations are likely to change.)
Let’s try to be clear about the overall context and other elements of statistical reasoning. “Statistical significance” means “statistically meaningful.” Significance implies readers should be *confident* that an association is not spurious (all the more so employing an .005 hurdle).
On the other hand, changing that metric standard has no impact on the substantiality or the power of an association (equally, causality). One could have a meaningful association but a very low leveled association. That means that the explained variance between or among “things” is not very positive or negative (viz., it’s slight). In social sciences, this measurement is often referenced by “R-square.” We could say that X meaningfully (we can be confident that it) shows up when Y shows up—but it happens infrequently. “Confidence” is not the same as strength or “power.” Confidence signals an association is not accidental or simply a random coincidence.
Additionally, statistics makes important assumptions about samples, their representativeness, and the distributions of populations. These are philosophically consequential. Have samples been randomly selected? (Doesn’t “selection” obviate randomness?) Are samples large enough to generalize from? Why are samples needed to begin with? Are populations normally distributed? Are there bona fide populations anyway?
Any time that we determine a category (we establish them, not nature), we are defining “things” into conceptual existence so that we can abstractly articulate / manipulate them. Does that intellectual process expose what is true and existent? When I stare onto the land in the morning in my silent sittings, do I see things separately and put them together into a unitary landscape, or do I see a vast (and infinitely detailed) display that I can abstractly bracket into dynamic parts? What is it that I, indeed, sense? Is it possible to hold anything outside of what simply appears to be consciousness? Does my consciousness come in parts, or in one “blooming, buzzing confusion” of William James.
In order to express and discuss anything, it appears I must create. Discrimination seems to be an analytical process. Am I finding puzzles or creating them? (Even this post.)
Be well.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!