[James001]

> You can't have less/more reliable knowledge. Science can't be half-wrong and half-right.

I wasn't trolling, but I think you might be?

Of course science can be more/less reliable or half-wrong/half-right. The truth isn't binary, it's closer to fuzzy logic sets.

And as much as you would like to call the "soft" sciences pseudosceince, you are doing yourself a disservice. In reality, your attitude suggests that you are closer to a pseudoscientist than the "soft" scientists you are so eager to dismiss. Narrow-mindedness like you are epsousing is the reason why science is in the dumps.

[tensor]

The truth is absolute, it's not some fuzzy thing. Your knowledge may be a fuzzy thing, but the truth is not. The problem in the social sciences is that they often ask questions that may not be well defined. So sure, then you end up in fuzzy half truths land, but only because you haven't defined the problem well.

To take a very simple example, let's take "intelligence." Almost immediately we can start arguing about what intelligence is, how to measure it, and so on. Notably, all the participants won't come to any meaningful conclusion because it's a poorly created human construct.

In contrast, the "hard" sciences like physics often deal with something much more clear cut: can you predict the future? If the starting conditions are X, what are the conditions at some time Y?

Can this be applied to the social sciences? We don't remotely know enough about things like the mind to be able to do this. Hell, even in biology the systems are so complex that we are still at the point of mostly guessing.

It's just not the same. Not by any fault of the people trying to study these extremely complex systems of course. Still, at the end of the day we should be honest with ourselves and recognize the differences.

[thaw13579]

Physics deals in fuzzy things, both theoretically (quantum mechanics and the associated uncertainty) and experimentally (noise is unavoidable and all conclusions require statistical reasoning). But I agree there is a vast amount more "fuzz" in the social sciences, but that seems like a reason to study it more, not less.

[tagrun]

Thank you for playing along and justifying everything I said.

[James001]

ah, good, no substantial reply. I thought you were just trolling and you were. Thank you for justifying everything I just said. Glad to know you agree that science does not = the scientific method