Psychology Is Scientific

From MemesAreNotScience

So psychology not only explains why clitoridectomy happens where it does but also partly why it doesn't where it doesn't, and provides an empirical test to verify its explanation. That test is therapy for child abuse, which psychology says should reduce the practice. In contrast, memetics provides nothing.

Does it also predict therapy for child abuse will stop circumcision in Jewish families?

Therapy need not be necessary for stopping child abuse nor is it necessarily effective. Legal coercion can be effective in breaking the cycle of abuse, though generally the law only steps in when the job is already 3/4 done. Getting to that 3/4s state generally depends on some form of therapy, whether institutional, individual or collective. OTOH, some forms of mental damage (notably psychopathy) do not respond to any form of therapy.

I didn't ask if therapy was necessary. I asked if therapy for child abuse would stop circumcision in Jewish families. That seems like it would be easy to test. Plot the number of Jews in therapy for child abuse against the number of Jews practicing circumcision over the last 100 years and see if there is a correlation. Given that the number of Jews in therapy 100 years ago was practically zero there should be a significant decrease in circumcision in that population if this theory is valid.

Only if the people going to therapy are a random cross-section of the population instead of being self-chosen from amongst those with the worst psychological problems. And then, only if circumcision is ever addressed in therapy. Hence, no, it isn't easy to test. In fact, all but the most elementary theories in psychology are like superstrings, nearly impossible to test in practice.

Therapy should be effective if it addresses circumcision at some point. It should still be effective if it's broad and comprehensive.

Wait, I thought your complaint about memetics was that it wasn't science (hence the name of the page) because it doesn't make testable predictions. If psychology can't be tested, it isn't science.

Even self-selected Jews in therapy for child abuse should show a decrease in the practice of circumcision, according to your theory.

Yes, and this decrease can't be measured because there is no control group and withholding therapy in order to perform an experiment would be unethical.

Being testable within the current limits of engineering and economics is not necessary for a theory to be scientific. Superstrings isn't testable in practice yet remains science; in fact the only science in advanced fundamental physics.

Furthermore, being testable within the limits of psychiatric and academic ethics is also not necessary for a theory to be scientific. OriginOfConsciousness makes numerous clear predictions which require thoroughly unethical experiments to test, yet remains scientific.

The problem with memetics isn't merely that it makes no predictions or retrodictions. That requirement only exists to ensure that scientists aren't self-deluding themselves when they verify a theory's consequences. The problem with memetics is that it makes no explanations in the first place.

If you classify OriginOfConsciousness as scientific, you are using a very different definition of that word than I am.

Yes, I do. But then, I already arrived at that conclusion long ago. About when you started defending memetics as scientific.

JulianJaynes' theory makes precise and clear predictions about what would happen if you raised people predisposed to schizophrenia in a parenting style that never encouraged them to develop a conception of self, and carefully structured their environment to systematically reinforce and suppress certain behaviours. The prediction is that these sad wretches of humanity would be functional enough to sustain a stone age civilization and would exhibit all of the distinguishing characteristics of those societies as established by archeological evidence.

Again, OriginOfConsciousness is a perfectly scientific theory, whose most comprehensive test just happens to be too horrible to ever perform. That's the inevitable problem when your scientific discipline involves human beings.

How can a theory be scientific if you can't test it with the ScientificMethod? Isn't it then just a theory? -- francis

You have assumed that there is such a thing as the scientific method that demarcates scientific theories from everything else. The ScientificMethod page you refer to suggests this might not be so.

My question about child abuse therapy stopping circumcision among Jewish families was intended to point out the over simplification of the reasons for clitorectomy in the authors original statements on MemeticsAreNotScience?. The author claimed:

Psychology explains clitoridectomy as a response to individuation of the child from the parent. The clitoris is central to female sexuality, which in turn is a powerful symbol of independence. But clitoridectomy is the response only in a culture which is sexually repressive, deeply misogynist and violently brutal. In addition, practitioners of clitoridectomy must have been personally brutalized as children in order to become the repressive brutal misogynists they are. Peer-pressure and "imitation" is not enough.

While some cases of genital mutilation may be "a response to individuation of the child from the parent", most are probably cultural traditions passed down by imitation without much thought by the practitioners. Humans have developed myriad ways of differentiating members of one group from another. Power politics may influence the form of these behaviors, but it's simplistic to claim the same politics are at work in every instance.

There's nothing scientific in the above quote. There's no way to falsify the claims.

The idea that people engage in complex and deliberate butchery "without much thought" is simply extraordinary. And if science teaches anything at all, it is that such extraordinary claims must have extraordinary justification.

: Hardly an extraordinary claim. My parents and their doctor didn't give it much thought when my genitals were mutilated shortly after birth. There was no compelling religious or medical reason to do it. It was just a common practice in my country at that time.
: I'm sorry, I didn't know you had suffered subincision. Or do you mean castration? And what country is it that you come from?

Are these people the unconscious bicamerals of JulianJaynes' stone-age societies? Have you managed to prove the very hypothesis others reject as untestable? As much as I might wish it were the case, I hardly think so.

In addition, your extraordinary claim rests on the contra-factual assumption that unconscious decision-making does not exist. This assumption isn't merely rejected by every serious psychologist, it has been thoroughly disproved by empirical research.

: No it doesn't. [assume unconscious decision does not exist]
: Of course it does. If it didn't, your argument would be left wide open to the counter that "unthinking" people are making deliberate yet unconscious decisions instead of merely imitating everyone else. Which would change the status of your argument from "unbelievably stupid after a bit of thought" to "unbelievably stupid" period.

Further, what group hides markers of group differentiation? If genital mutilation were caused by a desire for physical group differentiation, as you imply, it would not occur on a part of the body that is always physically hidden in public. In fact, the principal group differentiation caused by genital mutilation is psychological. Can anyone doubt that the most fundamental marker of group differentiation is its members' psyches?

: Jews and Yakuza are two examples. [of groups that hide markers of group differentiation]
: You're assuming your conclusion. You assume that the Jews and Yakuza's markers are physical instead of psychological even when they are hidden from other members.
: I can. [doubt that group differentiation is primarily psychological]
: I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the conclusion is now inescapable; you're a blatant idiot. Apparently, you don't understand the first thing about human nature. If group differentiation isn't primarily psychological then how do you explain people with white skin being treated, and reviled, as black in the USA?

So your claim is more than merely extraordinary, it is disingenuous. Because no-one can seriously doubt that, whatever the cause of genital mutilation of pubescent children, its principal effect is precisely the destruction of the child's sexuality and hence their independence. Nor can any thinking being doubt that if genital mutilation is caused by a desire for group differentiation then it is a desire for psychological differentiation.

That genital mutilation is done for the psychological impact it produces, in its victims and perpetrators, is such a self-evident fact that it should be beyond the shadow of a doubt for every thinking person. That some people deny the very most obvious truths of human nature only proves psychology correct in its assertion that people are violently irrational.

: It isn't self-evident to me.
: Apparently, it wouldn't be self-evident to you that pain is psychological. I know you're lying since it isn't possible for any person to be as stupid as you pretend to be and still be able to function in society, even on the internet.

Now onto remarks for thinking people: the brutal savages that engage in genital mutilation do so for its psychological impact. One can interpret this as their culture seeking to perpetuate itself by turning its children into more brutal savages. The key to understanding this is that the people involved see absolutely nothing wrong in being a brutal savage. This would explain why they would be casual and "unthinking" when mutilating the genitals of their child ... if in fact they were either casual or unthinking, since they are neither; just deny them the opportunity to mutilate their child and watch them go apoplectic.

However, to go beyond that and claim that the brutal savages or their victims are exempt from human psychology is simply beyond the pale. The idea that pain, horror and torture are to be dismissed as "power politics" is too stupid for words and anyone who believes such understands nothing of psychology. The idea that genital mutilation is just "one of those things" which people engage in without any psychological impact whatsoever is so unutterably stupid as to cast doubt on the sanity of whomever claims it.

I can and do seriously doubt many of those claims:

Genital mutilation doesn't destroy "a child's sexuality" (whatever that is). My genitals are mutilated and I don't think my sexuality is destroyed.
Destroying a child's sexuality doesn't destroy his independence.
I can't think of any reason to assume genital mutilation is caused by a desire for psychological differentiation, whatever that means.

What exactly is a "brutal savage"? Someone who lives in a hut? Or anyone that doesn't have indoor plumbing?

If you live in the USA, it's the guy down the street that clamours for mass murder of Iraqis.

: So anyone you disagree with? Or do you hold the view that some people are more civilized than others (which is how it sounds)?
: In primitive societies all of their members are brutal and savage pretty much all of the time. In the more civilized societies, the proportion of people who are brutal and savage, and the proportion of time they are so, both decline. Eventually, it tends to zero.
: The USA is more civilized than your typical Arab country, but Western Europe is far more civilized than the USA, and Northern Europe more civilized than Western Europe.

As should be obvious to everyone by now, even those who are pretending to be too stupid, I do not include circumcision in "genital mutilation". On MemesAreNotScience, I explicitly ruled out destroying a child's sexuality as a motive for circumcision.

: Why don't you include circumcision in genital mutilation? It mutilates genitals, doesn't it?
: Only if you qualify tattooing and other body modification as mutilation. But they're not since they're primarily transformative, not destructive.

Destroying a person's sexuality by mutilating their genitals at pubescence most definitely harms their independence. In the case of clitoridectomy, it destroys sexual independence and grievously harms emotional independence.

: How is independence linked to the clitoris?
: By independence I mean psychological independence, not financial or physical. Psychological independence entails intellectual, emotional and sexual independence. Sexual independence means that one's sexuality is devoted to one's own life goals. Cutting off a young woman's clit is a method of restricting her sexuality to her rapists.

Firstly, inflicting trauma, especially of a specific nature, is a phenomenon that is extremely well-known under the rubric of "initiation ritual". Secondly, initiation rituals are well-known for differentiating between members and non-members of the group. Thirdly, it's also well-known that initiation rituals can be purely psychological (eg, humiliation rituals). If you didn't think of these well-known facts then I assume you haven't dropped your stupid act.

Now here's some further explanation about initiation rituals. All initiation rituals are primarily psychological in nature and purpose. They inflict trauma for the purpose of putting the victim (the "initiate") in a vulnerable and emotional state of mind. Once that is accomplished, the victim becomes malleable and the perpetrator (the group) can indoctrinate the victim as it wishes.

In fact, the psychology behind initiation rituals is no more complicated or esoteric than that behind StockholmSyndrome? or the typical abusive spousal relationship. They are very effective, which is why the US army makes such extensive use of them when turning ordinary youth into bloodthirsty, racist, mass murderers.

: I'm familiar with initiation rituals. I subjected myself to a particularly intense one. What point are you trying to make with these paragraphs?
: That psychology is inherent in the ritual of genital mutilation? That this is an obvious fact of human nature? That you should've known better? And now, that you do know better but are merely pretending that you don't. The game is up, you've been made.

OK. I can't make heads or tails out of these statements. The game must be up.

Regarding "OffTopic" Suggestion

I don't think it is off topic. Much of the "evidence" in software engineering is (unfortunately) related to psychology. IOW, psychology is *key* to comparing various options and paradigms. Although I agree that psychology is a science, it is a messy science compared to other disciplines (DisciplineEnvy).

It would be well then to present that instead of mutilation of genitals, brutal savages, and childhood sexuality, which do not fit the *key* to comparing various options and paradigms as you put it.

Perhaps we should focus on the larger concept of psychology instead. How does science work to improve the discipline of psychology, for example. How are theories tested? Are they testable, or simply "working models"? Are working models bad?