WEIRD psychology, the Catholic Church, and Social Science

[Truthy]

History isn't a positive science. It even includes parameters which aren't deterministic (due to human agents and psychology).
But the bigger issue here is intent, cause it does seem like another attempt to revive the rather mundane 'war of cultures' trope in late 20th century history. You may recall the popular book "The end of history", which of course was shown to be BS a few years later, when all the fundamental hierarchies collapsed post second-Iraq war and 2008 financial crisis.

More generally, western/northern Europe made use of earlier discoveries and had the luck to not be bordering nomadic or other endless-war civs in the east; unlike eastern Europe. And even so it took them centuries before they got to a point of state organization similar to the Byzantine Empire, and even more centuries to present a boom in maths similar to what took place thousands of years before in the non-catholic non-west.

Non-determinism is is totally irrelevant. One, statistics totally doesn't hinge on "determinism." Two, you mention psychology. Which, surprise surprise, is a field dominated by probability and statistics. We absolutely can use statistical tools study human agents. No sane person would dispute that. Three, just to call out your use of "parameters"... Huh? I can infer what you mean, but bizarre word choice anyway.

As for the rest of your post... I've been seeing your swipes throughout the thread and ignoring them for a reason. But let me give you hand a for second. By and large, this is a cross-cultural psychology paper. And cross-cultural psychology is a 100% valid and important area of research. It is a hot topic in anthropology and psychology right now and for good reasons. And part of what the field studies is the fact that Westerners are often outliers in cross-cultural psychological research. You bringing in Francis Fukuyama is neither relevant nor insightful and frankly it makes no sense. Cross-cultural psychology has nothing to do with the "end of history." I also just love that you were compelled to shoehorn your Byzantine Empire hobby horse into this. And while you could have used that to try to make at least one relevant point, you opted not to. Finally... you know absolutely nothing about Henrich's intent or the intent of other economists/anthropologists/psychologists doing this kind of work.

Yeah, I have an epistemic bias against positivism because positivism is obviously stupid and if taken to its logical extreme leads to massive atrocities.

What in the world are you even talking about? What exactly is stupid and what do you take "positivism" to mean? I'm talking about using regression analysis to study history. Deploying one of humanity's most important intellectual tools to a new field is not "obviously stupid." It makes damn bloody sense. And it has eff all to do with atrocities.

This isn't really true, most good historical scholarship makes use of insights from other fields. It's just, good historians also don't use those insights as a substitute for historical scholarship the way you evidently think they should.

Once again, it's not "substituting" anything. They are testing an existing historical hypothesis that was developed with all the old school methods that count as "historical scholarship." And again, it is a 14-page paper. As is common almost everywhere in academia, smaller works--using a variety of methods--can be used in conjunction to study a topic and arrive at a consensus. I repeat: it is not a replacement for "historical scholarship" (which you're using to mean traditional methods).

However, it still remains unjustified why statistical techniques can't constitute "historical scholarship" in their own right. If regression analysis sheds light on interesting, non-obvious historical trends, I see no reason that shouldn't count as historical scholarship.

 

[Kyriakos]

Non-determinism is is totally irrelevant. One, statistics totally doesn't hinge on "determinism." Two, you mention psychology. Which, surprise surprise, is a field dominated by probability and statistics. We absolutely can use statistical tools study human agents. No sane person would dispute that. Three, just to call out your use of "parameters"... Huh? I can infer what you mean, but bizarre word choice anyway.

As for the rest of your post... I've been seeing your swipes throughout the thread and ignoring them for a reason. But let me give you hand a for second. By and large, this is a cross-cultural psychology paper. And cross-cultural psychology is a 100% valid and important area of research. It is a hot topic in anthropology and psychology right now and for good reasons. And part of what the field studies is the fact that Westerners are often outliers in cross-cultural psychological research. You bringing in Francis Fukuyama is neither relevant nor insightful and frankly it makes no sense. Cross-cultural psychology has nothing to do with the "end of history." I also just love that you were compelled to shoehorn your Byzantine Empire hobby horse into this. And while you could have used that to try to make at least one relevant point, you opted not to. Finally... you know absolutely nothing about Henrich's intent or the intent of other economists/anthropologists/psychologists doing this kind of work.

Statistically it would make sense to take into account the power set of knowing, not knowing, instead of being sure he is right
I do like that I got accused of a swipe, and answered in so non-swipe a manner, though.

 

[Kyriakos]

Good suggestion. That set contains the empty set, which I think is a good way to model your contributions to this thread.

In that way, every set contains the empty set... Which may be another way of saying you would react the same regardless.

By the way, this is going nowhere. But it is funny to accuse one of sentimental reaction, after your own output

 

[Truthy]

In that way, every set contains the empty set... Which may be another way of saying you would react the same regardless.

That's a fault of your posting, not me

 

[Lexicus]

What in the world are you even talking about? What exactly is stupid and what do you take "positivism" to mean? I'm talking about using regression analysis to study history. Deploying one of humanity's most important intellectual tools to a new field is not "obviously stupid." It makes damn bloody sense. And it has eff all to do with atrocities.

"Using regression analysis to study history" is not what positivism means. I assumed you were talking about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#Sociological_positivism

However, it still remains unjustified why statistical techniques can't constitute "historical scholarship" in their own right.

Because, you need other stuff besides regression analysis to give any data set meaning and context. Data never just stands on its own with a self-evident meaning, and the belief that you can skip the "interpretive step" when generating useful knowledge is exactly what I meant by "positivism is stupid".

 

[Truthy]

"Using regression analysis to study history" is not what positivism means. I assumed you were talking about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#Sociological_positivism



Because, you need other stuff besides regression analysis to give any data set meaning and context. Data never just stands on its own with a self-evident meaning, and the belief that you can skip the "interpretive step" when generating useful knowledge is exactly what I meant by "positivism is stupid".

I'm using it to mean something like this: "Verified data (positive facts) received from the senses are known as empirical evidence; thus positivism is based on empiricism.[1]" from the top of that wiki. And I don't think ignoring interpretation is what anyone has in mind.

To be clear, I see no use in getting hung up on the definition of "positivism." I don't think that's a fruitful thing to get into. The issue at hand is the appropriate use of statistics in history and what the epistemic standards and methods should be in that field.