Is it a good idea to study sociology? So many people say it is

>>9029389

Karl Marx is literally and unironically regarded as a major contributor to what we understand modern sociology to be. So there's that.

I'm being sorta-spicy but in another sense not really. People can have a spirited debate about whether psychology and psychiatry are sciences, but at least the debate is tenable in those cases. Even math has rules, makes discoveries, etc. Once you get to sociology you're as close to being outside of "the sciences" as makes no difference. And in any event, you're certainly outside the hard sciences, of course.

"Sociology is a science." is a sentence that might reasonably be assigned a very low, yet non-zero truth value: 0.05, say. Even Marx presented tables of data and examples, and did simple number crunching in service of his arguments.

Now, just because I say that sociology is pretty much not-a-science /right now/, doesn't mean that I can't conceive of some future state of affairs where our understanding of reality is so good that we can analyze ourselves and make "ought" statements about how society is run, which are very much more like a science. But we're not there now because we all have our biases and are free to have them, and it's always near-impossible for any one (or any group) to be objective about itself.

>>9029389
Yes, it's pseudoscience entirely based on ideology and politics. If you want to study it, be rigourous (as in, ensure the scientific legitimacy of what you're studying) and maybe attempt to contribute to reforming it. From it's inception it was like this, so it's best to ignore the core of it and make what you can out of the dregs.

>>9029389
It is futile to separate politics from sociology as power relationships are essential to understanding social problems and characteristics. It is needed to understand the whole and in fact, in the Weber or Marx's approach, it's the only thing that matters.

STEM and Economics don't like Sociology (and other social sciences that they refuse to call science) because its reliance in non-quantitative (qualitative) indicators that have internal validity but not external validity, assuming that quantitative indicators are enough. But while quantitative indicators can easily demonstrate correlations, they generally have a hard time to prove causality, that why qualitative indicators are necessary.

It is a very interesting science, I would recommend it with Economics, but not the "statistics autism" economics but more "theory" economics, get away from microeconomics.

>>9029389
I treat sociology books as math proofs, everything becomes more fun and worthwhile.

>>9029389
Statistics-based sociology, like The Bell Curve, is sound science.

>>9029389
Read some chomsky nigga

>>9031240
I was thinking about taking political science with it

>>9029441
Alex jones said that demons will create computrers capable of reading into the future and create a god machine out of humans to control earth.

I personally love psychology but it is a struggle to wade through all the bad psychology
I have a feeling sociology could be much worse, so be aware of that

I had a book on sociology for a course which seemed to be relatively (emphasis) scientific, so I imagine that if you make it through, you should be able to find credible sociology

Give it a shot if you feel like it

>>9031656

Everything that I wrote in the above post, to which you've just replied, is either true or sensible, reasonable. I take your reply as a snarky, sarcastic non sequitor which is intended to "match" the ("non-")seriousness of my above post by juxtaposing it with a silly post.

If in fact this was your intention with your post, then that intention is wrong and misguided, and for the reason that my post's various bits are all sensible. Karl Marx was an early modern theorist of sociology, sociology is pretty much not-a-science though it may have occasion to include a bit of science now and then (data), and it is reasonable to imagine a hypothetical future where sociology might proceed on a more rigorous, scientific basis, as our knowledge base about the world increases. None of what I had written is at all "kooky", as you seem to have perhaps suggested.

>>9031681
I agree with your post, there was a time when biological functions were so complex that we couldnt analyze and manipulate them effieciently, making medicine inefective, but now, its great ;)

And my post might not entierly deviate from yours, there might be a day when ill intentioned humans control all people through mechanisms that can take an incomprehenseble amount of variables into account.

Yes, we honestly need more smart people on the political left.

Oh and when in the process of learning sociology you become a communist/anarchist (inevitable fate) keep it to yourself. It's not good PR if you want to help the world progress politically.

>>9029441

Karl Marx is a fucking legend. Only an engineer would think otherwise.