I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?

Thats not true, sometimes people in Psychiatry or Psychology might cross someone that knows a specialized area of Physics and believe them to be lost within some fantasy world if the particular subject is discussed.

Sure, but that depends on the open-mindedness of the psychologist. Not to mention the supporting evidence for the Physics.

I maintain the concept of a polymath type "super-psychologist".

physics and math are the only true sciences.

Psychologists are not "experts in thought processes." You need to learn a lot more about psychology.

I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?
No. What you are referring to is a nexialist.

I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?Using your premise (which is crap), I would say economics trumps all other sciences: it studies how and why people act, not how they think.

physics and math are the only true sciences.

No, they are not. Even the smartest man in the world can testify to that.

Using your premise (which is crap), I would say economics trumps all other sciences: it studies how and why people act, not how they think.

How about an inter-disciplinary branch that stems from both: Psycho-economics?

No. What you are referring to is a nexialist.

I have never heard of that in my life. Is it a popular term? I googled it and there doesn't seem to be an entry in Wikipedia.

Even the smartest man in the world can testify to that.
who might that be?

If the psychologist beats the scientist, then who does the polymath beat?

physics and math are the only true sciences.

Unlike biology and chemistry which are just artistic dabbles.:D

IT DOESNT BEAT ANYTHING.... IT JUST THINKS IT DOES.

it as a science... suffers from delusions of grandure... probubly due to its mother...

-MT

who might that be?

The big guy himself, see Theory of theories (http://www.ctmu.org/)

See that? Nobody is saying shit now.

the #1 rule of psychology is that psychology has barely scratched the surface of learning.
compare a retarded drunk fratboy pawing at a coed to a don juan....

Lol. I knew I spoke too damn soon.

But seriously, psychology is a real science even though its one of the new ones. Just give it more time. Statistics is a friend of psychology.

Lol. I knew I spoke too damn soon.

But seriously, psychology is a real science even though its one of the new ones. Just give it more time. Statistics is a friend of psychology.

i know that...whew, do i know that. my lady is studying for her final bachelor's exam...and it is: TADAAAAA!!! some insane statistics course. i looked at her notes, and went into convulsions.
(she is a clinical psychology student)

I have never heard of that in my life. Is it a popular term? I googled it and there doesn't seem to be an entry in Wikipedia.

http://kangarookoncepts.tripod.com/Nexialist.htm

"I've never heard of a Nexialist, what's that?

First, here is the formal definition, coined by science fiction author A. E. Van Vogt.

Nexialist: One skilled in the science of joining together in an orderly fashion the knowledge of one field of learning with that of other fields.

He created this science for one of his books called "Voyages of the Space Beagle" which is actually a pretty good book. It was the classic anthology of stories about an exploratory ship full of scientists visiting planets around distant stars and, of course, constantly finding themselves in trouble. The main character in the book was the only Nexialist on board and was looked down on by the other scientists because they didn't consider Nexialism a "real" science. Needless to say, in almost every story the Nexialist character was the hero because of his ability to pull together useful things from several different scientific fields such as chemistry, physics and psychology to produce the gadget or tactic that saved the day. He was the one person on the ship who had a wide enough grasp of the sciences to "see the forest for the trees" when the specialists couldn't, because they were to focused on just their field of study. These days we call this sort of thing "thinking out of the box". Another definition I like to use is that a Nexialist isn't someone who necessarily knows the answer to every question, but they do know where to look to find that answer. In any case, by the end of the book, he was quite well respected by the other scientists on the ship, and had legitimized his field of study."

I think a Nexalist beats a polymath. And a polymath beats everyone else.

What I mean is, if a normal guy who some might label an "idiot" was a Nexalist, he could beat a very intelligent specialist.

I think a Nexalist beats a polymath. And a polymath beats everyone else.

They are kind of one and the same except that the polymath is expected to have an encyclopaedic style knowledge. Unless encyclopaedic knowledge cannot be used for practical application which of course the Nexalist can do.


Nexalist, jack of all trades, master of none, Polymath - master of all trades?

I would take a Nexalist any day. A polymath loses because he still specializes in the area of being a polymath. His mentality is still restricted. A Nexalist does not specialize in anything at all.

What I mean is, if a normal guy who some might label an "idiot" was a Nexalist, he could beat a very intelligent specialist.

I am not a specialist but I can problem solve and have problem solved more effectively than many alleged specialist accademics. It really is a 'seeing the wood for the tree's' kind of thing.

What about a Sexalist?

What about a Sexalist?

no such thing, unless we're getting into porn sites now?

What are you doing to me right now?

What are you doing to me right now?

I'm not 'doing' anything to you, I'm responding to your posts, anything else you are doing to yourself! bleh, I'd rather not know! Both hands on the keyboard NOW!

Theoryofrelativity.... always with the hand jokes.

Philosophy is truly the queen of all pursuits. She is litterally the mother of them all, save for mathematics, which is more like her sister. Moreover, whereas physics may tell us how things move and are composed, or psychology how we think, or chemistry how things react, philosophy provides the answer to why any of this is, what is truth (needed for all other things!), and the full gamut of the normative concerns of life (ethics and politics).

So yes. Philosophy > Everything else.

I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?

It's ... well, it's a little more complex than that. To enter the real sciences debate for a moment, physics and math are the only true sciences if we consider all other physical sciences as derivative of physics. Chemistry, biology, and eventually psychiatry. Psychology purports to seek the underlying thematic currents. Where psychiatry and the neurosciences might eventually have human thought down to its most basic natural components, they will speak physics and math. Psychology, on the other hand, will see its historical value and authority grow, but its predictive capability is vague and can only be refined so much. While its predictive capability may be potentially as infinite as humanity itself, that refinement takes place at a limited rate in part because it's like shining light on a particle. Only, this is a very strange particle. The physical grail of the scientific introspection may be attainable to a fundamentally practical degree. The "equation" as such, for psychology, changes fundamentally every time it determines what one of its variable components equals. The next outcome cannot be the same. It can be close, but never the same.

I have great appreciation for the study of psychology, and perhaps I should have taken it up formally. Symbolically, psychology is one of the places where art and science merge. Music, on the other hand, can be mathematically considered, and has its role in the search for the physical grail. Imagine that. Brian Wilson really is God. (For those with a thing for music, consider WNYC's RadioLab #202, April 21, 2006 (http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21). Pretty cool.)

I think I'll go give Tom Cruise a call to come on over to this discussion.. ;)

- N

make sure he takes his shoes off before he approaches the couch....

The sciences should be in cooperation, not competition. In many respects, psychology is still a branch of philosophy, whence it came - and as Prince James eloquently points out, philosophy is the crown of human mental achievement, and is the mother of them all.

It's nexialist, not nexalist.

I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?

You are full of bullsht! Psychology IS NOT a science. It is a pseudospeculative endeavor that tries to reinterpret the reality of the mind into a hypothetical warped and twisted framework of imaginatory ideas leading to nonsense and science fiction. It leads people astray from Nature and what is natural and innate. It has nothing to do with science and is nothing more than a complicated confusion to the mind. It causes tremedous harm to people - as has been proven throughout history - and should be banned as was alchemy and witch hunts. It causes people pain and suffering by attempting to redefine their thoughts and consciousness patterns into an artificial hyperbole of intertwined make-believe Alice-in-Wonderland fantismal construct congectures and artificial belief systems.

Let Nature be Nature without artificially distorting it with psychological bunk! The world is still suffering from the toilet smears left on the world by Freud!

I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?

Er, no. In fact, most of the psychology students I knew (and I dated one of them) were flakes. I suspect many are drawn to the subject to learn more about their own mental issues, than through a drive to help others.

So in other words, a Physicist thinks like a scientist, and a pyschologist is a flake.

....an artificial hyperbola of intertwined make-believe Alice-in-Wonderland fantismal construct congectures and artificial belief systems.... The latest issue of the Johns Hopkins Magazine I recieved had one page article by former head of the psychology department (at JHU hospital, if memory serves). He noted that all doctors in other medical fields based the therapies on the results of scientific studies (drug test results, double blind evaluations etc.) but his field was based on mutual beliefs held by the practitioners. Even they divide into different, somewhat hostile factions (Freud vs. anti-Freudians etc.)

He went on to illustrate the methodology of his field with the problem of autism: For many years the common belief was that it was due to a "cold rejecting mother" and this belief was "confirmed" by noting that the mothers of Austic children were often with some psychological problem, had less friends and did not socialize as much as mothers of normal children etc. That belief is no longer held, but the "methodology" of clinical psychology and psychiatry is unchanged.

It is still based on a system of beliefs, same as the African branch is. I read a study once where the Witch Doctor's cure rate of mental problems was higher than in US, but that was years ago. (Before the development of modern anti-depressant drugs etc - I.e. back when the "common belief" was strongly weighted towards the effectiveness of "the talking therapy.")

psychologist nah, mabye cognitive scientist turned buddhist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
You might want to check the Etymology section, but I thought it might make more sense to explain that Science is actually Derived from 'Knowledge' and 'To know'.

Which means the absurdity of this thread is how the title should probably read 'Are Psychologists Pedantic?'

I would suggest the 'science' that attempts to learn more is probably Cosmology.

How about an inter-disciplinary branch that stems from both: Psycho-economics?Dude, if you know anything about economics you would know that it is ALSO psychology, since it is a study of incentives and how people respond to them, only it's psychology not based on the fucked up fantasies of a dirty old man like Freud, but on reality.

You know, reality with ceteris paribus clauses... ;)

It is still based on a system of beliefs, same as the African branch is. I read a study once where the Witch Doctor's cure rate of mental problems was higher than in US, but that was years ago. (Before the development of modern anti-depressant drugs etc - I.e. back when the "common belief" was strongly weighted towards the effectiveness of "the talking therapy.")

Both may be unscientific, but the African branch is so old their techniques have probably evolved away their worst parts.

Philosophy is truly the queen of all pursuits. She is litterally the mother of them all, save for mathematics, which is more like her sister. Moreover, whereas physics may tell us how things move and are composed, or psychology how we think, or chemistry how things react, philosophy provides the answer to why any of this is, what is truth (needed for all other things!), and the full gamut of the normative concerns of life (ethics and politics).

So yes. Philosophy > Everything else.

Study Philosophy and you end up asking endless dream-world questions for the rest of your life without ever getting any answers: "Is it real?" "Is it true?" "Do I exist?" "What is reality?"

Study Physics and you get down-to-Earth scientific answers to all the above questions.

What does Mathematics have anything to do with Philosophy, other than being applicable to advanced logic? Mathematics is the fundamental tool of Physics, which provides solid answers to the fundamental processes and principles of Nature and the physical world around us.

Philosophy embarks on a blind wandering venture of eternal "speculation," rather than focussing on observational foundations (aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, historical philosophy, aka. Plato, Aristotle, Descarte's "mind-body dualism").

Psychology: the study of mental behavior. From my experience in college most students study and major in psychology to find out more about their own mental problems and how to understand and deal with them.

The latest issue of the Johns Hopkins Magazine I recieved had one page article by former head of the psychology department (at JHU hospital, if memory serves). He noted that all doctors in other medical fields based the therapies on the results of scientific studies (drug test results, double blind evaluations etc.) but his field was based on mutual beliefs held by the practitioners. Even they divide into different, somewhat hostile factions (Freud vs. anti-Freudians etc.)

He went on to illustrate the methodology of his field with the problem of autism: For many years the common belief was that it was due to a "cold rejecting mother" and this belief was "confirmed" by noting that the mothers of Austic children were often with some psychological problem, had less friends and did not socialize as much as mothers of normal children etc. That belief is no longer held, but the "methodology" of clinical psychology and psychiatry is unchanged.

It is still based on a system of beliefs, same as the African branch is. I read a study once where the Witch Doctor's cure rate of mental problems was higher than in US, but that was years ago. (Before the development of modern anti-depressant drugs etc - I.e. back when the "common belief" was strongly weighted towards the effectiveness of "the talking therapy.")

This is very interesting and I wish you could be more indepth. I highly doubt that a Witch Doctor's cure rate ever exceeded that of a physician dealing with a physical ailment, but I could see where it could exceed the cure rate of mental problems. And this tends to prove how misleading today's psychologists can be, and how they often do more harm than good.

There is a big distinction between a psychiatrist and a psychologist in that the former is considered a medical professional and his skills are based on scientific research: "medical field based therapies on the results of scientific studies (drug test results, double blind evaluations etc.)."

For example, if you have a psychological problem stemming from a past trauma that is haunting you to death, the last thing you need is psychoanalysis where the psychologist forces you to recall all those terrible past memories again and again to the point where they are then so engrained in your brain that you'll never be able to forget them. If something so terrible, traumatic or frightening that happened to you: no want wants to hear it. try to forget the past and move on with your life: bright, shiny, cheerful, optimistic, and new.

A note of clarification:

The author of the article on psychology and psychiatry I discussed in recent post (40) may have been a psychiatrist instead of just a psychologist. - I get free beers at local bar when customers wants some practice with English and I usually give away some of the newsletters and magazines I receive, so I cannot now check. In either case, he was a well-respected authority in the field.

I prefixed “psychologist” with the word “clinical” as there is a sharp division within psychology. - Some, who I will now call “research psychologist” are very good scientists. I spent a year (with full pay from APL continuing) learning about vision in the Cognitive Science Dept of Johns Hopkins Un. and was very impressed by their careful and clever methods. - They are aware of many subtle factors that can bias results. A lot of their studies concern perception and choice using brief computer displays and are very well done. Many very interesting things have been learned. - These psychologists are entirely different in their methodology from “clinical psychologist.” My prior post was not intended to be critical of them.

Valich may be correct in his speculation that witch doctors never were better than doctors in the treatment of physical diseases, but I am not so sure. During the couple hundred years, when western doctors thought “bleeding a sick person” would help remove the toxins making him sick, the witch doctor giving various herbs and a lot of “placebo effect” via magic charms dances etc. sure had an opportunity to be more effective in many physical illnesses.

BTW, many “therapeutic bleedings” were not done by doctors, perhaps most were not. Barbers had very sharp razors and often did the job. That is why the “barber’s pole” is red and white. - In the era when few could read, most merchants and service providers used pictorial signs.

During the couple hundred years, when western doctors thought “bleeding a sick person” would help remove the toxins making him sick, the witch doctor giving various herbs and a lot of “placebo effect” via magic charms dances etc. sure had an opportunity to be more effective in many physical illnesses.

That era coincides with the rise of homoeopathy. It had a better recovery rate than leech treatment, funnily enough ;)

If philosophy can be considered a science, it is more of a vote to beat psychology.

Psychology beats others though because usage.

Philosophy is also buddhism so you must account for such.

I think early doctors were somewhat like witch doctors and psychologists in that they based most of their conclusions on hypotheses and speculation, rather than grounded in scientific fact. During the Black Plague arsenic was considered a cure. This is why I made the distinction between psychiatrists and psychologists, though I admit I am too severe and critical of psychologists and the contributions that they do indeed make. I can't help but despise Freud and his own “fixation” on phallus symbols in disorders. On the other hand, I admire Carl Jung's indepth analysis of dreams. But here again, he was a psychiatrist.

physics and math are the only true sciences.
Whatever happened to chemistry.....! :eek:

Whatever happened to chemistry.....! :eek:

Mathematics and physics can explain chemistry.

I believe that you are what you specialize in. So an expert in Physics only thinks like a Physicist. An expert in Mathematics only thinks like a mathematician. But an expert in Psychology has an understanding of the thought processes of all areas. So Psychology beats all sciences?

Psychologists don't have to understand mathematics or anything else.