Any Experts on Massachusetts State Building Code 780 CMR in the House?

[Shiroikage]

I hate on Humanities like you would not even believe.

[Kuya]

Psychology is usually pretty high up in the top 10 degree choices when the polls are done.

It is popular; a lot of people take it. And then they flunk out and pick something else. Most people never really know what psychology is about until you've taken the first introductory course, and then they usually start running when they take a peek at Freud, Lacan, Wallerstein, Luria, Braunstein, etc.

[Kuya]

I hate on Humanities like you would not even believe.

We are less judgemental than nat. science students, but while humanities students may be smelly, the nat. science students are political oblivious and hence they let the administration walk all over them, which frustrates any form of organization on the part of the student body. Though the communications students are even more apathetic, but what can you expect from future big titied news reporters.

[Shiroikage]

I'm not sure whether introductory history or introductory psychology was a bigger joke of a class. I'm not basing it on intro stuff, though. For some reason, Microbio seems to be a popular subject to major in out of Psychology in my year. I know a few people taking upper level Psych courses to boost their marks.

[Shiroikage]

We are less judgemental than nat. science students, but while humanities students may be smelly, the nat. science students are political oblivious and hence they let the administration walk all over them, which frustrates any form of organization on the part of the student body. Though the communications students are even more apathetic, but what can you expect from future big titied news reporters.

For some reason, our student union is amazingly well balanced in terms of representation.

[Kuya]

I'm not sure whether introductory history or introductory psychology was a bigger joke of a class. I'm not basing it on intro stuff, though. For some reason, Microbio seems to be a popular subject to major in out of Psychology in my year. I know a few people taking upper level Psych courses to boost their marks.

You got me. Either you nat science students are really awesome at psychology, or your school's psychology is way different than the one here. Also, in here you're not allowed to take upper psychology courses if it's not your main concentration, and it is one of the hardest concentrations in the school (or more demanding). Also, most often people take psychology because simply put, most people don't know what psychology is about. Most people go in thinking Freud, when in reality psychology (then science) is not the same thing as psychoanalysis (which is technically not science), so they're usually shocked to find out that it's not what they thought. I was the same, but when i found out what it was about, i liked it anyway.

[Shiroikage]

You got me. Either you nat science students are really awesome at psychology, or your school's psychology is way different than the one here. Also, in here you're not allowed to take upper psychology courses if it's not your main concentration, and it is one of the hardest concentrations in the school (or more demanding). Also, most often people take psychology because simply put, most people don't know what psychology is about. Most people go in thinking Freud, when in reality psychology (then science) is not the same thing as psychoanalysis (which is technically not science), so they're usually shocked to find out that it's not what they thought. I was the same, but when i found out what it was about, i liked it anyway.

Some upper level courses require departmental permissions. It really depends a lot on what the enrollment is in the department. I know most Biochem upper levels require departmental permission, but I can enroll in whatever Microbio courses I need. It's easy enough to obtain.

I write more papers in lab-based science courses than most humanities or social sciences students write, and they're graded ruthlessly. Honestly, the marking on grammar,language, etc. on most Biochem papers is more stringent than most English classes. That being said, I'm not entirely sure why the natural sciences have the reputation they do here. Outside of the time it takes to write papers, I never really had any problems.

[Kuya]

No exceptions here, psychology has to be your main. I wasn't allowed to do poli sci/psych, so i had to switch to psych/poli sci. In here what really gets you is the amount of reading you have to do, since you have to cover social psychology, neuropsychology, human development, psycopathology, and they stress here knowing the history and context of psychology, since the school of psychology here is very social construccionist taking from a mix of the German school of Psychology. And finally, you have to take courses on methodology, which requires you know both the methods used in nat science and the anti nat methods.

[Kuya]

All that just to say that the notion that psych is easy somewhere makes me lol.

[Shiroikage]

No exceptions here, psychology has to be your main. I wasn't allowed to do poli sci/psych, so i had to switch to psych/poli sci. In here what really gets you is the amount of reading you have to do, since you have to cover social psychology, neuropsychology, human development, psycopathology, and they stress here knowing the history and context of psychology, since the school of psychology here is very social construccionist taking from a mix of the German school of Psychology. And finally, you have to take courses on methodology, which requires you know both the methods used in nat science and the anti nat methods.

Not exactly sure about methodology, but Honours students would need to cover all of the different schools. I know in introductory psych we had an overview of the entirety of what you mentioned, and that's usually representative of the courses that the program would require you to take. Without actually taking it or pulling up the course calendar, I couldn't really tell you what the exact requirements are.

I'm not really one to talk about reading, though, because I've pummeled through entire textbooks on bacterial physiology/genetics 3 days before the final exam. I have an astounding inability to ask people for help, so I end up reading papers and textbooks to clarify things. I sleep in easily 95% of my classes, so I end up teaching myself most of the material using borrowed notes, journals, and the texts (god, do I hate classes without texts).

[Shiroikage]

That being said, I was just making a light joke about a "war" that's much older than either of us.

[Kuya]

Reading pages and pages full of numbers would be horrible. Way harder to focus on that unless you're actively practicing exercises and formulas, aside form that, reading numbers is BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

[Kuya]

That being said, I was just making a light joke about a "war" that's much older than either of us.

Meh. The "war" was basically some soc. scientists saying that they should be able to study the context of "current" sciences instead of studying "failed" sciences, because they argued that studying the socio-historical context of a science does not delegetimize it... of course nat. scientists took this as an attack on science and got butt hurt about it, but to make matters worse, some soc. scientists and some other random people actually started arguing that science is a tool of the status quo and then shit hit the fan. Blah blah blah, some accusations of trying to make scientific truth relative, blah blah blah, accusation of obscurantist, blah blah blah.

That's it in a nutshell.

[Shiroikage]

Reading pages and pages full of numbers would be horrible. Way harder to focus on that unless you're actively practicing exercises and formulas, aside form that, reading numbers is BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

Fuck that. I hated the two calculus classes I took. Nothing was worse than being so lazy that I read the fucking solution manual to learn it instead of actually practicing. Seriously, if I could go back, I probably would do the work instead of reading it.

[Akanei]

Bringing the thread back to what's important.

Kuya, nobody goes to dunkin donuts for donuts. It's one giant mindfuck.

[Shiroikage]

Meh. The "war" was basically some soc. scientists saying that they should be able to study the context of "current" sciences instead of studying "failed" sciences, because they argued that studying the socio-historical context of a science does not delegetimize it... of course nat. scientists took this as an attack on science and got butt hurt about it, but to make matters worse, some soc. scientists and some other random people actually started arguing that science is a tool of the status quo and then shit hit the fan. Blah blah blah, some accusations of trying to make scientific truth relative, blah blah blah, accusation of obscurantist, blah blah blah.

That's it in a nutshell.

Yeah, that's more or less the case.
There's the age old stereotypes that social sciences are less empirical and rigorous that are virtually nothing but stereotypes anymore, too.

[Kuya]

Soc. scientist criticizing nat. science, and nat scientists saying that they can't do that because they don't understand nat. science, and nat. scientists criticizing soc. science, and soc. scientists saying that they can't do that because they don't understand soc. science.

That's an even shorter summary.

[Shiroikage]

Soc. scientist criticizing nat. science, and nat scientists saying that they can't do that because they don't understand nat. science, and nat. scientists criticizing soc. science, and soc. scientists saying that they can't do that because they don't understand soc. science.

That's an even shorter summary.

Discussion over.

[Shiroikage]

Also, math is icky.

[Kuya]

Yeah, that's more or less the case.
There's the age old stereotypes that social sciences are less empirical and rigorous that are virtually nothing but stereotypes anymore, too.

They are, depending on what you mean by rigorous. The thing that nat scientists don't know (well of course they don't know they're not soc. scientists!) is that soc. scientists used to be more empirical and rigorous till they realized that it didn't work. Fast forward to the 60s and the crisis of social science.

Essentially, the whole point of soc. science was that the philosophes from the Enlightment thought you could transmit the same techniques from natural science to a "science of the humanities" so you could figure out what human nature is, and construct the perfect human society based on rigorous, empirical, and mathematical science... furthermore they thought that if you could use the same techniques from the natural science to discover human nature, you could discover the very nature of human knowledge itself, and then, humans could obtain absolute knowledge and power over both nature and humankind. That was the whole point behind the creation of human science, the social science. That backfired lol, cue Reign of Terror, World War 1 and 2, numerous atrocious experiments of humans being treated like animals.

Right now social science is in limbo, currently developing new techniques to create knowledge about social phenomena, whilst also using some techniques from the natural science and making new ones. There isn't certaintity on what the new purpose of the social sciences should be, aside from producing knowledge, but most would agree that it needs to actually center itself around respecting and promoting human dignity... which it absolutely did not do by treating human beings like they were an atom or some cell.

That's what most nat. scientists don't realize, we tried using only techniques from nat science for social phenomena, and that failed miserably in within an awful 300 years. HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE HISTORY LESSON