UK Asylumites, which class are you?Follow

I'm obviously not a rocket surgeon though.

Our new neighbor is a PhD astrophysicist. I try to work in "it's not rocket science" whenever I can and then look at him as if I've come up with something completely novel. How I imagine Gbaji looks at everyone, all the time.

That must be the worst part of his PhD. He can probably count the people who haven't made that joke on one hand.

No. I wrote it in an explanation about why students who pursue a degree in sociology tend to be those who view math and reason as "hard", and thus find a degree that doesn't require much of it. Responding to that with a statement like "But figuring out people is hard too!" is you introducing a completely different metric to measure "hard" by and doesn't at all address the core issue I was talking about.

Let me clarify my response then: There are different kinds of "easy" and "hard". People who gravitate towards sociology are those who tend to find math and science "hard", but may find writing about people "easy". Does that make more sense?



Sure. Because we expect engineers to be intelligent, so it's funny when they're not. Making jokes about sociologists is like making jokes about the retarded fat kid.

No. I wrote it in an explanation about why students who pursue a degree in sociology tend to be those who view math and reason as "hard", and thus find a degree that doesn't require much of it.

You're thinking of degrees in *social work*. Not at all the same thing.

No. I'm thinking of degrees in sociology. It's the field that even folks in other soft sciences like history, archeology, basketweaving, etc make fun of.

Edited, Apr 11th 2013 2:24pm by gbaji

Biologists perspective:

Everyone finds their niche. Someplace where you're comparatively better than others, and can succeed with the least effort. In a social species like ours people will argue their niche is the most important, best etc. "We should do things my way..." The more people you can get playing your game the better, because you're better at it, you win in a sense. Your niche grows, and there's more potential for you. If you can shrink the niche of those who are good at things you aren't, well that's even better. "That doesn't matter, nobody cares if you're good at x,y,z..." It lessens the chance of you having to do something you're not good at, increases your relative group standing, etc.

Evolution, man. It all comes back to it.

There are some scientists on this board, and I'm sure we all know a few in real life. Have any of you ever heard one of them mocking sociology? I sure haven't. In fact I haven't heard it mocked by anyone, really.

Sometimes people make fun of those seemingly obvious studies, like "Study finds women are attracted to men with bigger penises," but that's mocking a specific study that's being used as clickbait by a news site, not mocking the profession as a whole. My best guess is that Rush Limbaugh mocks it regularly and that's where his notion comes from?

It's entirely possible that the bad rap for Sociology comes from the fact that virtually the only evidence of their work outside of pure academia is this sort of study though.

Fascinating. To be clear, you've become convinced that probably the field that likely has the most personal impact on you and your life choices is laughable and should be ignored. I wonder who decided you should think that. I'm kidding, I know, All of your ideas, and that's in no way an exaggeration, ALL OF THEM, are designed by someone in my field to fit your personality. You're a member of an exceptionally predictable demographic. With a more complete demographic picture I can probably tell you what brand of shoes you wear. If you don't see the power in that, that's fine, in fact it's the idea. Your argument amounts to "The Tobacco Institute says smoking increases awareness. Everyone I know laughs at that cancer stuff."

Shit, I don't even know what brand of shoes I wear.

SpoilerJust looked. Wearing Adidas sneakers at the moment.

Combat boots.

Classic black Fitflops. Comfiest. Shoes. Ever. I intend to wear them all through winter, without socks, because I can walk 3 times further in them than any other shoe. When I'm being classy I wear the beige Fitflops with the leather flowers on top.