# The mediocrity of modern social sciences



## Non-Existent (Dec 3, 2017)

In contrary to what the title might seem, I actually see a lot of potential in the social sciences. The ability to self reflect at the deepest possible level and understand complex processes of thought is an insanely useful skill. However for whatever reason(s),  the discipline has become extremely warped and twisted in to this pathetic Neo-Marxist, Woe Is Me, group therapy session of self validation. My question to the community is "how?". How does a discipline with so much potential fall to such a pathetic standard? Do you see it improving at all? Is there any hope for a bounce back? Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing your responses.


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## Paralethal (Dec 3, 2017)

It's a thin line between self-reflection and navel gazing.


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## Graffiti canvas (Dec 3, 2017)

Studying a subject = Enlightenment on a subject > Enlightenment on a subject = A sense of authority on the subject. >A sense of authority on the subject = "I'm right and you're wrong"

The above matrix doesn't lead to other disciplines becoming cesspools of opinionated screeching because most of them have benchmarks, agreed on points of reference and very little room for the 1000 shades of grey that Social Sciences contain. Any time you allow people to be considered an "authority" on a subject that has no definable boundaries AND also has an easily changed framework based on current events, you end up with a bunch of people yelling at each other in a room.


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## Non-Existent (Dec 3, 2017)

1864897514651 said:


> So-called 'self reflection at the deepest level' starts with the ability to critically think through logical progressions. It is very rare to find someone that can critically think nowadays. I have said this before, but I will repeat it: the educational system in the United States has succeeded in its goal of retarding the population.
> 
> With a population that is mentally handicapped, it is simply illogical to expect them to ever be able to develop the ability to critically think. And the fundamental reason that our university and college students can no longer critically think is because our country has actively worked to prevent them from developing that ability.



I couldn't agree more. The modern education system in the United States has bred people to be reactionary, illogical, and blind to their own flaws. However, there are still viable fields of study like Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, so they must be doing something right. Perhaps it's just foolish optimism, but with the somewhat-recent discoveries in neuroplasticity, we now know that the human brain can rewire itself at any time. Its morals, values, thought processes, everything; all a blank slate just waiting to happen. Maybe through a similar process along with the proper information, we'll see a change. Probably not, but I sincerely hope so.  Anyway, thank you again for your respectable responses.


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## Kyria the Great (Dec 3, 2017)

Non-Existent said:


> I couldn't agree more. The modern education system in the United States has bred people to be reactionary, illogical, and blind to their own flaws. However, there are still viable fields of study like Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, so they must be doing something right. Perhaps it's just foolish optimism, but with the somewhat-recent discoveries in neuroplasticity, we now know that the human brain can rewire itself at any time. Its morals, values, thought processes, everything; all a blank slate just waiting to happen. Maybe through a similar process along with the proper information, we'll see a change. Probably not, but I sincerely hope so.  Anyway, thank you again for your respectable responses.



I would disagree with the brain being a blank slate for that would entail that we has humans are only shaped by our environment and would ignore the very nature of humanity. This blank slate idea is the precise reason why the humanities are in such a terrible state with professors not trying to open their students to other possibilities, but to reshape them into their own image. I do believe that humanities and social sciences to have good with many of their subjects at their base stemmed in contemplation and critical thinking of the world around us, but this isn't the case right now and the death of critical thinking in these fields sicken me. It has gotten so bad that I at times want to become a history professor if for the only reason to make sure that historical revisionist that are dangerously skewing farther left don't lead this generation's thinkers into the very ideas which allowed the havoc of the French, Russian and Chinese Revolution to be so bloody and murderous.


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## Non-Existent (Dec 3, 2017)

Kyria the Great said:


> I would disagree with the brain being a blank slate for that would entail that we has humans are only shaped by our environment and would ignore the very nature of humanity. This blank slate idea is the precise reason why the humanities are in such a terrible state with professors not trying to open their students to other possibilities, but to reshape them into their own image. I do believe that humanities and social sciences to have good with many of their subjects at their base stemmed in contemplation and critical thinking of the world around us, but this isn't the case right now and the death of critical thinking in these fields sicken me. It has gotten so bad that I at times want to become a history professor if for the only reason to make sure that historical revisionist that are dangerously skewing farther left don't lead this generation's thinkers into the very ideas which allowed the havoc of the French, Russian and Chinese Revolution to be so bloody and murderous.



Perhaps you're right. After all, my understanding of neuroplasticity is very minimal. I suppose I'm just looking for a silver lining. However, you definitely make a fair point regarding the professors. They absolutely bare some, if not most of the responsibility for the politically biased shift we're seeing in the social sciences. Maybe that's where the rehabilitation will begin; a new generation of articulate, sensible professors with enough intellectual honesty and moral motivation to fix the Marxist mess that has become the modern social sciences. Anyway, I sincerely appreciate your dispute regarding neuroplasticity. Thank you


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## Kyria the Great (Dec 3, 2017)

Non-Existent said:


> Perhaps you're right. After all, my understanding of neuroplasticity is very minimal. I suppose I'm just looking for a silver lining. However, you definitely make a fair point regarding the professors. They absolutely bare some, if not most of the responsibility for the politically biased shift we're seeing in the social sciences. Maybe that's where the rehabilitation will begin; a new generation of articulate, sensible professors with enough intellectual honesty and moral motivation to fix the Marxist mess that has become the modern social sciences. Anyway, I sincerely appreciate your dispute regarding neuroplasticity. Thank you



Well the lack of people with right-leaning tendencies retreating from this absolute madness is only hastening the truly echo-chamber mentality of the social sciences making it become a self-fulling prophecy. I just hope this hysteria raised on campuses will cause colleges and universities to rethink their courses and not instead lead to a doubling down of their ideas or make the idea of high education being poisonous to the mind seem like a viable idea. All I know is that this divide needs to be bridged soon or we are looking at a scenario in the United States we haven't seen since the Civil War. 

You are totally welcome as discourse and understanding folks positions is the cornerstone of moving forward as a society.


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## PsychoNerd054 (Dec 3, 2017)

From what I'm seeing, even a few technical college are falling onto the same path of being overly sensitive about their students. A few of them don't even encourage critical thinking, but instead rely heavily on the feelings of other people. That's mainly if they're associated with a liberal arts college, though.


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## SomeSonicFag (Dec 3, 2017)

PsychoNerd054 said:


> From what I'm seeing, even the technical college are falling onto the same path of being overly sensitive about their students. A few of them don't even encourage critical thinking, but instead rely heavily on the feelings of other people.



I can say that this is true. Personally, I think that all of this comes from people never being told "no" when they were younger. I believe that most of us had somewhat reasonably thinking parents that would cut us off from things that we enjoyed if we went overboard and would attempt to get us to do our schoolwork or other important things. My generation, sadly, seems like it mostly had parents that would give their children whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. 

Look at Christian Weston Chandler, he won that stupid contest back in the 90's and now expects that everything should come to him, just because he puts in the minimal amount of effort and he is "autistic". Stuff like this has obviously caused most of us to become egomaniacs, which has lead to many people taking on lolcow traits and personalities. 

People can't stand not having their every wish fulfilled since they have grown up, been taught in, and graduated in safe spaces, where they are taught that if they just bitch and scream, they can have whatever they want. When they have to face reality, get a job, or come to grips with the face that we didn't get the president that we wanted, they start throwing temper tantrums, like the ultra left did when Donald Trump became the president. ANTIFA is pretty much what toddlers would do if they could walk, riot, and start fires.

TL;DR society is fucked because lolcows can't feel empathy for others and only care for themselves.


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## GS 281 (Dec 3, 2017)

Non-Existent said:


> In contrary to what the title might seem, I actually see a lot of potential in the social sciences. The ability to self reflect at the deepest possible level and understand complex processes of thought is an insanely useful skill. However for whatever reason(s),  the discipline has become extremely warped and twisted in to this pathetic Neo-Marxist, Woe Is Me, group therapy session of self validation. My question to the community is "how?". How does a discipline with so much potential fall to such a pathetic standard? Do you see it improving at all? Is there any hope for a bounce back? Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing your responses.


Are you basing this on YouTube claptrap or scholarly research claptrap


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## Kyria the Great (Dec 3, 2017)

I know this sounds rather harsh, but I partially blame a society that has been cultivated to protect the weak rather than build them up to become strong. We are a point where strength is sneered apawn and abject weakness is to be celebrated. The fact that most journalists and academic circles sneer at those who are more athletically and physically inclined because they might be more assertive and therefore more often lean right should be a damning tell about our current state in America.


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## PsychoNerd054 (Dec 3, 2017)

SomeSonicFag said:


> TL;DR society is fucked because lolcows can't feel empathy for others and only care for themselves.



Yet it's somehow a crime for calling out on these Lolcows bullshit because "WAHH, U R HIRTING DARE FEEWINGS!!1"


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## PsychoNerd054 (Dec 3, 2017)

Kyria the Great said:


> I know this sounds rather harsh, but I partially blame a society that has been cultivated to protect the weak rather than build them up to become strong. We are a point where strength is sneered apawn and abject weakness is to be celebrated. The fact that most journalists and academic circles sneer at those who are more athletically and physically inclined because they might be more assertive and therefore more often lean right should be a damning tell about our current state in America.



I think it's much of the same. I feel like the main reason for all of this though is their constant appeal to pity and appeal to emotion. Plus, they seem to use their emotions as their intelligence. Logic is ultimately defined by how other people would feel in their eyes.


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## Non-Existent (Dec 3, 2017)

yawning sneasel said:


> Are you basing this on YouTube claptrap or scholarly research claptrap


No. These are merely my thoughts. If you disagree with any of them, I'd be glad to have an actual discussion with you.


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## GS 281 (Dec 3, 2017)

Non-Existent said:


> No. These are merely my thoughts. If you disagree with any of them, I'd be glad to have an actual discussion with you.


What I am asking is how did you form your ideas. Is it from reading scholarly research in different fields of social science or from watching youtubevideos of tards pretending they know what theyre talking about


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## Non-Existent (Dec 3, 2017)

yawning sneasel said:


> What I am asking is how did you form your ideas. Is it from reading scholarly research in different fields of social science or from watching youtubevideos of tards pretending they know what theyre talking about


A combination of philosophy, statistics, psychological and sociological research, and personal experience. I'd say those are the primary attributes of what formed my thoughts on this matter.


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## PsychoNerd054 (Dec 3, 2017)

1864897514651 said:


> There are macroeconomic influences on those fields that render them totally useless to study.



Not to mention, Computer Science always has the shit advertised out of them. So many of these programming companies make Computer Science look like the one thing that goes above everything else, that if you take up Computer Science, you'll always live a nice and stress-free life. 

The common argument for signing for a Computer Science job always seems to be that it's high paying. I could never stress this enough though, so many people have already taken up the job, which means that it's not worth as much as it was in the 1980s. 

Do I believe schools should obliterate CS classes completely? Absolutely not. In my mind, it's very important to teach computer literacy since every job nowadays makes use of a computer in one way or another. The real issue though is that the economy milks that shit like crazy out of college students, and because of that, the jobs aren't worth as much as they used to be.


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## Kyria the Great (Dec 3, 2017)

PsychoNerd054 said:


> Not to mention, Computer Science always has the shit advertised out of them. So many of these programming companies make Computer Science look like the one thing that goes above everything else, that if you take up Computer Science, you'll always live a nice and stress-free life.
> 
> The common argument for signing for a Computer Science job always seems to be that it's high paying. I could never stress this enough though, so many people have already taken up the job, which means that it's not worth as much as it was in the 1980s.
> 
> Do I believe schools should obliterate CS classes completely? Absolutely not. In my mind, it's very important to teach computer literacy since every job nowadays makes use of a computer in one way or another. The real issue though is that the economy milks that shit like crazy out of college students, and because of that, the jobs aren't worth as much as they used to be.



The problem is that courses like Computer sciences feed into the tech and education bubble that states like Massachusetts and California currently find themselves in and lack of educational or financial diversity can lead these currently booming states to reach a crisis if these fields should crash or at least take a noticeable decline. 

Another major hurdle in fixing the Social sciences is that alot of these schools are also driven by raw profit rather than education, so much like FOX news or CNN end up feeding their students their biases to placate them so they don't attempt to find another school and thus end up with the mess we are currently in. This thought process is coming from a rather staunch Free market advocate by the way.


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## Non-Existent (Dec 3, 2017)

1864897514651 said:


> Those are not 'viable fields of study'. There are macroeconomic influences on those fields that render them totally useless to study. I consider all forms of modern 'higher education' to be fundamentally evil. Regardless, your comment on 'neuroplasticity' is just a nod to the notion of free will. All humans are born with the free will to either follow or reject logic. The etymology of 'logic' comes from the Greek word, 'Logos', meaning the Word of God. So although I say the United States has succeeded in retarding the population, it is ultimately the population's free choice to reject logic since logic, by definition, is the Word of God. Nobody can force you to reject God, Who is logic itself.
> 
> I actually wrote an essay on this topic a few months ago—an essay where I defined evil. I also wrote an essay that described how it is possible for people to escape evil. It is not easy to escape evil, which is the base premise that causes people to lose the ability to critically think. Once you have rejected logic, it typically takes a supernatural miracle to return to God.
> 
> In regards to Kyria suggesting that becoming a professor is the remedy to this civilization situation—it is not. It is a waste of your time. This civilization is over, so the most you can do is work on yourself and preach to the people closest to you. I have written before about how our civilization will end with landmass redistribution, massive bloodshed, and hyperinflation.



You're not wrong. At the moment, those are just examples of fields that the current market has a high demand for. However, the reason I chose those two majors is because I firmly believe those particular fields of study have a solid potential to benefit mankind. If you don't mind me asking, what do you classify as higher education? The point I was trying to make in my response was that even though a fair proportion of the United States education curriculum is flawed, there are still plenty of potential skills to be learned; showing that there is some light to shine, even when things seem their darkest. However, I'm very interested on your thoughts of neuroplasticity and free will. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read, neuroplasticity has stated that even though a person has established a solid set of morals and perspective, that those are subject to change at any time if said person is willing to pursue that change. I suppose you could categorize that as free will, however, I would humbly debate that it's fairly more complex than that. Look at activists for example. They've built an entire ego &  identity around savagely opposing some form of ideology. Sure, you could apply free will there, but to subconsciously reconstruct yourself in a manner that changes your very identity and sense of self, I'd say that's a calling for a closer look of what exactly is going on. Sorry for the blunt transition, but if you're open to it, I'd really like to read your essay. I'm always looking for new material.


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## Bum Driller (Dec 3, 2017)

Non-Existent said:


> In contrary to what the title might seem, I actually see a lot of potential in the social sciences. The ability to self reflect at the deepest possible level and understand complex processes of thought is an insanely useful skill. However for whatever reason(s),  the discipline has become extremely warped and twisted in to this pathetic Neo-Marxist, Woe Is Me, group therapy session of self validation. My question to the community is "how?". How does a discipline with so much potential fall to such a pathetic standard? Do you see it improving at all? Is there any hope for a bounce back? Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing your responses.



Being a former student of certain field in humanities, I can simply say that this isn't a new phenomenon, at least in Europe. From the seventies onward, academia has been dominated by marxists, and as the real marxism was unfashionable for some time, the leftists just appropriated other things like green movement etc. as their guises. Now when communism is all the rage once again, these vermin are just crawling out from the woodwork.


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## Kyria the Great (Dec 3, 2017)

Bum Driller said:


> Being a former student of certain field in humanities, I can simply say that this isn't a new phenomenon, at least in Europe. From the seventies onward, academia has been dominated by marxists, and as the real marxism was unfashionable for some time, the leftists just appropriated other things like green movement etc. as their guises. Now when communism is all the rage once again, these vermin are just crawling out from the woodwork.



When you were in school, did they even teach you the scale of murder and oppression of communist and socialist governments and the reason for the failing of their policies, or was there historical revisionism at works there?


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## Save the Loli (Dec 3, 2017)

So how many people in this thread have actually taken social science courses in college outside of a few gen-ed courses? The role of colleges as indoctrination centers is serious overrated (although there definitely is some of that shit going on). But then again, I never took any gender studies or sociology classes when I was in college.

And yes, I had professors who genuinely advocated critical thinking and praised you for arguing against them.


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## Genghis Khan (Dec 3, 2017)

I have the panacea to your inquiry.


Spoiler


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## AnOminous (Dec 3, 2017)

PsychoNerd054 said:


> From what I'm seeing, even a few technical college are falling onto the same path of being overly sensitive about their students. A few of them don't even encourage critical thinking, but instead rely heavily on the feelings of other people. That's mainly if they're associated with a liberal arts college, though.



They're not treating them as students to be taught, but sources of money to be sucked dry, i.e. infantile babies who are there to be coddled and told they're special little snowflakes, at least as long as the money keeps flowing in from the government.


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## Bum Driller (Dec 3, 2017)

Kyria the Great said:


> When you were in school, did they even teach you the scale of murder and oppression of communist and socialist governments and the reason for the failing of their policies, or was there historical revisionism at works there?



Stuff like that(the atrocities of Soviet Union) are a common knowledge in my country, which it's expected that all people know of after attending basic schooling. As I studied Comparative Religion and Folkloristics in the university, it didn't in itself add to that, except that we were indeed told about how minority religions were persecuted in Soviet Union. 

The point nowadays isn't with historical revisionism - in the fields of humanities, it's more about the so-called "post-industrial postmodern feminist marxism", which in essence means this; that white man owns the means of production, and that true equality and the liberation of the oppressed classes can come only after the means of production have been seized by the marxist uprising of women and sexual minorities. 

Guess why I chose to jump ship?


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## Autopsy (Dec 3, 2017)

I blame historians for failing to fulfill their fundamental moral obligations.
It may have been excusable to believe in the 'Noble Savage' two centuries ago, but archaeologists and anthropologists have known better for decades.
Sure, maybe Marxist critiques were valuable in some purely intellectual sense and in their time period, but anyone with a breadth of the 20th century knows how that terrible tango went down. Pair this context with the (contemporary) extreme successes of the Americanized National System.
They fail to contextualize what it means to be poor or explain what 'suffering to live' actually is, two things that escape the middle-class imagination entirely. Granted, basic critical thinking might work here, too. People didn't go into the mines because they were forced to, and if you really process that tidbit and everything it implies, you're much closer to coming to grips with it than most social-science goblins.
They also fail to publicly and loudly explain what precisely occurred in the 20th century, allowing for the banal insinuation that the Germans were simply "bad people", that da Jews dindu nuffin, and that the assorted medias were _totally_ an agent for free speech and world peace. This radical oversimplification is the kind of inaccuracy that extremist types use as a MacGuffin to drag in unsuspecting Joe Blows, and every manipulative wretch that perpetrates it is complicit in the atrocities that occur when the 69th Reich rolls around.
If a prim and proper history buff crashed the party every time Post-Modern thought reared its ugly head? The issue would sort itself out. That doesn't happen and hasn't happened because the discipline of History is every bit as compromised as the rest of the humanities and Social Sciences. In fact, do some digging on this, you'll find they were the _first_ field to collapse (possibly to neuter academia's ability to fight back).


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## Dooly Tilly (Dec 4, 2017)

The government would dissolve if the population could think critically.
I'm a technological anarchist, and this is the only 100% decent and indiscriminate ideology and economics.


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## Secret Asshole (Dec 4, 2017)

Kyria the Great said:


> I would disagree with the brain being a blank slate for that would entail that we has humans are only shaped by our environment and would ignore the very nature of humanity. This blank slate idea is the precise reason why the humanities are in such a terrible state with professors not trying to open their students to other possibilities, but to reshape them into their own image. I do believe that humanities and social sciences to have good with many of their subjects at their base stemmed in contemplation and critical thinking of the world around us, but this isn't the case right now and the death of critical thinking in these fields sicken me. It has gotten so bad that I at times want to become a history professor if for the only reason to make sure that historical revisionist that are dangerously skewing farther left don't lead this generation's thinkers into the very ideas which allowed the havoc of the French, Russian and Chinese Revolution to be so bloody and murderous.



Tabula Rasa is an idea that is dependent upon many concepts in the Social Sciences working. The problem is that evolutionary psychology, psychology, psychiatry, neurology and genetics have long since disproved this outdated concept. Even mentioning this if you are in the Social Sciences will get you kicked out and ostracized. Professors in these fields are terrified of the consequences of removing this from them. This is because you will basically undo all post-modernist work from the 1970s on. The entire discipline would have to change, massive amounts of books and publications on post-modernist cultural ideas would be invalidated. 

Look at Anita Sarkessian. She's not an academic, but a really simple example of Tabula Rasa to explain. Her entire theory relies upon the fact that we are tabula rasas, we have nothing in our minds until exposed to culture or media or ideas. This is simply not true. Her entire series is basically invalidated because it relies on people just absorbing this without question. 

The real difficulty is that the cancer has completely consumed these fields. Colleges and Universities indulge in these disciplines because they are cheap, provide an easy source of revenue and a steady stream of students. All you have to do is parrot theories from the 1970s back to professors and get yourself an A. Write a blog about gamergate and get your PhD, which you have to pay for since only the most wealthy institutions give a stipend for humanities. 

It has nothing to do with ideology and more like the fact that the humanities is a house of cards that science has been pissing on for the past 50 years. And it is only going to get worse. It doesn't change because there is simply too much money on the line and too many careers. The problem is that since these degrees are basically functionally useless outside of patreon begging, activisim and academia, you get this cycle where these students keep feeding into it. Most conservatives have long since abandoned these fields or people trying to push against the tabula rasa ideals.

If you go over essays from Social Scientists, these fields have resisted science for decades. They don't want it included, because they are petrified of what it means. Biology scares the shit out of these people, because it completely obliterates the social construct idea. They don't want to face it, so they hide in their ivory towers. Its only recently with the progressive side being loud and obnoxious that these ideas have come out. Because science is advancing rapidly, with hard, statistical and numerical evidence building against basically the entire discipline. Its why you see them getting more and more desperate, more confrontational and more angry. The American Association of Anthropologists actually removed science from its mission statement. And you see the attempt to infiltrate STEM fields with this ideology. Except the problem is post-modernisim and tabula rasa doesn't ever work in STEM fields. You need too much evidence, have to eliminate bias and do a ton of work otherwise peer review will tear your asshole open.

These subjects are basically have been a huge house of cards for decades. Nearly all of their studies have reproducibility issues, unproven theories touted as fact, major statistical flaws, flaws in study design and major biases along with conflict of interests (see the videogame violence studies that always find what they are looking for. I do know one good Social Scientist who did good research into this and found nothing with a hardcore study. Though he had no budget and had to buy equipment himself. Which is why a lot of the time you get these bad, lazy studies). Honestly, I feel like the whole discipline is eventually going to collapse in on itself. With the exceptions of criminology and certain psychology journals, it hasn't shown any valid conclusions IMO. Just contradictory opinions that cannot be proved or repeated.


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## Dooly Tilly (Dec 4, 2017)

I think tabula rasa is valid, ie, our brains DON'T develop unless exposed to certain stimuli, obviously, the more intelligent the elders, then at least in theory, the more advanced the educational process could be.


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## Wallace (Dec 5, 2017)

Secret Asshole said:


> The real difficulty is that the cancer has completely consumed these fields. Colleges and Universities indulge in these disciplines because they are cheap, provide an easy source of revenue and a steady stream of students. All you have to do is parrot theories from the 1970s back to professors and get yourself an A. Write a blog about gamergate and get your PhD, which you have to pay for since only the most wealthy institutions give a stipend for humanities.
> 
> It has nothing to do with ideology and more like the fact that the humanities is a house of cards that science has been pissing on for the past 50 years. And it is only going to get worse. It doesn't change because there is simply too much money on the line and too many careers. The problem is that since these degrees are basically functionally useless outside of patreon begging, activisim and academia, you get this cycle where these students keep feeding into it. Most conservatives have long since abandoned these fields or people trying to push against the tabula rasa ideals.



You're not wrong.


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## Soylent Green (Dec 5, 2017)

Non-Existent said:


> In contrary to what the title might seem, I actually see a lot of potential in the social sciences. The ability to self reflect at the deepest possible level and understand complex processes of thought is an insanely useful skill. However for whatever reason(s),  the discipline has become extremely warped and twisted in to this pathetic Neo-Marxist, Woe Is Me, group therapy session of self validation. My question to the community is "how?". How does a discipline with so much potential fall to such a pathetic standard? Do you see it improving at all? Is there any hope for a bounce back? Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing your responses.



I don't really view this as being the case. Granted, the reasons for this softening is because psychology and the social sciences are the most common degrees at the college level, and they have been cemented as very easy classes (even though a considerable amount of the material discussed in PSY 101 is so dated that it's equivalent to teaching biology out of a 100 year-old textbook). They are also much more plastic and less rational than per say mathematics and the hard sciences, meaning that some of the more difficult material (ie: there are indeed cultural differences in mental illness and social psychology) is pushed up to 300 and 400 level courses.


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## Medicated (Dec 6, 2017)

Kyria the Great said:


> I know this sounds rather harsh, but I partially blame a society that has been cultivated to protect the weak rather than build them up to become strong. We are a point where strength is sneered apawn and abject weakness is to be celebrated. The fact that most journalists and academic circles sneer at those who are more athletically and physically inclined because they might be more assertive and therefore more often lean right should be a damning tell about our current state in America.



I feel like this comes from narcissism though, more than uplifting the weak or actually helping people that are less fortunate. 




Non-Existent said:


> Perhaps you're right. After all, my understanding of neuroplasticity is very minimal. I suppose I'm just looking for a silver lining. However, you definitely make a fair point regarding the professors. They absolutely bare some, if not most of the responsibility for the politically biased shift we're seeing in the social sciences. Maybe that's where the rehabilitation will begin; a new generation of articulate, sensible professors with enough intellectual honesty and moral motivation to fix the Marxist mess that has become the modern social sciences. Anyway, I sincerely appreciate your dispute regarding neuroplasticity. Thank you



A lot of people coming out of this new type of sociology studies tend to think Humans are completely blank slates though.  I often talk to people who have come from studying that background and find that they subscribe to the idea of nuture is everything, and nature is a myth.  If we could get babies at a young enough age, we could meld them into perfect worker ants for a communist revolution.



Secret Asshole said:


> The real difficulty is that the cancer has completely consumed these fields. Colleges and Universities indulge in these disciplines because they are cheap, provide an easy source of revenue and a steady stream of students. All you have to do is parrot theories from the 1970s back to professors and get yourself an A. Write a blog about gamergate and get your PhD, which you have to pay for since only the most wealthy institutions give a stipend for humanities.



I feel this issue is worth exploring.  I've been reading up on exactly where all of this came from.  And what shocked me was that many Professors in Social Sciences since around the 1980's use Radical Lesbian Feminist authors from the 1960's and 1970's as basis for a lot of the essays and PhD works they have done later on.  And then because Social Science Professors from the 1980's had published academic work on these subjects. Professors from the 1990's and onwards use Social Science work that was developed on the basis of these Radical Lesbian Feminist authors as coursework and virtually treat them as textbooks.

They aren't there to be critiqued or reviewed, it is considered to be like the Social Sciences version of the "Law of Gravity" or something.  And it's all based on work that was done by people that either suffered from Schizophrenia like Shumalith Firestone and Valerie Solanas, or by people that had absolutely no formal qualifications in anything they were talking about, like Germaine Greer who holds a Bachelor in English Literature.


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## Bum Driller (Dec 6, 2017)

Secret Asshole said:


> If you go over essays from Social Scientists, these fields have resisted science for decades. They don't want it included, because they are petrified of what it means. Biology scares the shit out of these people, because it completely obliterates the social construct idea. They don't want to face it, so they hide in their ivory towers. Its only recently with the progressive side being loud and obnoxious that these ideas have come out. Because science is advancing rapidly, with hard, statistical and numerical evidence building against basically the entire discipline. Its why you see them getting more and more desperate, more confrontational and more angry. The American Association of Anthropologists actually removed science from its mission statement. And you see the attempt to infiltrate STEM fields with this ideology. Except the problem is post-modernisim and tabula rasa doesn't ever work in STEM fields. You need too much evidence, have to eliminate bias and do a ton of work otherwise peer review will tear your asshole open.
> 
> These subjects are basically have been a huge house of cards for decades. Nearly all of their studies have reproducibility issues, unproven theories touted as fact, major statistical flaws, flaws in study design and major biases along with conflict of interests (see the videogame violence studies that always find what they are looking for. I do know one good Social Scientist who did good research into this and found nothing with a hardcore study. Though he had no budget and had to buy equipment himself. Which is why a lot of the time you get these bad, lazy studies). Honestly, I feel like the whole discipline is eventually going to collapse in on itself. With the exceptions of criminology and certain psychology journals, it hasn't shown any valid conclusions IMO. Just contradictory opinions that cannot be proved or repeated.



I agree with you in principle, but it must be noted that it's not just that these fields would be completely devoid of science inherently. If you look backwards in time, there was a time when social scientists of different stripes really had a function in the advancement of scientific knowledge; mainly that they collected and analyzed data from various fields of human culture and really tried to figure out why human societies and systems like religions do what they do - in essence they really tried to figure out the mechanisms behind human action. Closer we get to the present day, however, the more we see that these fields of research become more and more twisted with political agenda and relativism, in essence leading to a situation where their only function in society, at least here in Europe, is to train middle- and high-school teachers of disciplines like history, religion and philosophy. 

Now they refuse to change because for the last few decades their main student-base has come from the people who for the most part really aren't intellectually capable of any real scientific thought anymore, and the few who do are often incapable of doing any meaningful research as the very methodologies employed in these sciences are based on politically motivated gibberish. Take Comparative Religion, for example; even if you wanted to do any real research on WHY people believe in concepts like gods or WHAT happens when people have religious experiences, how are you going to do it if majority of accepted research methods consist of things like intersectionality, critical feminist theory, discourse analysis, affect theory or the myriad other inherently unscientific ways of categorizing reality? Then you end up with endless supply of studies on "How empowering it's to be a muslim woman." or "How I too found enlightenment in ayahuasca retreat".


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## Secret Asshole (Dec 9, 2017)

Dooly Tilly said:


> I think tabula rasa is valid, ie, our brains DON'T develop unless exposed to certain stimuli, obviously, the more intelligent the elders, then at least in theory, the more advanced the educational process could be.



There are critical periods after birth where we do need certain stimuli to develop. These are typically language, vision, hearing and memory. Without these stimuli, deficits occur (see feral children, who often never recover). But they are not tabula rasa.

This idea is so completely and utterly, utterly, utterly, wrong. Please read about behavioral genetics. This is not the case. Many, many, concrete twin studies and studies of people who have been adopted have disproved this entire notion. Believing in tabula rasa is believing in an idea that is fundamentally dead, disproven and buried. Its like believing in creationism.

Our genes and our behaviors are inheritable. And why wouldn't they be? Evolution would pass down behaviors that ensured reproductive success and weed out behaviors that limit it. But if you want to argue with me if you put a baby in a void its going to be deaf, blind and dumb sure, but it will still have innate behaviors that are concrete or influenced by genetics. A brain as complicated as ours isn't simply going to be shaped solely by nurture. You think evolution rolls the dice on reproductive survivability? Fuck no. What if nurture promotes a really shitty reproductive strategy? And it spreads? Whoops, you just made humanity go extinct.

I know it stems from the desire that we aren't animalistic. That we can turn against our genes. And to some extent we can. And to some extent we are slaves to them and the neural pathways they form. Tabula rasa is a primitive, outdated, human-centric ideal. To follow it, in any capacity, is to be inherently wrong on human behavior. Neurons are told what pathways to form through genetic information. Any stimuli that you get is filtered through your genetic code which then translate to what neuron goes where, which dictates the outcome and result of that stimuli (and we still have no idea exactly how the genes know to place which neuron to where so you get a human and not a gibbering maniac). And unless you are a clone or a twin, that genetic information is going to be different from everybody else, processed differently and consumed differently. Sorry buddy.



Medicated said:


> I feel this issue is worth exploring.  I've been reading up on exactly where all of this came from.  And what shocked me was that many Professors in Social Sciences since around the 1980's use Radical Lesbian Feminist authors from the 1960's and 1970's as basis for a lot of the essays and PhD works they have done later on.  And then because Social Science Professors from the 1980's had published academic work on these subjects. Professors from the 1990's and onwards use Social Science work that was developed on the basis of these Radical Lesbian Feminist authors as coursework and virtually treat them as textbooks.
> 
> They aren't there to be critiqued or reviewed, it is considered to be like the Social Sciences version of the "Law of Gravity" or something.  And it's all based on work that was done by people that either suffered from Schizophrenia like Shumalith Firestone and Valerie Solanas, or by people that had absolutely no formal qualifications in anything they were talking about, like Germaine Greer who holds a Bachelor in English Literature.



Pretty much. The whole thing started with post-modernism (which was just in philosophy) and then it bled over to the social sciences. Because the idea that nothing is truth makes it easy for very stupid people to produce some shit that sounds true, but isn't. Like 'the male gaze'. You mean MEN like to look at TITS and ASSES? REVOLUTIONARY. Or all sex is rape. Or that fluid mechanics is sexist (yes, this is real). Also you get everything is sexist, racist and what not. The whole fucking Bechdel Test is based on a political cartoon and its touted as some revolutionary fact and studied and poured over.

All of this is a load of shit. A heaping steaming pile. There have been many attempts to push this into STEM, but reality doesn't conform to whatever you want it to be like. Also, STEM is getting more and more complicated. It is way harder to force this 'well, its my truth!' garbage without any evidence. But there is going to eventually be a point where the social sciences and the sciences themselves will have to reconcile their differences. These fields can't run in parallel forever and its not going to be pretty when this happens.



Bum Driller said:


> I agree with you in principle, but it must be noted that it's not just that these fields would be completely devoid of science inherently. If you look backwards in time, there was a time when social scientists of different stripes really had a function in the advancement of scientific knowledge; mainly that they collected and analyzed data from various fields of human culture and really tried to figure out why human societies and systems like religions do what they do - in essence they really tried to figure out the mechanisms behind human action. Closer we get to the present day, however, the more we see that these fields of research become more and more twisted with political agenda and relativism, in essence leading to a situation where their only function in society, at least here in Europe, is to train middle- and high-school teachers of disciplines like history, religion and philosophy.
> 
> Now they refuse to change because for the last few decades their main student-base has come from the people who for the most part really aren't intellectually capable of any real scientific thought anymore, and the few who do are often incapable of doing any meaningful research as the very methodologies employed in these sciences are based on politically motivated gibberish. Take Comparative Religion, for example; even if you wanted to do any real research on WHY people believe in concepts like gods or WHAT happens when people have religious experiences, how are you going to do it if majority of accepted research methods consist of things like intersectionality, critical feminist theory, discourse analysis, affect theory or the myriad other inherently unscientific ways of categorizing reality? Then you end up with endless supply of studies on "How empowering it's to be a muslim woman." or "How I too found enlightenment in ayahuasca retreat".



I agree with you. But it hasn't been this way for the past 50 years and its only gotten worse. I honestly don't see it changing as psychology is currently being enveloped in it as well. The only hold-outs now are basically criminal justice and forensics to some extent. The problem like I mentioned is all the money they invested. You're basically fighting an entire university system and an entire discipline itself.

The major problem is integrating science into social science. Find people who've tried it. Oh, wait, you can't. Because they've all been fucking fired. Or they can't find a job. Or they've been discredit and ostracized. Nobody teaches you how to do it. If you do look into the few social scientists willing to do or talk about this, you'll find that their fellows have been quick to squash them. Many just quit the field entirely. This is because the whole fucking empire comes down if you introduce science. They are terrified of it. They don't understand it. When I was an undergraduate student, I was taught research design by this old fuck who everybody hated, because he made you go hard into stats and what goes into a hard psychological study. But he was good at design. I loved it, because I learned a lot about stringent design from him that was pretty much applicable everywhere. He said that good psychological studies need to follow good protocols in order to get results that are true and repeatable. And that this is often hard, sometimes impossible. I got a feeling most of the students ignored him. No clue if this is still even taught, probably some soft design bullshit like most of the garbage I sometimes read.

I've been on both sides and let me tell you, the social sciences piss themselves at the thought of hard science coming into their research. It just doesn't withstand any scrutiny, none. Experimental design, methodology, statistics, elimination of biases, controls, variables.....the burden of proof is like a glove vs. a wrecking ball. Social scientists aren't taught this methodology or any real sound scientific one. Scientists don't go looking for answers. Scientists go looking to disprove what they believe (at least, that's the philosophy of scientific research. To try and disprove a hypothesis. And if it isn't disproved, it is accepted. Until something disproves it. Scientists don't like to call something concrete unless its been heavily evaluated). Social scientists go looking to prove their beliefs. And no shit they find it (the APA had to repudiate a bunch of studies on videogame violence for this. And there was a PhD who lost her PhD because she followed this mongoloid). And as long as everything fits into the nice little narrative bow they crafted over the past 50 years, you get a PhD and a pat on the head. I mean, science also has these problems. But hard science will always wither under the proof of the counter-narrative. Its designed to change. Social science hasn't changed. It hasn't integrated science for half a century, even in areas like studies of gender or behavior. It has actually expelled actual science from anthropology and basically drove many people in that field underground or silenced them. Yet it proposes to make sweeping conclusions as pure fact, just as hard science does, except without any solid proof, evidence, research. Only on the power of belief. Secular social science has replaced religion. Listen and believe, indeed.


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## Done (Dec 9, 2017)

Secret Asshole said:


> There are critical periods after birth where we do need certain stimuli to develop. These are typically language, vision, hearing and memory. Without these stimuli, deficits occur (see feral children, who often never recover). But they are not tabula rasa.
> 
> This idea is so completely and utterly, utterly, utterly, wrong. Please read about behavioral genetics. This is not the case. Many, many, concrete twin studies and studies of people who have been adopted have disproved this entire notion. Believing in tabula rasa is believing in an idea that is fundamentally dead, disproven and buried. Its like believing in creationism.
> 
> ...


You get 10 x for this post.

Jordan Peterson goes into great length about it here. Post-Marxism has brought nothing good to the table, academically speaking.


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## Harbinger of Kali Yuga (Dec 9, 2017)

Sociology at my university actively solicited activists and advertised the benefits of sociology has helping enable social change.  That same flier's picture was of Marx giving the V sign.  Sociology classes were also stupid easy and makes me skeptical of the quality and value of the research since they teach nothing useful at all, common sense shit and just a bunch of terms.

Part of the reason social psychology (in fact all psychology) is so hard to test is in part the extremity of the IRB/ARRBs.  So afraid of ethical violations and so "informed" by "ethicists" and politics that their treatment of animals practically requires backrubs, manicures, and maybe even a blowjob.  Like, they could turn down a study's protocol for the equivalent of giving someone a slice of jalapeno to "minimize harm" to the animals.  Here, we fucking kill the damn things as pests all throughout the country (rats) but don't you dare so much as to give one a mean look.   And of course that's just animals, what about people?  What happens when giving someone "bad feelings" follows the line of logic used to censor mean words, the "stress causes harm" argument?  We might already be there, I need someone involved with this to let me know.

Before someone pops in and claims post-modernism isn't real, stop it.  Everyone knows exactly what we're referencing when we talk about post modernism, I don't care if you want to say it's actually post-structuralism or the lie (like that famous "smart" post from a SJW academic on reddit) where it's claimed to be merely an art movement.  It's not.  It doesn't matter how much you dislike the term. It refers to something that very much exists.  The people who try to say postmodernism doesn't exist always shares the beliefs attributed to postmodernists anyway, so just look closely.

In the social justice thread I talked about my experience in black studies, go check that out for some real eye opening stuff (spoiler alert:  we wuz kangz!)  I did also briefly mention an instructor (English composition) talked about stuff I knew he got from What the Bleep Do we Know!? garbage newagey gobbledegook, that the native americans couldn't see the ships approaching land because they didn't have a concept for it.

Oh  yeah, I forgot to mention that in Black Studies the Egyptian-goddess-name-using instructor told us something about how if everyone believed it would rain, it would.

This shit was all on the cusp of the intersectionality stuff exploding.  The humanities being beyond fucked up is not just some loudmouth Paul Joseph Watson shit.  It's definitely real.

Probably the best source, taking things straight from the horse's mouth, is the twitter Real Peer Review.  https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview  Actual stuff published in the social sciences.  They are never going to run out of material.


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## Dooly Tilly (Dec 9, 2017)

To me, the brain is receptive and responsive to stimuli, almost like a computer in safe mode, but it's not until we spend some time and develop the programming, that we approach higher levels of consciousness.

Tabula rasa is quite conceptual anyway, ie, how does one not interact with a baby and expect it to survive.


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## Secret Asshole (Dec 11, 2017)

Tabula Rasa posits all of our beliefs and behaviors are informed from society. That we are a blank slate until exposed to ideas. IE: All men are not inherently sexist, it is the patriarchial society and media that makes them sexist. Therefore, if media is sexist, it will make people sexist.

Like I said before, this is simply not true. Not in the least. Tabula rasa is a dead concept in any scientific scenario. We already have reactions built into our brains and our genetics. We have behaviors and our reactions to a certain extent encoded. A sexist that is genetically made that way does not need to be exposed to any stimuli. We already come pre-built with behaviors, reactions and instincts. These may lay dormant until puberty or further brain development, but nearly every aspect of our life is influenced by our genetics. From birth to death. We do not have a blank slate even if a baby is born in a void. A baby is designed to react and to expect stimuli. This is hard wired. The brain and body expects to see the mother, breastfeed and see things. Paths are already set for this to happen. And how this stimuli is interpreted is already hard-coded by genetics. The critical pathways are designed to expect stimuli to be present. They are also designed differently in all of us, as we all interpret the same stimuli in different ways. This is because of genetics. In tabula rasa, there is no expectation of anything. It is literaly a blank slate. 

Tabula rasa is garbage that explains nothing about humanity. Its an outdated, ancient construct that informs nothing about human behavior.


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## Harbinger of Kali Yuga (Dec 13, 2017)

I remember reading Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" in high school thinking that this shit was on the way out.  Oops.


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## Positron (Dec 13, 2017)

Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:


> I remember reading Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" in high school thinking that this shit was on the way out.  Oops.


That shit stays in academia because high-profile academics like Pinker don't criticize it enough.  Pinker is famously demure on gender-related differences (which is shameful considering his stature and job security), and while I don't know exactly his position on race, I suspect he is not telling.  Such reticence gives the perfect opportunity for hacks to take the stage and spew bullshit.



Secret Asshole said:


> Tabula rasa is garbage that explains nothing about humanity. Its an outdated, ancient construct that informs nothing about human behavior.


Tabula rasa doesn't die for the same reason that Communism doesn't die -- because some people _want_ it to be true, for politically-motivated reasons.


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## Harbinger of Kali Yuga (Dec 13, 2017)

Positron said:


> That shit stays in academia because high-profile academics like Pinker don't criticize it enough.  Pinker is famously demure on gender-related differences (which is shameful considering his stature and job security), and while I don't know exactly his position on race, I suspect he is not telling.  Such reticence gives the perfect opportunity for hacks to take the stage and spew bullshit.
> 
> 
> Tabula rasa doesn't die for the same reason that Communism doesn't die -- because some people _want_ it to be true, for politically-motivated reasons.



Pinker's overrated and I don't think the book was particularly well argued (I don't think he fairly represented the behaviorists, for example) but this was before the intersectionality explosion.  This shit is gaining ground now, not losing it.

You're absolutely right about tabula rasa, but I will add that the idea is not just like but is very married to socialism and communism, in part due to the historical influences of Russeau and the like, and also because it means that we can build a New Socialist Man with just the right social upbringing and societal values.


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## Secret Asshole (Dec 13, 2017)

Positron said:


> Tabula rasa doesn't die for the same reason that Communism doesn't die -- because some people _want_ it to be true, for politically-motivated reasons.



It doesn't die in the Social Sciences because it basically allows you to say anything without proof:

"Oh, you play video games with big tittied women? You obviously view women as sexual objects and hold misogynist views. This is why gamers are so bad."

"You like 'The Punisher'? Well, you are obviously attracted to gun culture, violence and death. You view the world in black and white and it only informs on your toxic masculinity."

"You watch pornography? Well, like videogames, you only view women as sexual objects. This is because you played a lot of videogames while you were younger and that influenced you."

"You hated the New Ghostbusters? Obviously, you play games, which are basically misogynist induction devices. That's why you can't see past it."

These aren't hyperbolic points, many people have made these 'connections' (no quotation marks big enough). People have done studies on things like this, written books. I don't need any training in the humanities to write a humanities paper. I can just write one up and reference other, non-existent, post-modernist shit and pack it with incomprehensible jargon to make me look smart.

Of fucking course they don't want to get rid of it. If they did, the humanities would actually be forced to prove half the shit they say concretely. Good luck proving intersectionality using scientific methodology by the way. Why do you think they want to lower the bar to science? You've had people literally say that a subject being difficult was discrimination.

The shit they say is mostly unprovable, easily counter-able and filled with logical fallacies. And if they think that it does exist and they can shape the perfect socalist mind, lol. Look at North Korea. Oneof the mist indoctrinated countries on Earth and it is barely hanging on a thread, even with minimal contact with the outside world. Tabula Rasa posits they all should be fanatics and communists, since that's all they were exposed to. In theory, all Norks should worship Kim as God. But they don't. They smuggle in Chinese, Korean and even American movies. They seek the outside world. 

There is absolutely no such thing as human imprinting. Its fucking trash for lazy hacks who are fucking terrified the money train will be derailed by reality.


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