#sociology

[greatwyrmgold]

Sociology tries to make a predictive science out of the one thing in reality we know with absolute certainty does not act predictably. Political theories kinda just have to hope that they can average out all the different varieties of moon logic.

Median voter logic is my favourite genre, greatest show on earth does it again.

[urban-lad]

Late-nineteenth-century watercolor portraits of indigenous North-African men by Spanish painter Josep Tapiró i Baró (1836-1913).

[animentality]

[happyroadkillart]

actually made this before the election tho seems slightly more relevant after watching CA vote no on things like rent control and, like, Prohibiting Slavery

[yuribeam]

(common superstitions from the perspective of a USAmerican- would love to hear superstitions from other regions and cultures!)

(follow the most often when the situation arises, or believe in the strongest)

[prokopetz]

It's fun watching sociologists try to refute the Fermi paradox because 90% of the time it's like "the idea of Fermi paradox says more about the institutional psychology of the STEM community than it does about the nature of universe because it reveals their unexamined assumptions about the nature of extraterrestrial life, and here's why", then proceeds to unwittingly put the commentor's own unexamined assumptions about the nature of extraterrestrial life on full blast.

[queercodedangel]

The non-binary urge to be in a state of non-belonging because you feel too trans for cis people but not trans enough for trans people

[dakota-zen]

[mysharona1987]

[st-just]

A great question to get at this is: Did the trial of Galileo succeed or fail? If we believe that the purpose of the Inquisition trying Galileo was to silence Galileo, it absolutely failed, it made him much, much more famous, and they knew it would.  If you want to silence Galileo in 1600 you don’t need a trial, you just hire an assassin and you kill him, this is Renaissance Italy, the Church does this all the time.  The purpose of the Galileo trial was to scare Descartes into retracting his then-about-to-be-published synthesis, which—on hearing about the trial—he took back from the publisher and revised to be much more orthodox.  Descartes and thousands of other major thinkers of the time wrote differently, spoke differently, chose different projects, and passed different ideas on to the next century because they self-censored after the Galileo trial—an event whose burden in money and manpower for the Inquisition was minute compared to how hard it would have been for them to get at all those scientists.  The final form of Descartes’ published synthesis was self-censorship—self-censorship very deliberately cultivated by an outside power.

-Ada Palmer, Tools for Thinking About Censorship

[sociologi]

02.01.2024 | the wheather in denmark right now gives me cozy fall vibes. spent the evening in a busy café writing on my anthropology essays while it was raining ☕️

[fat-fuck-hairy-belly]

Sociology should be a mandatory course for all STEM students. The amount of people that think we just need "technology” to solve all our problems is frankly scary. Take basically any problem we face today and the root cause is always societal. You could create some magical new technology that creates 100% free and clean electricity with no cost to operate it or to distribute it, and the capitalists will still find a way to monopolize and monetize it. You could make a miracle machine that builds houses out of thin air at no cost and we'd still have a housing crisis. You can completely automate the production of absolutely everything and people will still have to spend 90% of their life working for pennies to survive. Every time we've developed some new technology that's meant to make our lives better the capitalists just used it to further consolidate their power. Advancement in technology without appropriate societal changes don't make things better. You can go back to 100AD and give Romans all the modern weapons and medicine and fertilizer and shit, and the Roman empire will still fall, because they'll just continue killing each other in constant civil wars and resulting famines and plagues, except now they'll do it with F16s.

[lawfullyfit]

Finally found the best set up for me to complete my sociology optional syllabus. The teacher was quite slow which messed up my flow because I’m too impatient 😭😭 thank god the player has a slide mode so now I can just copy down his notes and focus more on reference materials.

In other news we have rain every now and then (still not a daily thing) which leaves the most beautiful sunsets 🥹

[reasonsforhope]

"It's easy to lose touch with friends, especially when you live far apart. And sometimes the longer you've gone without speaking to someone, the harder it feels to pick up where you left off. However, a new study suggests that reaching out to pals—especially ones that you have not talked to in a while—is even more appreciated than initially thought.

“People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others. Yet, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to by someone in their social circle?” the study asks. To answer this question, the authors gathered 5,900 participants and put them through a series of experiments.

In one scenario, half of the participants were asked to remember the last time they contacted a friend they had fallen out of touch with, then estimate on a seven-point scale how appreciative the person was (with one being the lowest score, and seven being the highest). Then, the other half of the participants were prompted to recall a time when someone had reached out to them and assign a number to how grateful they were. When these two groups were compared, the researchers found that people greatly underestimated the value of reaching out to someone.

“Across a series of preregistered experiments, we document a robust underestimation of how much other people appreciate being reached out to,” the authors continue. “We find evidence compatible with an account wherein one reason this underestimation of appreciation occurs is because responders (vs. initiators) are more focused on their feelings of surprise at being reached out to. A focus on feelings of surprise in turn predicts greater appreciation.”

In another experiment, participants were told to send a note and small gift to a friend they had not interacted with for a long period of time. They were then asked to estimate on a numerical scale how thankful the person would be because of the contact. Additionally, the receivers of the gifts were asked to rank their feelings upon accepting the gift on the same seven-number scale. Once again, the gift-givers greatly underestimated how much their gesture meant to the other person.

The study concluded that reaching out to people—particularly those that you've lost contact with—is almost always appreciated. It can seem challenging to maintain healthy social interactions, especially due to an increased amount of people working from home and a lack of opportunities. But clearly, the evidence suggests that a little extra effort is worth it.

“For those treading back into the social milieu with caution and trepidation,” the study adds, “feeling woefully out of practice and unsure, our work provides robust evidence and an encouraging green light to go ahead and surprise someone by reaching out.”"

-via My Modern Met, 7/31/22

[happyroadkillart]

what did he mean by this