A field of academic scholarship which scrutinizes various topics merged into one course such as political science, sociology, geopolitics, anthropology, criminology, philosophy and psychology. In my opinion it is the most important course to study as politics controls many aspects of our daily lives such as how much bills and taxes we have to pay and what the minimum wage is in each country.
Individuals who study Social Sciences cultivate a more informed decision on which party to vote for as they have more education of the complexity of the political layout.
by UltimateDoge August 28, 2022
Get the Social Sciences mug.The prediction problem. Unlike in physics, where you can isolate variables and predict an eclipse to the second, social sciences (economics, political science, sociology) deal with complex, reflexive systems. Humans react to predictions, changing the outcome (the "Lucas Critique"). The hard problem is: Can you have a real science of human society if its core subjects alter their behavior upon hearing your findings? True scientific laws are supposed to be invariant. Social "laws" are more like trends that expire once people know about them, making the field perpetually one step behind a moving target.
Example: An economist develops a perfect model predicting stock market crashes. Once published, investors see it and adjust their behavior to avoid the predicted conditions, thereby preventing the very crash the model forecasted. The model is now wrong. The hard problem: The act of studying the system changes it. This makes falsification—the bedrock of science—incredibly tricky. Social science thus often ends up explaining the past very well (postdiction) but failing at predicting the future, which is what we usually want from a science. Hard Problem of the Social Sciences.
by Nammugal January 24, 2026
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