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Mass_Driver comments on The Neglected Virtue of Scholarship - Less Wrong
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I very much agree with your final sentence.
Do you think Eliezer's post is more precise and useful than the controlled experiments published in peer-reviewed journals described in the book I linked to? I find that most writing on psychology is necessarily pretty soft, because the the phenomena it is trying to describe are vastly more complicated than those of the hard sciences.
Now, that link is a must-read. I got through the whole first chapter before I could look away, and I'll be going back for the rest.
I have nothing against psychology or psychologists or social science in general -- AP Psych was my second favorite class in high school, my mom has a master's degree in it, my bachelor's degree is in political science, etc. It's noble, hard work, and we even have a little bit of knowledge to show for it.
As for the "controlled experiments" described in the book you linked to, I'm afraid I missed them, for which I apologize. I only saw descriptive papers. Maybe a page reference when you get a chance? Or just link directly to one or two of the studies or the abstracts?
Oops, you're right that my link does not mention controlled experiments. A few controlled experiments are instead mentioned in other sections of the book on techniques applicable to a greater variety of behavior change goals.
Unfortunately, the author of Psychological Self-Help died last year, and his book has not been updated much in the past decade. Of course, more work on procrastination has been done in recent years, though I'm not sure if it is collected nicely anywhere.