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polymathwannabe comments on Open thread, Oct. 13 - Oct. 19, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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In what universe can't you do experiments about biology or psychology?
Surely you can do some tests or experiments, but the staple of physics-like experiments, having identically prepared systems, is partially or totally lacking.
It's only unfortunate that the poorly qualified first paragraph has totally hidden the real question, which was at the end of the second paragraph. I guess I'll have to wait for the next open thread...
I just realized that MrMind probably meant evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, which makes waayy more sense.
Guess I should've stayed home today.
Well you can't do things that would be really nice to do in biology like "rerun the tape of life", not to mention the tremendously interdependent system that is any living organism. And the artificial laboratory conditions of psychological experiments, along with variability of subjects, form a huge impediment to study.
It's not that you can't do experiments, but it's much more difficult to isolate parts of biological, economic and psychological systems and experiment usefully on them.
You can't do things in cosmology like "rerun the tape of the universe" either.
Sure, but I think it's reasonable to say that humans are ill-behaved as experimental subjects compared to other biological organisms, which are ill-behaved compared to particles, stars and galaxies.
I mean ill-behaved in the sense that their behaviors cannot be reliably modeled by compact mathematical models.