almost the same material conditions can still include the guy who works in a supermarket for a living and the guy who became a taxi driver for a living
I think a good point can probably be made here about not mixing different pairs of socks. One thing is talking about class or category, and acknowledge that there's some tendencies here and there. Another is individuals, and individuals are up to their personal history. So the real punchline here is neither (which does not prevent me from having a certain... experience with taxi drivers in particular).
I think compatibilism pisses almost everyone off to some degree, but when free will absolutists sound like the New Age clowns that they are and the capital-D determinists tend to be insufferably smug reductionistic assholes, what else is there?
Substitute tendencies for propable outcomes/distributions, the pair of socks with initial state, and personal history for variance. Any small variance could have radically different outcomes according to Lorenz. I could see this making any kind of analysis of outcomes from arbitrary cohort extremely complex. This is outside my area of expertise and I'm definitely not a scientist (though I use it constantly). Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective? It just seems that for any cohort the amount of variance would be so high that if you were to draw a conclusion from data it could already be wrong. And that's just 1 issue of many I can think of.
I could see this making any kind of analysis of outcomes from arbitrary cohort extremely complex. This is outside my area of expertise and I'm definitely not a scientist (though I use it constantly). Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective? It just seems that for any cohort the amount of variance would be so high that if you were to draw a conclusion from data it could already be wrong.
These would be two distinct yet connected sorts of data. The qualitative and the quantitative. One can disprove or question theories defined by the other, which is one reason why social sciences are in a permanent state of revision. Another reason is because your understanding of society is contingent on the very questions and framing devices you utilize.
Let's say you are investigating the birth of a city from an economic standpoint. Meaning that you wish to know what sort of trade or productive activity jumpstarted those first few cycles of capital accumulation. In the Americas you have cities like Rio de Janeiro which are so new that the documentation goes back to when there were only a few hundred families in the urban center + surrounding hinterland. So you have both the potential to realize patterns and variance, or the quantitative and the qualitative sides of your analysis.
You can look at specific families, what they did for a living, how they did well for themselves, what happened to their estates, what economic role mothers and fathers played, etc. And you can look at all families at once to find patterns. The quantitative analysis might help you make blanket statements such as 'the first and most primary form of capital accumulation for Rio de Janeiro was slavery, specifically the enslavement of native groups as part of allied wars and enslavement campaigns'. But if you go on to make another blanket statement such as, say, 'social mores in the wealthier sectors of colonial society followed a rigid patriarchical structure', then you'll find numerous examples of families where sometimes 3 full generations were outright led by the mothers and wives rather than the fathers and husbands. Sometimes because they appear to just be better at it than the men, sometimes because there were no men.
I'm framing it like this because that's how it works. We write our sociological narratives, and then someone else re-frames things a little differently and comes up with new and interesting inputs. It's not often that we completely disprove old, well supported theories. Rather, we end up refining them as scholars argue forever to the smallest detail.
I can understand the methodology involved. I did have some education on the fundamentals of social sciences like 20 years ago. I appreciate the refresher and it triggered some part of my memory. My brain has rewired itself over time to a certain rigid scientific modality that can sometimes be restrictive. Humans are chaotic systems lol. Then you put us together and it's just ...complex and ever-changing.
almost the same material conditions can still include the guy who works in a supermarket for a living and the guy who became a taxi driver for a living
Even then, sometimes people practically working side by side can split, one to comradship, one to chuddery. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Besides, which between the supermarket worker and the taxi driver is supposed to be the chud-in-waiting in your example?
I think a good point can probably be made here about not mixing different pairs of socks. One thing is talking about class or category, and acknowledge that there's some tendencies here and there. Another is individuals, and individuals are up to their personal history. So the real punchline here is neither (which does not prevent me from having a certain... experience with taxi drivers in particular).
I think compatibilism pisses almost everyone off to some degree, but when free will absolutists sound like the New Age clowns that they are and the capital-D determinists tend to be insufferably smug reductionistic assholes, what else is there?
Substitute tendencies for propable outcomes/distributions, the pair of socks with initial state, and personal history for variance. Any small variance could have radically different outcomes according to Lorenz. I could see this making any kind of analysis of outcomes from arbitrary cohort extremely complex. This is outside my area of expertise and I'm definitely not a scientist (though I use it constantly). Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective? It just seems that for any cohort the amount of variance would be so high that if you were to draw a conclusion from data it could already be wrong. And that's just 1 issue of many I can think of.
These would be two distinct yet connected sorts of data. The qualitative and the quantitative. One can disprove or question theories defined by the other, which is one reason why social sciences are in a permanent state of revision. Another reason is because your understanding of society is contingent on the very questions and framing devices you utilize.
Let's say you are investigating the birth of a city from an economic standpoint. Meaning that you wish to know what sort of trade or productive activity jumpstarted those first few cycles of capital accumulation. In the Americas you have cities like Rio de Janeiro which are so new that the documentation goes back to when there were only a few hundred families in the urban center + surrounding hinterland. So you have both the potential to realize patterns and variance, or the quantitative and the qualitative sides of your analysis.
You can look at specific families, what they did for a living, how they did well for themselves, what happened to their estates, what economic role mothers and fathers played, etc. And you can look at all families at once to find patterns. The quantitative analysis might help you make blanket statements such as 'the first and most primary form of capital accumulation for Rio de Janeiro was slavery, specifically the enslavement of native groups as part of allied wars and enslavement campaigns'. But if you go on to make another blanket statement such as, say, 'social mores in the wealthier sectors of colonial society followed a rigid patriarchical structure', then you'll find numerous examples of families where sometimes 3 full generations were outright led by the mothers and wives rather than the fathers and husbands. Sometimes because they appear to just be better at it than the men, sometimes because there were no men.
I'm framing it like this because that's how it works. We write our sociological narratives, and then someone else re-frames things a little differently and comes up with new and interesting inputs. It's not often that we completely disprove old, well supported theories. Rather, we end up refining them as scholars argue forever to the smallest detail.
I can understand the methodology involved. I did have some education on the fundamentals of social sciences like 20 years ago. I appreciate the refresher and it triggered some part of my memory. My brain has rewired itself over time to a certain rigid scientific modality that can sometimes be restrictive. Humans are chaotic systems lol. Then you put us together and it's just ...complex and ever-changing.