The academic side of social science has not produced any good knowledge in at least 100 years. It produces lots of evil (training CIA torturers, assisting NSA surveillers) but mostly churns out trivial and blatantly wrong nonsense.
A fine example of the latter is circulating this week. Some “scientist” has declared that most people don’t have an inner monologue.
Massive disproof: Every novel, play, movie, radio show and TV show from Shakespeare to the present. Shakespeare wasn’t writing for a select audience of scholars, he was writing for the sweaty masses. He knew that they would recognize inner monologues, and used the technique often. Radio drama used monologues intensely for exposition and narration. Again the writers were not speaking to Lit Crit types who are the sole possessors of intelligence. They were writing to EVERYONE, and EVERYONE knew what the narrator was doing.
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Shortest disproof:
So I says to myself, Self….
This is obviously “ungrammatical”, not the way an intellectual would speak. If self-talk were reserved for the Superior Ones Who Plan Effective Altruism And Eugenics, the phrase would be more like
Thus one shall declare within an internal dimension reflexively unto oneself, Oneself…..
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Meta: The fact that such blatantly glaringly STUPID SHIT is peer reviewed should be an instant disproof for the reigning myths about peer review.
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Sidenote: When squawking and ranting on this subject I used to contrast the practical social science of marketers and advertisers. Those technicians understood how ordinary people function, and used their accurate understanding to make money. Now I’m not so sure. See Bud Light and many similar examples. Marketers seem to have lost their skills.
Polistra's Mill 