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What you are describing isn't the fault of sociology as a field. It's the infiltration of sociology with politics.

The field of sociology isn't inherently infiltrated by politics. It just happens that in the US a lot of the uni departments are.

Sociology can also be a very interesting empirical field of study - similar to psychology just not about the psychology of individuals but about the psychology of crowds and families and peoples.

77 sats \ 3 replies \ @Kruw 26 Jul

This is a good point. If I weren't working on Bitcoin privacy research, I would find it fascinating to be a human behavior analyst.

Politics skews human behavior, so it becomes an economic derivative, not a concious choice.

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not a conscious choice? is it political or economic or both? why does it matter? elaborate please

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40 sats \ 1 reply \ @Kruw 28 Jul

I'm entering a restaurant while other customers are leaving. There is a bottleneck at the door. If I see the passerby is a stereotype of my political opponents, I rush through first and do not hold the door open for them. If I see the passerby is a stereotype of my political allies, I smile, nod, and hold the door open for them.

This sort of friction exists in every single interpersonal medium because politics distorts the cooperative game, and turns society into a backstabbing match. There's no point in tracking intermediary steps towards inevitable political violence, you'd be better off just studying combat tactics.

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Why are you entering a restaurant? If the reason is hunger you would not hold the door for anyone

Hold the door for females, be a gentleman

Unless it's a Lulu Lenin leftist

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A field is what it does, no? Maybe there's a good way of doing sociology, a good reasonable way of investing its subject matter. Nobody has seen it since e.g., Weber

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That's who I was going to bring up.

I'd say the role of Sociology should be to find interesting associations for economists to untangle: i.e. the observation and hypothesis formation steps of social science. Economists can get into the messy weeds of causal inference.

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