- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Is opinion measurable?

In Reply to: And frankly, neither do I. posted by Frenchy on October 25, 1999 at 11:17:32:

: Politics and Economics and certainly the Social Sciences are not Sciences at all but rather opinions, sometimes well thought out and sometimes not, that are shared for discussion.
: Science can put a man on the Moon with certainty, or predict exactly how many electrons will pass a given point in one second given X volts. It's not only predictable, it's repeatable, every time. It is, in short, everything that human action is not.

The social sciences are "science" in so far as we are able to observe "BEHAVIOR" with all the usual scientific trappings of measurement and predictability. Causality is much more difficult - We can predict a hurricane at a certain point - but not the "butterfly effect". (even electrons are "fuzzy"). The question is - to what extent can "BEHAVIOR" which is (as Barry and SDF point out) observable and subject to the disciplines of science, be influenced by, as you put it, "opinions, sometimes well thought out..." Advertising has become a "science".

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