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Re:We need more goat sacrifices by pdonis on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:44PM (#50456172)
> Isn't trying a plausible sociological intervention then measuring its effectiveness a win regardless of how effective it ended up being?

Only if the value of whatever smidgen of knowledge you gain (assuming you do actually gain any) outweighs the much-more-than-smidgen cost of the intervention to all the people who weren't helped, and in a significant number of cases were harmed, by it.

As you can see, I don't think whatever benefits are gained actually do outweigh the costs. Which means that no, continuing to try such interventions is not a win.

The lesson we should be learning from all this is to stop trying to do so many things top down. That whenever you see some kind of large scale statistic that you think is not what it should be, the last thing you should do is concoct a large scale intervention to try to change it. Still less should you sacrifice a poor goat who did nothing to deserve it, just to underscore the point that your intervention won't work.

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by tjwebbnorfolk on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:50PM (#50456248)
The goal of a scientific experiment can't be to "help" people. What you're describing is a political experiment.

The goal of science can only be to learn whether it helps people, who it helps, who it hurts, etc. Then it can be implemented, or not, depending on the results.

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by _heimdall on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:54PM (#50456300)
Duplicating a top level comment I just posted, but this all assumes that people will generally respond the same way over time. I'd be surprised if culture, societal norms, life experiences, etc didn't make a meaningful difference and those absolutely change over time.
Re:We need more goat sacrifices by tjwebbnorfolk on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:56PM (#50456340)
yea, social science researchers are well aware of longitudinal studies that track populations over time...
Re:We need more goat sacrifices by _heimdall on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @07:22PM (#50461077)
I assume you meant this condescending given the "..." at the end.

Longitudinal studies tracking populations over time does not imply that sociological intervention experiments, especially political ones, will be reliably recreated over time.

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by tjwebbnorfolk on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @11:28PM (#50463086)
man ellipses are just catnip for pedants, eh? thanks for refuting absolutely nothing