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@QiaochuYuan The more humanistic side of psychology was torn between Social Psychology (the situation matters) and Personality Psychology (the person matters). For some reason Social Psych won and ate Personality, but again neither of them are about being charismatic or having relationships
@QiaochuYuan That's just not really engaging with the questions as academic psychology understands itself (though its goals are dubious in other ways). Auto engineers are trying to make the best cars, not become the most skilled drivers.
@mold_time i'm still confused about the distance you see between academic psychology and the ordinary idea of understanding people. you wouldn't necessarily expect auto engineers to be good at driving but you might expect them to *know more about cars than most people*
@QiaochuYuan Well they want to understand "how the mind works", and are not officially interested in "the ordinary idea of understanding people". Maybe they do a bad job at both, maybe they *should* be interested in the latter rather than the former, but that's just not their goal
@QiaochuYuan relatedly, I think a lot about how the peace corps has a superior language-learning pedagogy and schools just like, don't give a fuck https://t.co/tLHkENhwJ5
Book opens with a joke about how learning the details of technicalities is ineffective when learning a new language. Frank compares 4 years of Spanish (ineffective) vs 13 weeks of rudimentary Nepalese with the Peace corp, mimicking children (effective)
by the way you could substitute "psychology majors" for "therapists" or "meditators" here and i think it would still be true 😛 in all three cases there are substantial selection effects. people are drawn to these practices because they can tell they're really fucked up
