Brainy Bad Luck Brian17 december 2013 04:13
Heya! I noticed that you commented in your post about the samples taken regarding ethnicity and gender. My question to you would be do you think that studies like these with a "skewed" sense of sample can really count on the results produced? Is it enough in their paper to point this out but still go ahead with the study? SvaraRadera
Svar Olle Bergendahl18 december 2013 02:31
I think it depends on if there is reason to believe that the two groups (male and female) might behave differently or answer the questionnaire differently. If this was a study about something like human length (in centimeters/inches) a sample skewed towards females would of course affect the outcome of the study. But in this case, is there really reason to believe that females behave differently? From what I understand you do not really "play" Second Life as yourself, instead you have an imaginative avatar. A female player might decide to play as a male in-game, and a male player might decide to play as a female in game. So maybe the gender does not matter that much... On the other hand, I kind of agree what you suggest in your second question. It should not be "enough" to just point out flaws in the method, and then just go ahead and present the results as reliable. Of course it is a good thing that the authors are aware of any possible weaknesses/mistakes in their method, but the best thing would be to not make those mistakes in the first place.
-------------------------
Ekaterina Sakharova26 november 2013 06:51
I do not agree with Sutton who says that references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses are not the theory. I think that references, data etc. are not the theory itself, but I am sure that data and diagrams are important parts or ingredients of theory. And I always though that hypotheses are the base of theory. SvaraRadera
Svar Olle Bergendahl4 december 2013 05:27
I think you are correct when you say that data, references, etc. are an important part of the theory. Without underlying data there is nothing to base the theory on, and such a theory is more or less useless. A hypothesis might be the base of a theory, but in my opinion a hypothesis is not based on raw data but on "belief". A hypothesis is want you think the outcome of an experiment might be before you conduct the experiment. In other words I guess you could call a hypothesis a guess that is based on your previous experience, but not based on data/facts about the current case. Radera
-----------------------
leah22 november 2013 01:54
I like how you looked up the authors on wikipedia. It's important to find out what sort of perspective they were writing from to make sure we do not mistake their opinion for the majority. It seems much clearer why they did not appreciate American society due to their ideological views, while others maybe would have embraced it. SvaraRadera
Svar Olle Bergendahl4 december 2013 05:18
Thanks for your comment. Yes, reading on Wikipedia gives you a completely different picture of the authors' opinions. I'm not sure but maybe they were quite alone in having such a negative view of the culture industry. I think this is something that should have been discussed during the seminar.
--------------------------
Brainy Bad Luck Brian20 november 2013 03:50
Hej Olle, I was wondering what you would think Adorno and Horkheimer would think of the new media technologies today? Looking at other people's blogs it seems like the general accordance is that they would be horrified and dismayed at the point in which the culture industry has gotten to now. Is there any redeeming features in your opinion of new media today? SvaraRadera
Svar Olle Bergendahl4 december 2013 05:14
I agree with you to some extent, but I also think that there are benefits of the current media technologies. It is true that the culture industry in general is more about money/capitalism than ever before, but I also think that the Internet have helped to redistribute some of the power concentration. One of Adorno and Horkheimer's main arguments is that the culture industry concentrates power to a few powerful people. To me it is clear that the Internet is doing the opposite, giving "ordinary people" a way to be seen by a large audience and convey their own message or opinion. Examples of such services are blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. A more concrete example would be the Arabic Spring.
-------------------------
MatteoCampostrini20 november 2013 08:07
I see your point about the purpose of myth, mainly is a tale to explain phenomena we were not able to explain and still there are many mysteries in our universe. For instance any ancient civilization has its own creation myth, nowadays we know about the Big Bang, scientist perfectly described backwards physical forces up till what they call "the Planck epoch", 10^(−43) -(0, 43 zeros and 1)- seconds after it but still we don't know what happened before. Why do you think we do not use myth anymore to explain this? SvaraRadera
Svar Olle Bergendahl4 december 2013 05:15
I think some people still like to use a "myth" to explain the creation of the universe or what happened before the universe was created. If we look at the States we see that some people still believe that the Earth was created by God roughly 6 000 years ago. But I guess that you are referring to the scientific community and why they do not try to explain what happened before the Big Bang. I believe that what happened before the Big Bang is "outside" of the reach of science. The basis of science is that it has to be based on observations, experiments and falsifiability. If a scientist makes a claim of something that happened before the Big Bang, it is impossible for another scientist to try to verify or dismiss that claim. Therefore such a claim is not scientific, and there is no point to try to discuss such events in a scientific manner. There is a very good example of this coined by the philosopher Russell (that we read in Theme 1). It is called Russell's teapot and you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
----------------------------
VictorO15 november 2013 03:40
One thing that I came to think of after reading your post is that although "true knowledge" cannot be derived from "mislead" knowledge in Russell's meaning, can it the knowledge itself be rejected since from the perspective of one individual truth can be experienced on way and from another can be experience another? SvaraRadera
Svar Olle Bergendahl4 december 2013 05:15
That is a very interesting thought! I guess you mean that in some cases there are no real "truth", since each person could interpret reality differently. Any knowledge based on such a truth might therefore have to be rejected if we look at it the way Russell does. Even though it might seem reasonable to reject such (subjective, or whatever you want to call it) knowledge it leads to problems in some cases. As the theory of relativity states, even "hard" facts/measurements such as time, distance and velocity depends on the perspective of the observer. I guess that if we apply Russell's thought to the theory of relativity we cannot obtain any knowledge that is based on facts/data of distance, time or speed. This causes some weird paradoxes, such as http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fotonklocka.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_spaceship_paradox
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar