Hello everyone,
I am following this discussion, and am quite astonished that designers fight so fiercely over topics that pertain to the social sciences. Whether human behavior is predictable or not is a subject of the social sciences.
As a sociologist, I don't know anyone who can predict human behavior. I mean individual behavior, not mass social processes. Social sciences strive to achieve understanding of the humans and their behaviors, but are far away from even a modest progress. You can be a brilliant professor in psychology and the best you can do is to guess with some probability what a person might do. Actually, poker players guess much better than psychologists what their competitors will do.
In this line of thought, I am surprised that "material" designers dare to engage in social design and believe they can do it, while sociologists and psychologists are quire reserved. Actually, they even reject the idea of social design. I am struggling to promote this idea at several social science conferences and at this point I am at the stage of being accused of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It is strange that designers are ready to accept the idea of social design while the social scientists (from left and right) are rejecting it vehemently. Designers are so optimistic because they assume that organizing behavior is like organizing material and space. I will stop here because this is another talk.
Best wishes,
Lubomir
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar Swanson
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2014 8:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Clinical Research and Clinical Guidelines
Terry,
I was going to contact you off list but I think that I am, perhaps, not uniquely stupid so maybe others share my confusion.
I asked:
> Are you saying that (1) human behavior can be predicted (i.e., it is possible even though it is not being done) or that (2) human behavior can be predicted (i.e., that someone is currently able to do it)?
>
> If (2), will you give us some examples of this being done?
and you replied:
On Dec 5, 2014, at 8:07 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What I did is an example as you requested.
First an assurance: This is me being confused. This is not a rhetorical ploy where I feign ignorance to maneuver you into some position of disadvantage. (I confess. I've been known to do that. I am most certainly not doing that right now.) It's me actually trying to figure out what you are saying.
I'm not sure what you are saying that you did that was an example of what I requested. These conversations get fairly lengthy and I'm two days from the end of the semester so my mental acuity is not what it might be at other times. But I'm also not sure that my clarifying question helped us toward clarity.
In re-reading my question, I see that it is vague. I'm inferring from your reply that you were choosing #2 and asserting that someone is currently able to predict human behavior. Well, duh, Gunnar; of course someone is able to predict [some] human behavior. Sorry. Stupid question. We can predict that a person subjected to intense pain will show various signs of stress, that it is probable that (at least under most circumstances) starving people will respond to offers of (non-objectionable) food by taking the food and eating it. . .
What I'm trying to understand is the extent of your claim. If you've done this already, I apologize but can I get you to give an example of current predictive abilities? I'm not looking for general principles at this point. I'm a concrete/pragmatic guy so I'd like to get a feel for the extent of your claim. It would be stupid to think that human response is completely random and unpredictable and I assume you are not claiming that we could write history books fifty years in advance if we'd only open our eyes and do a little math.
So what I'm hoping for is "By looking at x, you can predict that (all/most/more than usual number of) people will do/feel/believe y if x happens." Something that is at all representative of the current state of the path you are advocating.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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