thesis musings

Jan 21, 2009 22:11

When thinking about what I should write my thesis on, I'm trying to optimize for several variables ( Read more... )

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arisrabkin January 22 2009, 06:39:16 UTC
I think you overestimate how controversial the poly thing would be. Talking about it is almost certainly uncontroversial; advocating it would be somewhat dicey. I think you should do it.

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g0ssamer January 22 2009, 06:43:17 UTC
forgot a crucial part of this entry, whoops.

while i'm interested in the poly thing, i'm also very concerned and interested in how to solve what i think is one of the largest problems facing the world. so i have to take that into account too, though on a day-to-day level, i'd probably be more interested in and get more out of the poly paper. and while the rationalization of cognitive dissonance is much more important a topic, i'm not sure i would actually make much headway in solving the problem. so yeah, i donno.

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leora January 22 2009, 08:40:57 UTC
I don't think you can make headway on solving the problems that people are prone to without running experiments. i.e. you'd need to be able to come up with a hypothesis about something that might cause people to behave better, then run an experiment to test it. Then you'd need to rinse, wash, repeat a lot to find what does and doesn't work.

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arisrabkin January 22 2009, 09:14:17 UTC
Is your question about cognitive dissonance fundamentally different from "why do people do bad things, given that most people don't think of themselves as bad people"? That's a very extensively studied question, and I doubt that you're in a particularly good position to tackle it.

I fyour question is interestingly different from that one, can you explain how?

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