<p>The</a> Ladder Theory</p>
<p>I think that much of it is satirical in nature but its underlying principles speak the truth about men and women and the way they deal with sex.</p>
<p>The ladder theory is not really scientific. It is really just an interpretation of data that has been made readable for the 'average Joe'. It was created as a satire about what we all think about the opposite sex.</p>
<p>Also, the Ladder Theory is not really a theory in the scientific sense, as it makes claims without providing a set of substantiating claims that show that it corresponds with the data it was originally based on.</p>
<p>Anybody who takes this seriously is an idiot.</p>
<p>Still, it's always fun to read stuff like that.</p>
<p>True, but it bothers me that so many people think that this is actually a factual representation of what goes on. I can't tell you how many people have cited this to me in complete seriousness.</p>
<p>Of course this isn't a scientific study but there is a lot of truth to it- use your common sense. Psychology isn't a science at all but we still are encouraged to learn about it!!</p>
<p>Think of the way women tend to think of men.
Being the physically weaker sex, this is the way they can have much of the power when it comes to sexuality- deciding who is in the 'friend zone' and who is in the 'sex partner zone'.
I have seen this to be true. I have a painfully shy friend who is very interested in a girl. They do so much together but she refuses to get into a relationship with him saying that he is in the 'friend zone'. He obeys and keeps being her lapdog. It's pathetic the way she plays him. She does it because she likes the fact that he finds her to be sexually attractive. I don't know what else she has to offer. She seems kind of dull-witted to me but my friend may see other positive traits in her.</p>
<p>Of course... this only applies to attractive women, :p. I guess the 'wolf ugly' girls can't go through the same measures.
That's a flaw in his 'theory' and that is why I'm assuming it is mostly satirical.</p>
<p>EDIT: I get what you literalists are all uptight about.. yes, this wouldn't actually be considered a theory.</p>
<p>First of all, psychology is a science.</p>
<p>Secondly, of course there is SOME TRUTH in this. Nobody is denying that. There is SOME TRUTH in many things. But to take this as some sort of serious representation of what really goes on is incorrect. There are much better explanations for how people interact.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What are these better explanations?
I'm genuinely curious.</p>
<p>Also psychology isn't a real science since you can't truly prove anything in it like you can with physics or chemistry, that's why it is called a 'social science'.</p>
<p>^you're talking about ladder theory...of course there are better explanations...like scientific ones!</p>
<p>just search social interaction on google</p>
<p>lol i enjoyed reading the ladder theory, kind of reminds me of the book, the alphabet of maniless</p>
<p>
<p>Well, there's social psychology, for one. If you're really interested in this stuff, the "pickup artist" websites actually have quite a bit of good information.</p>
<p> [quote] Also psychology isn't a real science since you can't truly prove anything in it like you can with physics or chemistry, that's why it is called a 'social science'.
</p>
<p>Nothing is ever proven in ANY science. Psychology is absolutely a "real science."</p>
<p>
[quote]
Nothing is ever proven in ANY science. Psychology is absolutely a "real science."
[/quote]
But with real sciences you can come to a definite conclusion that a given hypothesis is by far the most likely true. You don't just spout off hypothesis which sound reasonable and then argue about it till you turn blue in the face, like psychologists do.</p>
<p>Richard Feynman had this to say about psychology:</p>
<p>
[quote]
The witch doctor says he knows how to cure. There are spirits inside which are trying to get out. You have to blow them out with an egg, and so on. Put a snakeskin on and take quinine from the bark of a tree. The quinine works. He doesn't know he's got the wrong theory of what happens. If I'm in the tribe and I'm sick, I go to the witch doctor. He knows more about it than anyone else. But I keep trying to tell him he doesn't know what he's doing and that someday when people investigate the thing freely and get free of all his complicated ideas they'll learn much better ways of doing it. Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, of course.</p>
<p>(the entire Psychology department reportedly walked out in a huff at this)</p>
<p>If you look at all of the complicated ideas that they have developed in an infinitesimal amount of time, if you compare to any other of the sciences how long it takes to get one idea after the other, if you consider all the structures and inventions and complicated things, the ids and the egos, the tensions and the forces, and the pushes and the pulls, I tell you they can't all be there. It's too much for one brain or a few brains to have cooked up in such a short time. However, I remind you that if you're in the tribe, there's nobody else to go to.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sources: Feynman</a> Humor, This</a> Unscientific Age.</p>
<p>At best, if psychology is a science, it is the softest and most unreliable of the sciences. At worst, it is a total pseudoscience. Behaviorists did the field a big favor by trying to move psychology into an experimental field. Rather than sitting around all day formulating possible causes which can never be tested, like Freud did, men like Pavlov and Skinner dedicated themselves to actually doing experiments to gather data, then trying to explain that data, and then testing their explanations with more experiments. Among psychologists, these men had the mind of real scientists.</p>
<p>Personally, I think Psych falls into the realm of social science, not science. It's not really something to argue about - at most colleges, Psych is under the category of social science, not lumped in with Physics/Chem/Bio or the physical sciences. If you look up "social science" online, Psychology will be included in the list.
[quote]
But with real sciences you can come to a definite conclusion that a given hypothesis is by far the most likely true
[/quote]
Can't you do this with Psych? and also other social sciences like Econ? Or maybe I'm just completely off here.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can't you do this with Psych? and also other social sciences like Econ? Or maybe I'm just completely off here.
[/quote]
Nope, it's been many decades since either field was established and consensus has yet to build among the top experts on what is most likely (on the other hand, consensus has built that some things, like Freud's psychoanalysis, was bunk).</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that it is fiendishly difficult to acquire good data to work with. In economics, all you have to make your observations are standing societies, and it is very, very hard to filter out a single independent variable for cause and effect relationships. It would be easier if there was a whole country that would consent to having it's economy screwed while economists played around with it, but of course no such country exists. </p>
<p>And psychologists... ethical guidelines when experimenting on human beings, probably a few guys who volunteered a few hours anyways, are a nightmare for acquiring useful data. Those dumb questionnaires and surveys only go so far... self-reporting is full of bias, but how else to find certain things? And once again, a large number of people won't consent to allowing their lives to being one big experiment for psychologists to figure out what exactly causes what else independently of third factors, so we get a lot of muddled relationships and correlations which cannot be ascertained to imply causation.</p>
<p>I mean, look at even stuff like the Milgram experiment. Okay, that gave some useful data to work with... people are bastards when ordered to. Now we can come up with explanations for it. But how the hell do we test those explanations and decide which one is better? We can't! That's psychology's failing.</p>
<p>The social sciences are not real, hard sciences. They just like the title. I even had an AP Human Geo teacher trying to tell me human geo was a science... <em>sight</em></p>
<p>Ok, I understand what you mean now, especially about the problems with finding data for Econ. Geo, like Econ, Pol Sci, History, Anthro, Psych, Soc and the others are all in the realm of Social science. I don't think Human Geo could ever be considered a science, but I can understand how someone might think of Geo as a science, even though it's not, since it's basically the study of the earth. personally, I find social sciences a lot more interesting than the natural/physical sciences - I'm an econ major :)</p>
<p>I understand it's not a scientific theory but who thinks this 'ladder theory' actually does work in the real world?</p>
<p>The Ladder Theory is very similar to what evolutionary psychologists believe about human mating rituals. And the language used to describe said rituals is nowhere near as sexist.</p>
<p>And to jamieastorga2000, would you be willing to call psychology a "hard science" if there were no ethical limitations on experiments?</p>
<p>Modern psychology is not a science (if there is a thing such as "science") but a practical art for regulating society in the guise of science, which is seen as legitimate authority in our society. Feynman was spot on. Compare with Foucault. In the Middle Ages, the priests would burn you as possessed by demons for questioning the community's reality, but now you'll be institutionalized as schizophrenic by a psychiatrist. In both cases, society must have a way to exert authority over perception of reality. In the Middle Ages, religious authority was seen as legitimate. The Church has been overthrown by science. Thus, our witch-doctors dress themselves up as scientists and use the language of science and medicine.</p>
<p>Psychologies are, broadly, ways of dealing with people. There's folk psychology, which every person knows--you explain people with emotions such as "anger" and "happiness" and you respond to them appropriately, allowing society to function. You could also, of course, have a special psychology based on spirits and demons. This might work for your society. People who are problematic are labeled as being possessed and corrected/exorcised/burned. Again, the important thing, with any psychology, is that society continues to function.</p>
<p>Observe how Freud's concepts have made their way into everyday parlance and folk psychology. You may casually remark that someone is sexually repressed, without being a psychoanalyst. If you have some vague knowledge of Freud, you may casually talk about superego, ego, and id. This helps you explain people and deal with them. Freud's theories are effective because they represent an improvement in the ability to explain people's actions in modern times, because modern people do often suffer from the fact that they are forced do many things that they don't want to do etc. (explicable in terms of id vs. superego). But do these things (supergo, id) actually exist? The question is irrelevant, if not nonsensical. Does narcissistic personality disorder exist? Does anger exist? Does Pazuzu exist? Does an electron exist? (Have you seen an electron, by the way? No. But the concept explains a lot of things.)</p>
<p>There is no distinction between folk psychology and "scientific" psychology. They both serve as means to explain people's actions and to organize society. Again, in what way are "clinical depression and "histrionic personality disorder" real? If you examine these diagnoses, you'll find that they're based on severity and "maladaptiveness," which basically means that society thinks that these traits pose a problem.</p>
<p>Some of us seem to want to reject unsavory ideas with reflexes of textbook pedantry such as brandishing the strict, mostly meaningless definition of "theory." From experience, it seems to me that the cynics, such as Tiresias and Freud and this guy, are usually right, and one day when our relationships are in shambles, we'll bitterly admit that this ladder guy had a point.</p>
<p>But is there nothing Good and Beautiful in life?</p>
<p>
[quote]
And to jamieastorga2000, would you be willing to call psychology a "hard science" if there were no ethical limitations on experiments?
[/quote]
Assuming the psychologists took advantage of the break in ethics and approached data collection and testing from a scientific mindset, probably yes... and by no ethics, I mean we would go as far as breeding people whose entire purpose would be to serve as experiments, in large numbers to be statistically significant and raised in controlled environments to account for unexpected variables.</p>
<p>Even then, it would be the softest of the hard science. Still, it would be in much better condition as a field than it is now.</p>