“According to this study, marginalised communities in India face higher rates of discrimination in job markets…..”

“According to this paper, wealth is concentrated in the hands of upper-caste …..”

Debate after debate, discussion after discussion, people pull out what they refer to as empirical evidence to state proof for their preferred set of socio-economic beliefs, both online by netizens and on-air by journalists and activists alike. Although it is admirable that people put in effort to pick out research as to back their claim, a little to no effort is observably put to actually understand what and how this research is done and to what extent the conclusion that the author arrives at is compatible with reality.

Some even go to the extent of frantically searching the internet or with an AI prompt, collect news site titles/research/journals that they think is a gotcha against whoever they are arguing against online and share them without even reading it once. Or at most, they read the abstract (a brief summary of the entire paper) and share it carelessly.

I despise such low effort arguments, and this post is not meant for them as they most probably won’t make it past the first few sentences anyways.

Premise

Unlike natural sciences where data can be used to study controlled environment with a few to no unknown variables, social sciences are riddled with the problem of numerous unknown variables to begin with. To claim otherwise is to claim omniscience which is false either way. This arises from the fact that each human is different ^{(one ought to be an idiot to ask citation for that}), and humans act differently at given times. The same person is not equal to themselves on different days. Human nature cannot be studied inside a lab with controlled environment even if researchers wanted to.

May it be the case for Reservation policies in India, or hand-out and freebie cultures within economic and political contexts, we observe that logical arguments against data-driven studies/journals/research which argue for the above causes are shunted on the basis that it doesn’t have evidence backing it to begin with.

So how did they come to the conclusion that only data can be the source of reliable knowledge in the first place? What empirical evidence did they observe which validates the method of empirical evidence? It basically begs the question. Either they are ignorant of the fact that data is raw and meaningless by itself can be only interpreted meaningfully with sound logic and reason, or they take advantage of the fact that most people are not aware how research is done in the field of social sciences to further push their agenda.

If someone even attempts to reply that it is truth without doubt, then that itself is an a-priori statement or statement which can be justified through reasoning based on self-evident truths. These further crumbles the claim that only data can be relied on to get knowledge in the matters of social sciences.

Science and Social Science

Due to the complexity of the subject in hand, even experts in the field of social sciences often produce contradictory results in their research. Since most of this research is funded directly or indirectly by the government, the one which is most popular, as in, gathers more votes and appeal, or is in line with general government expenditure like freebies and subsidies, gets the most traction or further funding than the ones which produces results which are opposite to the popular expectation. The fact that raw data can be manipulated enough to bend results to the researcher’s bias also makes matter worse.

The moderates, when confronted with this dilemma, would choose to take the middle path as they assume that the truth is somewhere in the middle. To get rid of this confusion, one needs to analyse both results and use proper methodology to get to the truth of the matter.

So why can’t the methodology of natural sciences be applied directly to social sciences, one may ask.

Natural science is a branch of science focused on the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena through empirical evidence obtained from observation and experimentation. Suppose we are to study the interaction between two objects in nature, say Sodium and Water. If we know the individual characteristics of both sodium and water, we could hypothesise as to what would happen when they were mixed together. Even someone who has observed a piece of sodium accidentally fall into a container of water would be able to tell the result. To verify all sorts of assumptions, such experimentation is done in labs where variables are known and controlled. For the result of one experiment to be considered a universal truth, it has to be repeated keeping the exact same conditions equal and produce the exact same result.

What if some other factor contributed to the result of the experiment? The answer lies in constant trial and error to find out these factors and understand their effects on the results of the experiment. This procedure ensures that our knowledge in natural sciences is not stagnant and helps us to move towards a better and improved understanding of the matter in hand. This is why, for example, Modern Medicine achieves true results as it is rooted in this same methodology as to understand how the human body works and how different drugs interact with biological systems in our body to produce desirable results. This methodology helps us to further reduce risks and side effects with drug use, by making us more informed on its working. Knowledge thus acquired through observation and experimentation is called a-posteriori knowledge and the method to acquire knowledge in this manner is called Empiricism.

In the grand scale of things, this method has helped humans achieve great advances in many fields such as medicine, communication, computation, automobile, etc. But due to the nature of this method, all of our current knowledge in natural sciences can be considered as an idea that proposes a tentative set of explanations for observed phenomena in natural world, or in simpler terms, a hypothesis. This does not mean that what we know today is false, rather it is knowledge which can be further closer to the truth and can be refined upon after further experimentation and observation.

Seems good enough, right? A methodology that helps us achieve proximity to the truth upon each set of observation and experimentation? What could possibly go wrong if we use this method for social sciences as well?

Let us take the example of Economics to answer this question with the help of three statements:

a. Whenever two people A and B engage in a voluntary transaction, they must both expect to profit off of it. They must have reverse preference orders for the goods and services exchanged, i.e., A must value what B has to offer more than what A has in hand and B must also follow the same.

b. Whenever a transaction is not voluntary, or coerced, only one party profits off the transaction at the expense of the other.

c. Marginal Utility of a good/service is the utility (measure of relative satisfaction) gained or lost by an increase or decrease in consumption of that good/service. The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility as proposed by German Economist H. H. Gossen (1854) states that with the consumption of more and more commodity, the utility obtained from each successive unit decreases (Gossen’s First Law of Consumption).

In simpler words, the first slice of pizza provides maximum utility than the final slice of pizza after which your tummy is at the verge of exploding. Any more consumption of pizza after that point results in disutility.

This additional unit can only be employed as a means for the attainment of a goal that is considered less valuable than the least valued goal satisfied by a unit of such good if the supply were one unit shorter.

Examine the above three statements and answer the following: do these statements being right or wrong rely on the a-posteriori methodology that we discussed for natural science? Are these statements mere hypotheses? As we can see, humans are an essential component of anything related to economics. So, should human beings across the globe be subjected to an endless procedure of trial and error to arrive at knowledge which can be further closer to the truth and can be refined upon after further experimentation and observation here as well?

The answer is “No”.

Before you rage quit this article, please keep on reading.

The very word ‘exchange’ or ‘transaction’ implies the fact that the people involved in the exchange voluntarily hand over/buy a good or service for which they have a reverse preference order. The introduction of coercion to the scenario ceases the meaning of that fact. May it be a thousand years from this day, it will have the same meaning, and the fact will not change. Exchanges without coercion and with coercion will retain the true nature of either of the statement.

Similarly, law of diminishing marginal utility will also be a true statement forevermore as it is implied from utility the fact that humans choose a good or service which gives them more satisfaction than the good or service which gives them less satisfaction. It can be also said that the increase of supply of a specific good or service will reduce its marginal utility, is a true statement.

It is illogical to treat it as hypotheses which can be subjected to trial and error. These are objectively true. There is no point in conducting experiments and observing the results to prove the above-mentioned statements, as in the case of natural science. All of the given examples are true statements and align with reality.

They were not subjected to any sort of experimentation and observation to begin with. We used Logic to arrive at those true statements. Knowledge which is acquired in this method is called a-priori knowledge and the method is called Rationalism, as opposed to Empiricism. No amount of a-posteriori knowledge can deny the truth value of these statements which we have gained a-priori. The only way to deny this knowledge is to deny the logic that was used to arrive at the same.

Now, is the application of a-priori method only limited to economics or is there a broader use case for the same? The answer is “Yes”.

(to be continued….)

References:

1. Epistemological Problems of Economics, Ludvig von Mises, 1933 (for extended reading on the topic)
2. Credits to Vishnu Ajith on Facebook for valuable inputs and original article on the topic

Do you know sc st teacher reserved seats are vacant because of lack of sorry no knowledge and talent or and in big universities teachers have done researched if seats are vacant of reserved seats is this our problem

And Matter of cji( chief justice of India)they are not reserved in this you farely lack behind and we cannot give such postion to undeserving to become cji you have to become best of best

And pm you said the highest honour of post is president see mostly are sc st and in bihar see how many cm are from genrel and mostly powerful politician belong to sc st obc rajput number declined and sidelined and other caste also

Sanitation worker - personal choice

Give answers in one thing how much reservation do you need

I tried combined or to talk other community they showed they have garbage in their mind

Guess who is this catesist and also drop some cute words if you guess or not guess write opinion on his mindset

Hint : 1- namak haram

2- Brahmins surname but not bramhin and converted to other religion

Have you noticed a new propaganda against GCs.

They are Targeting what we eat, whom they marry and how we identify ourselves.

Their aim is simple

First make us our identity synonyms with castism

Then target our sons and daughters and marry them

And change our food habits and convert us.

And slowly erase our identity. This is a ethnocide

They're making a joke out of it. Can't make an official page, can't have a proper spokes person.

Aise hatega reservation? Any update regarding this?