[HN Gopher] The world needs computational social science ___________________________________________________________________ The world needs computational social science Author : Anon84 Score : 43 points Date : 2023-10-02 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (petterhol.me) (TXT) w3m dump (petterhol.me) | throw4847285 wrote: | Was that written by AI? Because I have no idea what the author | was trying to say, and I'm not sure they were saying anything at | all. The confused haircut metaphor did not help. | | Quantitative social science exists. What is the big revelation | here? What makes it computational? I don't understand. Can | somebody enlighten me? | | If you want to hybridize computer science and social science, | I've got some good news for you. The ranks of data scientists | across the corporate world are filled with ABD grad students from | a range of quantitative fields, who applied their own problem | solving skills to the question of "how do I turn my skillset into | money." And in that regard, maybe computational social science in | a broader sense is the art of converting quantitative social | science into profits for major corporations. The utopia that CSS | aficionados longed for is already here. | dleeftink wrote: | Going through Petter's archive it doesn't feel like it, writing | about the topic for some time. | | I gathered the grooming metaphor referenced how it's time for | the CSS practitioner to don the complete methodological anarchy | that once dominated the field, while remaining open to | disruptive changes coming out of CS or elsewhere. | diogenes4 wrote: | Well for one thing, the need for better consensus, conflict | resolution, and fact (or dictionary) propagation in society is | obvious and likely never-ending, considering how many corners | of life it's applicable. I've been considering trying to find a | way to study sociology/computer science fusion in grad school | for a moment now myself. | [deleted] | _a_a_a_ wrote: | > The reasons follow below and I also cover what a computational | social scientist should know [and] do | | It doesn't seem to do any of that. There's nothing actionable | here AFAICS. | qaq wrote: | Psychohistory ... | dmvdoug wrote: | > It should do that in total epistemological freedom, being | informed by everything from the latest in ML to the oldest in | sociology and not bound by conventions of what constitutes a | scientific explanation, etc. | | So the author wants all the shine that being labeled a science | brings without any of the heavy-lifting that science requires | (i.e., following the "conventions of what constitutes a | scientific explanation"). | | I can play this game too: my life is evidence-based and data- | driven, by which I do not mean that I gather and use data to help | decision-making like crusty old "data scientists" learn to do nor | do I follow any accepted standard of evidence, because I am an | epistemological anarchist! My data is my experience and my | evidence is how I feel in any given moment. I should get grants | from grant-making agencies just for existing! | [deleted] | hotnfresh wrote: | If I've read the article correctly, all that stuff seems to | have mainly to do with avoiding becoming tied to the | particular, distinct norms, methods, and standards of the | various disciplines CSS might touch, interact with, or be | applied to. | | It explicitly opposes having _no_ norms or standards. It | appears to be intended to stake out CSS as an independent | discipline, rather than a study of pure methods that can end up | "living under" any of several other academic areas, with | mutually incompatible norms and cultures. (I've no idea whether | that's, in fact, a good idea) | commandlinefan wrote: | Things like total epistemological freedom always end up being a | euphemism for chasing fashions. | barryrandall wrote: | I always took it as a warning that you're about to be asked | to make a gigantic leap of faith. | [deleted] | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I have often banged on about "MOOP" - massive open online | psychology. The idea is a form of behavioural epidemiology - we | can watch through smartphones and other devices people at | enormous scale - and answer questions like "do people who save | 10% of their income in index linked isas have less stress / | better life outcomes" or "do people who meet a mate for a drink | each week live longer" ... | | The answers may well surprise us, but at some point the answers | will also benefit us. | wufufufu wrote: | Don't we already have many answers? -- We just do nothing to | address the problems. | ancorevard wrote: | Why would anyone would want to corrupt anything with the anti- | science that Social Science is today unfathomable, unless | corrupting another field is the goal. | huitzitziltzin wrote: | I have absolutely zero sense of what this actually is. | | All kinds of economists estimate models on very large data using | computers. Does that count or not? | | What good is it specifically to "know habermas as well as feature | selection" ? What problems are you solving? | | Maybe "the world needs an explanation of what you mean when you | say computational social science" would make a nice follow up... | chaostheory wrote: | Glad I'm not the only one who felt this way, given all the | vagueness. | | At the moment, social science is an oxymoron. | rapjr9 wrote: | I worked with a sociologist on a variety of projects which used | sensors and cellphones to do computational social science. In | the past, sociology was based on observing people, writing | those observations down, and then thinking about them. Some | statistics were gathered, but it was a very fuzzy science. Now, | electronic devices and networks have made detailed big data | about people available and sociologists are using it. | Electronic surveys have replaced paper surveys and greatly | increased scale. This happens mostly behind the scenes, such as | research on the use of electronic medical records, marketing, | employee motivation, etc. Take a look at her research projects | here (and look up the people she worked with to see what else | they are working on): | | https://sph.umich.edu/faculty-profiles/anthony-denise.html | | One of the things we did was build survey apps for phones which | would sense activity and only pop up a question when a person | wasn't doing much. The sensor data would also serve as a ground | truth, telling us for example how much activity a person really | did, versus how much they think they did. One early result from | such research was that people think they are always doing | things, rushing around, when the truth is they are sitting | doing little for 95% to 99% of the day. We used the survey app | to build a system to train a gait recognition machine learning | algorithm for user authentication, where the survey app | collected both sensor data and quick answers about what a | person thought they were doing, where they were, were they | walking, where they were... A lot of todays AI projects are | essentially computational sociology, algorithms trained on | peoples behavior that is used for predictions. | | Business has bought up a lot of the sociology talent, to work | with marketing, motivating employees, and changing peoples | minds (somebody had to design those motivational posters in the | hallways and some of them were based on sociology, lobbying | campaigns to change public opinion are based on sociology, | political campaigns use sociologists work). | | I have a strong suspicion that all the Big Tech companies that | collect lots of intimate data about people are employing | sociologists to analyze that data and use it for many purposes, | mostly related to advertising and motivating people to buy | stuff, but also swaying opinion, making market decisions, | investing, hiring and firing, and more. A common refrain in | economics is that markets are unpredictable because you can't | know what all the individual players are thinking, well now you | can measure them and build models/AI. Big computational social | science already exists at scale. I wonder what is being done | with the health data from fitness trackers. | | Similar things have been happening in economics. Unfortunately | in both cases the data is being used mainly to gain special | private knowledge about the social behavior of people, rather | than informing the public or public policy. Because money. | There are a few researchers who are more interested in the | public good though. | wsintra2022 wrote: | My gist was that the author wants the data vacuumed up by big | tech to be used to continue analyzing the questions posed by | social science, why do we have inequalities, why do we have | class division, that sort of thing. | dleeftink wrote: | I don't think it's a matter of whether a certain project falls | under the CSS nomer depending on the scale of the data and | methods employed, but that there is as much 'sociality' to | computation as there is 'science', and that studying both | social and computational aspects of contemporary society and | their interactions can broach insights into the 'digital stack' | modern life is folded into. | | I gathered the quote is not about Habermas and feature | selection per se, but a platitude about bridging theory and | practice--both social _and_ computational theories and | practices. Knowing when, for instance, not to divvy up social | features that may constitute a larger (digital) public, or | conversly combining /throwing away features that may in fact | constitute multiple publics or subject groupings, paves the way | for building more accurate or generalisable computational | social science models. | | Why would we want such models? Perhaps to map 'hunches' about | social life that were previously only in the realm of rhetoric | or simply too difficult to map before the advent of large scale | data collection and computation. | jeron wrote: | I got my degree in Computer Science and Anthropology which in my | opinion quite fits in line with "Computational Social Science". | That being said, it feels that the more applied aspect of | computer social science often ends up being human computer | interaction or UI/UX design | water9 wrote: | If the world needs it, it'll be there. Subsidizing it does not | suddenly make the world need it. | hotnfresh wrote: | I believe shopping this assertion around a social science | department (or economics, if we're not calling that social | science) would yield a rather more nuanced view. | stevenally wrote: | The internet was subsidized.... | hcks wrote: | "The world needs another field where nothing replicates and those | main function is to produce fake results for airport books aimed | at management consultants" | [deleted] | masswerk wrote: | I wouldn't be too happy about such a divide into high-level | analysis and interpretation on one hand, computational social | science, on the other hand. A certain degree of intimacy with | your data is essential. There are even cases, where high-level | descriptors would suggest one thing, while in the actually data, | there emerges an entirely different picture. | atemerev wrote: | But we do have computational social science. Simulations, | interaction networks, opinion spreading models, voter models etc. | Quite an interesting area of research (and practically useful). | Frost1x wrote: | There aren't a lot of people being paid to do this type of work | though and social science tends to lag behind on the technology | front because people with said skills tend to find more | lucrative venues. | | I've worked with a few computational social scientists. | Personally I've always found the area a bit fascinating. | There's lots of agent based models, tie ins with economics, | social models, etc. trying to determine how groups of people | will behave and interact. Lots of understanding behavior and | exploring implications policies may play on behavior from a | governing standpoint or how things naturally occur. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-02 23:00 UTC)