[HN Gopher] Measuring Algorithmically Infused Societies
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       Measuring Algorithmically Infused Societies
        
       Author : tchalla
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2021-07-09 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
        
       | troelsSteegin wrote:
       | See the other big picture 'setting the agenda' perspective, co-
       | published and similarly paywalled: "Integrating explanation and
       | prediction in computational social science" at
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03659-0 . Authors for
       | both are high profile, I am guessing these are aggregates of
       | position papers for a conference panel.
       | 
       | Both are part of a Nature Computational Social Science special,
       | https://www.nature.com/collections/cadaddgige , in part covering
       | the network science conference Networks21,
       | https://networks2021.net/ .
        
       | temp8964 wrote:
       | Never heard of "computational social scientists" before. Seems to
       | be CS people working on social issues. The reference list seems
       | to be exclusively CS, no social science at all.
       | 
       | Maybe they should just call themselves computer scientists.
        
         | Anon84 wrote:
         | (former) computational social scientist here...
         | 
         | This particular bunch (I know several of the authors
         | personally) are a bit more CS oriented, but CSS people do run
         | the gamut from Theoretical/Computational Physicists (like yours
         | truly) to CS and more traditional Social Science types.
         | Essentially, and this is what brought me the field, we were
         | doing Data Science before such a thing had a name and trying to
         | answer behavioral/social questions using large (at least for
         | the time) datasets along with some CS/ML skills. Check out my
         | google scholar to see the kind of stuff we played with
         | https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rtKaL18AAAAJ&hl=en...
        
       | psboody wrote:
       | I have a bad feeling by the time computational social scientists
       | or whoever work anything out algos will suck society dry.
       | 
       | I have been in too many meetings where no one cares. Each time
       | its the same story - ya the data is showing this random group of
       | people over here are hooked like crazy, dont worry about why and
       | what effects its having on them just keep them hooked.
       | 
       | Its like a big trap. Once you walk in there is no exit. The
       | people who push back or try alternatives all get politically side
       | lined. And we end up with cluelessly or crazy people in charge.
        
         | Jeff_Brown wrote:
         | If it remains a "free" (perhaps monopolized but mostly
         | unregulated) market, we can expect that behavior to continue.
         | 
         | Not everyone in society seems to be equally vulnerable to those
         | algorithms. We might reasonably expect a Darwinian loss of
         | populations who are. More hopefulny, at least some people are
         | able to outgrow such addictions.
        
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