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Category: computational social sciences

Computational Social Sciences at Intel…

As related in today’s NYT, here. The centerpiece of the article is Dr. Genevieve Bell, an Australian who used to teach at Stanford and now serves as Intel’s chief computational social scientist. In contrast to the folks we have here at Krasnow, Dr. Bell is an anthropologist by training and I would say is a social scientist who studies humans interacting with computers.

Intel is not my idea of a company that would hire an anthropologist at all, so the article was newsworthy. And some of the notions of clever ideas (for example the ‘billboards’ on your laptop’s cover) struck me as a bit iffy. I’d be really interested if IBM hired a corporate anthropologist with the same remit as Dr. Bell.

jlolds anthropology, computational social sciences, Intel February 16, 2014 1 Minute

Mason’s Center for Social Complexity…

I don’t often brag about our own centers on Advanced Studies, but can’t resist a pointer to the new web site of our Center for Social Complexity, here. And while I’m going there, I might as well jump the shark and offer a pointer to our Department of Computational Social science, here. The faculty of the center and the department overlap to a large extent and represent the Institute’s scientific program in the area of social cognition. Over the years, the Institute’s existing strength in neuroscience has led perhaps to the wrong notion that Krasnow is a pure brain research institute. In fact, we are very much an institute for advanced study and the waterfront of Krasnow research stretches from theoretical physics to poppy farming in Afghanistan…

jlolds Center for Social Complexity, computational social sciences November 7, 2013 1 Minute

Shaking up the social sciences….

Yale University’s Nicholas Christakis advocates for change in the social sciences in the pages of the NYT here. Christakis is co-director of Yale’s Institute for Network Science. Money quote:

For the past century, people have looked to the physical and biological sciences to solve important problems. The social sciences offer equal promise for improving human welfare; our lives can be greatly improved through a deeper understanding of individual and collective behavior. But to realize this promise, the social sciences, like the natural sciences, need to match their institutional structures to today’s intellectual challenges.

I would submit that Krasnow’s own department of Computational Social Sciences represents just such an evolution.

jlolds computational social sciences, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, Nicholas A. Christakis July 23, 2013 1 Minute

Beyond Google Earth….the next big thing:

David Samuel’s long piece in Wired, here. The start-up in question, Skybox, aims to be to satellite imagery what Google is to search….the advantage over Google Earth: much more dynamic data streams and an off-the-shelf approach to the technology.

I’m wondering if my colleagues in our own Computational Social Science Department here at Krasnow might be able to use such data–I’m guessing the answer is definitely yes.

jlolds computational social sciences, Google, Google Earth June 24, 2013 1 Minute

Big Data and Social Sciences

This blogpost from Marginal Revolution. Money quote:

Equally, economics is not the only social science engaged in this race: our friends in political science and sociology use similar tools; computer scientists are grappling with “big data” and machine learning; and statisticians are developing new tools.  Whichever field adapts best will win.  I think it will be economics.

Does there really have to be a disciplinary winner (and looser)? Computational social science is cross-cutting in facilitating progress. In the same way that bioinformatics changed life sciences….

jlolds bioinformatics, computational social sciences July 26, 2012 1 Minute

David Ignatius call your book agent….

This could be culled from his most recent novel, but it’s non-fiction from Wired Magazine, hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, here.

jlolds Afghanistan, computational social sciences, DARPA, David Ignatius July 21, 2011 1 Minute

C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures Revisited

I was sitting down with a colleague this morning–he’s a biochemist and I’m a neuroscientist–and the question came up of how hypotheses can be properly falsified in the social sciences and especially computational social science. This, to me, is an incredibly important question for the future of the social sciences, because, if you accept Karl Popper‘s requirement that scientific questions by definition, must contain falsifiable hypotheses, then social science can’t just be observational and inductive.

Now I’ve been familiar with Popperian-based social science since my training days in Ann Arbor (e.g. much of survey research is of this type). My problem is a deeper one. Given the complexity of human social relations, and our difficulty making measurements (of say the type we make in chemistry), how sure are we that the result of an experiment on social human beings can say anything definitive about an underlying hypothesis (much less falsify it).

Here I explicitly ignore trivial examples such as: all heads of state throughout history have been male (false).

Rather, I’m after the really non-trivial social science questions. The following is an example: human settlements (such as cities) follow a power law as far as population is concerned.

Even more importantly, as we create models for social systems in silico, we can conduct experiments on the models with Popperian rigor, but what really can we say about the relationship between a falsifiable hypothesis for a computational social science model and its corresponding hypothesis in the world of social human affairs?

Recently the new field of social neuroscience has opened up, led by John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago among others. Here at least, is the germ of an answer to my problem. Functional MRI measurements of human brains as they interact fulfills Popper’s requirements–within the caution that the fMRI BOLD signal is mismatched to both the spatial and temporal dimensions of the neural code (think neurons and action potentials to a first approximation).

The field of experimental economics, as pioneered by Vernon Smith, similarly, fulfills Popper.

Interestingly, the field of computational neuroscience requires a “validation” cycle with bench top neuroscience to be taken seriously: model results must be compared to bench top science. When the model and the bench top results don’t agree, we go with the bench top data and change the model.

Should there be a similar requirement for computational social science models?

jlolds computational neuroscience, computational social sciences, John Cacioppo, social sciences, Two Cultures, Vernon Smith July 21, 2011 2 Minutes

Computational Social Scientists in Demand

From Politico, the link is here. I’m sure, likewise, the GOP is hiring.

jlolds computational social sciences, data mining, Obama July 14, 2011 1 Minute

Another academic year in the books

We are quickly approaching the end of the academic year with the Spring exam period and it’s worth a pause, to look back. Most salient of course is the new research wing, which is now larger than the original Krasnow Institute facility that we moved into in 1997. I’m looking forward to an official grand opening in the Fall, but we’ll begin moving our scientists as soon as the semester ends.

Second, this past year was marked by a highly successful collaboration with our friends in Singapore with the Decade of the Mind VI Conference this past October. Sadly we mark the passing of the intellectual founder of the Decade of the Mind project, Dr. James Albus. Jim was an intellectual giant and we’ll all miss him.

Third, the Institute is minting its first Computational Social Science doctorate at Commencement next week, Mark Rouleau. This is a milestone both for the Institute as an Academic Unit of Mason, but also for the United States–Krasnow’s CSS doctorate program is the first of its kind in the nation.

So all told, a great year. We’ll be having our annual Krasnow Science Retreat at the end of the month and then hopefully a bit of rest as summer sets in.

jlolds computational social sciences, James Albus, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study May 12, 2011 1 Minute

Decision Maker Short Courses: Registration now open

Registration is now open for our two decision-maker short courses being offered for one incredibly intense week, next June.

The courses are aimed at the following quite common scenario: you or your boss is a principal and is called upon to make a consequential policy decision involving the very rapid recent changes in neuroscience or computational social science (think neurolaw, modeling the Lehman Brother’s crash, deception-detection or migration effects of climate change).

There is a proposal on the table, it requires the ability to think critically at the intersection of policy, business and the wave of new technological tools–the key is to have a good decision, informed by an appreciation for the difference between what’s real and what’s pie-in-the-sky.

We aim to educate principals and their top staff to make realistic consequential decisions informed by the latest research. Our  faculty  are experts in their disciplines and they all have the ability to communicate in plain English–we’ve minimized the jargon.

The venue will be Mason’s brand new Mason Inn Conference Center and your cohort of high-level fellow attendees will be as engaged as you. There will be additional ample opportunities for face-to-face social networking (still the best kind, in my opinion).

jlolds blogs marginal revolution neuroeconomics, computational social sciences, government, neurolaw, policy, principal, Science of Science Policy December 11, 2010 1 Minute

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