
Sociophysics and Econophysics, the Future of Social Science? - HBlix
https://daily.jstor.org/sociophysics-and-econophysics-the-future-of-social-science/
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Moodles
It’s cool to have some mathematical rules of thumb to describe crowds and so
on if it is backed up by experimental data.

I did an economics undergrad. One thing that really frustrated me about the
whole subject was how they kept calling it a social “science” and yet there
was no experiment or predictions. Everything was a retroactive explanation for
something, e.g. the financial crash or the affect of a minimum wage. Where’s
the predictions? Another thing that bothered me was that often it felt like
they were introducing maths to make it all seem a bit more legit: like solving
integrals for second-price bid auctions or describing utility functions and so
on. But that was always just a cute model with no experimental evidence to
back it up.

Basically, I think social sciences should stop calling itself a science unless
they start making predictions. And they should make it more like statistics
and psychology classes. Evidence is king.

~~~
xapata
> until they start making predictions

1\. Economists make predictions.

2\. Geologists don't run experiments with n earths and randomized double-blind
trials. Do you think they're not scientists either?

~~~
geoalchimista
> 2\. Geologists don't run experiments with n earths and randomized double-
> blind trials. Do you think they're not scientists either?

Although they can't travel back in time to do _controlled experiments_ ,
computer simulations are pretty routine for the study of the deep time of the
earth, for example, the neoproterozoic "snowball earth" simulations [1].

[1]
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/W_Peltier/publication/1...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/W_Peltier/publication/12477830_Neoproterozoic_Snowball_Earth_simulations_with_a_coupled_climateice-
sheet_model/links/540dba160cf2f2b29a3a00f6/Neoproterozoic-Snowball-Earth-
simulations-with-a-coupled-climate-ice-sheet-model.pdf)

~~~
xapata
Computer simulations are a good tool for economists as well. That was my
research focus in grad school.

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vinayms
Applying physics to understand human behavior is same as applying human
intuition to explain physics. Any correlations found, which are anyway
"fitted", are bound to breakdown.

Firstly we don't understand physics fully. We have only more breadcrumbs but
no answer to the ultimate "why", and are basically unable to answer a pesky
kid who keeps repeating that. Now, we are applying this to explain another
equally intractable problem, that of understanding human behavior. It is a
strange case of reductionism. I wonder why people engage in such futile
activities. May be this line in the article is the answer.

> Results like these have obvious value for corporate marketers.

A bunch of maths equations and charts presented in the form of a paper that
promises to crack the human behavior with further research is too good for the
corporates to let go. Ergo funding. Well done. I won't be surprised if all
this started out as a joke that the corporates lapped up.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with trying to quantify an observation or
a phenomenon, and in fact is always welcome, but bringing in incongruent
things into the mix reduces the gravity.

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jkingsbery
Paul Krugman is a Nobel laureate, but so is F.A. Hayek:

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really
know about what they imagine they can design."

The work described in the article can be interesting as far as it goes, but it
seems to me that a lack of humility coupled with insufficiently accurate
models can be a dangerous combination.

~~~
MrEfficiency
Lets stop caring about the Nobel institutions.

They have proved they can and will be corrupt as needed. Politics should not
validate science, but people treat it so when we care about the Nobel prizes.

~~~
jkingsbery
I agree! My point isn't that we should listen to people because they won an
award, because people who've won the same award have come to different
conclusions.

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zwaps
We've had econophysics for quite a while. It has yet to provide substantial
insights.

The issue is twofold. As others have remarked, human beings react to each
other and the intervention you do strategically. Econophysics models often use
things like particle behavior based on probabilistic choice rules to predict
behavior. This may describe a situation if fitted, but it also tends to break
down with interaction and intervention. Furthermore, we know that in such
interdependent situations, it can be highly misleading and wrong to use
aggregate functions and non-behavioral approaches. For example, if networks of
externalities influence choices. In many areas, such as auction behavior or
anonymous trade, the game-theory based models fit empirical behavior extremely
well. In other situations, it seems we start to understand better why people
react differently. Econophysics feels like a step back to old style economics.
I believe the current research agenda, ie. giving people strategic agency and
trying to understand their bounds to understanding and rationality, seems to
be more useful to me.

Secondly, econophysics claim to fame is also party based on mathematical
tools. I think this is misguided. While the math is different, and new tools
are always useful, the economic models are actually based on quite deep
foundations. Those reaction curves you learn in Game-Theory 101 seem simple,
but that is more a matter of representation. They can also be derived in much
more general mathematical spaces. For example, instead of simply finding
optimal functions in continous spaces, the same can be done in lattices based
purely on orderings... Economic theory has always been dominated by pure
mathematicians.

and for sociology - I mean seriously. Some of the biggest names in formal
sociological theory are physicians, such as White.

In my research I have personally found that physics style models, which are
not based on strategic behavior, can be highly misleading as they allow, for
example, for aggregation and inference that would not actually correspond to
strategic agents making individual interdependent decisions.

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r41nbowdash
[http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/comic/2012-03-21)

~~~
kgwgk
[https://xkcd.com/793/](https://xkcd.com/793/)

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jevgeni
I think the Black-Scholes model and its history in the financial world shows
how fragile physics-inspired models are in explaining social behaviour.

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d--b
These guys should take some clues from quantum mechanics, where observing or
trying to control the system observed screws it up.

“Physics found we can take advantage of Facebook to spread opinions and
control people’s minds” - “oh shit, we polarized the people, and now we’re on
the verge of WWIII”

~~~
greenpresident
There are several famous examples of this in economics. See for example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)
<\-- Observing behaviour changes said behaviour, leading to invalid
observations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique)
<\-- Treating relationships between variables as structural and changing one
to influence the other will affect the supposed underlying structural
relationship.

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rmbeard
Mostly, this is a failed research program and not at all the direction the
social sciences are going. Economists at least will draw one lesson from
physics and respond to econophysics, by following the "shut-up and calculate
approach" \- the result, econophysics will be ignored.

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the6threplicant
Fun fact: If they cut you open to remove your appendix and find out that it
isn't inflamed or infected then they still remove it since the scar left after
surgery is universally known that you already had an appendectomy and so
doctors, on seeing the scar, will rule out anything to do with the appendix as
a possible cause for your harrowing abdominal pain.

So to eliminate this possible confusion surgeons - all around the world -
always follow this unwritten rule.

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dranoel0226
Humans adapt their behavior by observing it. Looking at sth. doesn't affect
the outcome, but instead the observation adds to the set of exogenous
variables that will determine future behavior. We're not an ant colony that
acts in an entirely exogenous setting, we change the setting both through the
(un)intended consequences of the observed behavior and our attitudes toward
them.

The allocation of scarce ressources did neither begin with capitalism nor
economics. Many formal descriptions of foundational economic principles can
(edit: be traced back to) ancient Mythology [1]. How societies applied these
principles has differed greatly. Trade has been an important factor of human
behavior since the dawns of civilization. In a framework of linear progress
one might be tempted to search for deterministic laws in human behavior, but
it might make more sense to just interpret phenomena case-by-case with a
rather loose set of theoretical beliefs.

[1] Tomas Sedlacek - Economics of Good and Evil

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steve_gh
Glad to see a Hari Seldon (Asimov's Foundation) reference.

The "phase transition" around a level of extreme opinion in a population is
interesting, and I'd certainly like to find out more about this research

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deytempo
I read that first one as sociopaths

