
Scientists use big data to sway elections and predict riots in the 1960s - sohkamyung
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02607-8
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xtiansimon
I'm curious about this code the way hardware peeps are curious about the
Apollo guidance computer. haha.

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Nasrudith
They seem to take the exact wrong message from the history. The complaints
about Simulmatics are sheer anti-intellectualism, saying that doing it by hand
is aokay but using math and suddenly you are the next Hitler. They take a
scolding "You should have learned from this!" tone yet their precedent
suggests the opposite conclusion and really implies the objectors are
hysterical idiots.

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megameter
It's not anti-intellectual to say that arguments based in moral philosophy and
ground-level polling hold their weight against a simulated outcome.

The whole premise of predicting through data is one based in rendering legible
that which is not, creating order from chaos. This means that it does equally
at well at reinforcing biases as it does at revealing truths, because if you
really want a certain kind of answer, you will find a way to make the data
reflect it. Just look at automated stock trading, for one. It's easy to make
it work in back-testing, and then it goes live and the market does something
totally different. Grip sand too tightly and it will simply slip through your
fingers.

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Nasrudith
What moral philosophy? I saw only rationalization in the article that failed
to articulate the difference.

"Burdick warned, their very lack of interest in contemplating the possible
consequences of their work stood as a terrible danger. Indeed, they might
“radically reconstruct the American political system, build a new politics,
and even modify revered and venerable American institutions — facts of which
they are blissfully innocent”.

That description could apply equally to any activist advocating for change. It
is vacuous in that sense as it applies to civil rights activists, monarchists,
utopian reformers seeking technocracy, communism, or some other bizzare
system.

Plus calling people war criminals just for doing math? What is anti-
intellectualism if not damning people for trying to understand complex systems
because they might use it for evil?

