week 1 review
What we want can be different from what I want plus what you want. because if we think about the social collective, we have to consider interactions of the larger whole, while only looking out for myself might lead me to a more self-centered result. In other words, the general will is an emergent phenomenon on a higher level.
According to the eminent political scientist Jean-J. Rousseau, there is an important emergent phenomenon we have to consider when dealing with democratic will formation. What is it?
Why does the digital revolution have an influence on evolution?
Because it is a major innovation in information processing. it can be considered as one of the well-known "major transitions in evolution".
Induction
In lecture, we reviewed an example of a psychologist (Gottman) who used observational data in order to create some theories about why marriages fail and succeed. This process from empirical evidence to theoretical framework is called:
An ant colony
In the book Godel, Escher and Bach, an anteater interacts with a socially emergent entity. What is it?
Glass of red wine theorizing
Not without tongue in cheek, in lecture, we gave an unconventional name to a very common way to deduce hypotheses in the social sciences. What was it?
It is based on and subsumes the dynamics of physics, chemistry, and biology. these disciplines study the 'emergent phenomena' on each level, while society builds on (and therefore subsumes) what is going on in biology, chemistry, and physics.
On basis of what argument was it claimed in the lectures that the Social Sciences are the most complex of all sciences?
Technological storage can already store more than all human DNA
Question 3 Comparing the amount of information that can be store by the world's technological devices, with the amount being stored by all human DNA, what have we seen?
Problems of averages are modeled with known distributions that summarize many variables. this is what Weaver referred to as the second wave of science. We also learned that the first wave of science tackled rather 'simple' problems of a small number of interacting variables, and in the current one we aspire to tackle problems of complexity that are modelled with a sizable number of organically interrelated variables.
Reviewing the historical context of science, we learned about so-called problems of 'simplicity', 'averages', and 'organized complexity'. Which of the following statements is true?
Problems of simplicity are modeled with a small number of interacting variables
Reviewing the historical context of science, we learned about so-called problems of 'simplicity', 'averages', and 'organized complexity'. Which of the following statements is true?
The digital revolution just recently provided the data and the computational power
Social science has always been very complex, so why is computational social science just right now becoming as relevant as it is?
Physics => Chemistry => Biology => Social Science
Social scientists study emergent phenomena that interact with the rules and laws of other scientific disciplines. We discussed a simplified version of a pyramid of different scientific disciplines. What was the order we discussed in class?
Induction
The method that Charles Darwin spearheaded in the work on evolution by going from phenomenon over models and hypothesis toward a scientific theory is called:
The amount of information that can be stored in the world grows very fast. How much more new information can the world store every two to three years?
The same as it was able to store since pre-history. it grows 'exponentially', which can be presented as a doubling process, and since it 'doubles' every two to three years, this means we add the entirety of the current amount again.
Empirical method
The scientific method based on making observations by collecting data is called:
Theoretical method. Yes, many ideas exist 'in theory', but not in empirical practice.
The scientific method based on working with ideas that might not even exist in reality is called:
False, it will never be possible to find the optimal way to create knowledge. The idea that this could be possible was proposed by the influential mathematician David Hilbert (the so-called Entscheidungsproblem), but it was proven to be impossible by the logician Kurt Gödel in the 1930s.
True or false. We discussed how computational social science methods can be used to reorganize the sequence to sub-sequentially employ different aspects of the scientific method, including empirical, analytical and theoretical approaches. After careful review, we found one optimal way to go through the circle in order to create knowledge.
Digital revolution. the advancements in information storage, communication and computation enabled this new way of generating knowledge about society.
What is the fundamental paradigm that drives the possibility of doing computational social science?
50-70%. This is known as the 'replication crisis' and is a major issue with today's knowledge creation processes.
What proportion of psychological experiments cannot be reproduced with the same result successfully?
The theoretical approach. All too often, computational science is equated with 'big data' or 'machine learning', but theoretical computer simulations are an important part of it, especially for the social sciences.
When we grow artificial societies in hypothetical computer simulations on our screens and test for different scenarios, we are exploring social reality through:
All of them, empirical, analytical, and theoretical. Just like the digital revolution modernizes all aspects of society, it also modernizes all aspects of social science. In this course we'll cover all three of them.
Which aspects of the scientific method does computational social science cover?
Kurt Hilbert showed that it is possible to create algorithms that implement the optimal way to create knowledge (Incompleteness problem)
Which of the following statements is false?
80-90%
With computational technology, social science studies have recently started to make predictions with accuracy up to:
