Lella Mazzoli [[email protected]]Fabio [.] Giglietto [@uniurb.it] Deparment of Communication Studies and Human Sciences | Università di Urbino Carlo Bo
SOCIAL SYSTEMS: FROM SIMULATION TO OBSERVATION
Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences annual congress, The Legacy of A.M. Turing, Urbino 25-27 Settembre 2012
Summary
The legacy of Alan Turing in social sciences; Cognition, AI and simulation of social systems
Top-down approaches Bottom-up approaches
Form simulation to observation Conclusions
The cognition-computing short circuit
Inside the “biological black box”
Can machines think?
PERMANENT LINK TO THIS COMIC: HTTP://XKCD.COM/329/
Top down Bottom up
Social system theories and simulation
From simulation to observation (1/x)
source: http://vincos.it/osservatorio-facebook/
Focus groups, interviews, surveys Unspontaneous data
Social media data Spontaneously
generated Tradition of content
analysis but: 1. Contents not
anymore generated by an elite;
2. No filter before publishing.
From simulation to observation (2/x)
Simulation Models
Observation Real data
From simulation to observation (3/x)
Conclusions (1/3)
The theoretical effects of computational social science (CSS) on sociology and theory of social systems are not fully explored;
CSS is criticized by some sociologists with the same arguments used against theories of social systems;
Conclusions (2/3)
Can the display or the analysis of a conversations network, always detached from single individuals
taking part to that conversation, help us fully understand the phenomenon under study?
What is the relationship between the displays of networks of communications and the relationship
between individuals and society?
Conclusions (3/3)
Most of the studies in CSS are developed by computer scientists (recall strong AI);
Most of the concept developed in sociology is not enough well defined (recall weak AI);
A stronger and more in depth collaboration is needed to fully express CSS potential.
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