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Wild how after years of scandal involving tech companies not thinking through the impact of their products on society, people are still saying sociology is a us

Wild how after years of scandal involving tech companies not thinking through the impact of their products on society, people are still saying sociology is a useless major.

geezerjay 8y ago
In your opinion what could be contributed by a sociology major to realistically avoid any of those scandals?
- beatpanda 8y ago
  By working with a product team to develop worst-case scenarios for non-technical abuse of a tool, like trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on. Especially as it concerns a tool developed by people mostly embedded in one culture and releasing it to an audience embedded in another. Soliciting feedback from people who study society and social problems, to understand how a tool might be used by people who are not like the people who are building it, might have helped to avoid a lot of problems.
  - pm90 8y ago
    I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. I know sociology was meant to be a placeholder for any one of seemingly worthless degrees, but the commenter has made a convincing case for how sociological analysis could have helped silicon valley social media firms (at the very least) recognize the kind of impact they have on society and be more responsive those impacts.
    - masonic 8y ago
      In my experience, Sociology majors are no less prone to "trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on" than the general population. More so, in fact.
  - olcor 8y ago
    +1. Sociology is an extremely important area to learn, not just in tech. How people work, play and live within different types of social constructs (and how these constructs are built and maintained in the first place) is valuable info to anyone who wants to get things done properly.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Unfortunately, things like psychology and sociology are rife with inherent problems as areas of formal study. Hard sciences have serious challenges in, for example, replicating studies. More "social" degrees tend to be vastly worse. I participated in at least one seriously flawed psych study being done so someone could get a degree. I was not impressed. I find the social stuff really fascinating. I seem to have an innate knack for it and I've taken college classes pertinent to that interest. But I tend to seek out other types of information when trying to further my interest in understanding how people work. For example, negotiating, parenting and marketing are all areas that require you to understand how people work and are results oriented. You either get results or you don't. A good test for how solid your hypothesis is: how well does it predict results? This is a general rubric. We know that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is superior to Newtonian gravity because it more accurately predicts planetary positions in the future. Ability to predict outcomes accurately is fairly strongly tied to performance. So, to my mind, social things that are performance oriented set a higher bar than those that are generally descriptive in nature instead. Psychology's ability to genuinely reform people with serious mental health issues is notoriously poor. This suggests it probably isn't on especially firm footing. In addition to the above areas of interest, I also find some harder sciences, such as neurological studies, much more generally useful for understanding social phenomenon than most psych or sociology things I've seen. I've also found books written by primatologists very good. A person I knew with a psych degree told me once that psych majors are mostly people who don't really understand people and are hoping to get a clue. Sadly, this hit a nerve for me. Some psych majors I've personally known fit that description all too well. Maybe someday these areas of study will be better than they are currently. But their current state leaves much to be desired.

Wild how after years of scandal involving tech companies not thinking through the impact of their products on society, people are still saying sociology is a useless major.

geezerjay 8y ago

In your opinion what could be contributed by a sociology major to realistically avoid any of those scandals?

beatpanda 8y ago
By working with a product team to develop worst-case scenarios for non-technical abuse of a tool, like trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on. Especially as it concerns a tool developed by people mostly embedded in one culture and releasing it to an audience embedded in another. Soliciting feedback from people who study society and social problems, to understand how a tool might be used by people who are not like the people who are building it, might have helped to avoid a lot of problems.
- pm90 8y ago
  I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. I know sociology was meant to be a placeholder for any one of seemingly worthless degrees, but the commenter has made a convincing case for how sociological analysis could have helped silicon valley social media firms (at the very least) recognize the kind of impact they have on society and be more responsive those impacts.
  - masonic 8y ago
    In my experience, Sociology majors are no less prone to "trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on" than the general population. More so, in fact.
- olcor 8y ago
  +1. Sociology is an extremely important area to learn, not just in tech. How people work, play and live within different types of social constructs (and how these constructs are built and maintained in the first place) is valuable info to anyone who wants to get things done properly.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Unfortunately, things like psychology and sociology are rife with inherent problems as areas of formal study. Hard sciences have serious challenges in, for example, replicating studies. More "social" degrees tend to be vastly worse. I participated in at least one seriously flawed psych study being done so someone could get a degree. I was not impressed. I find the social stuff really fascinating. I seem to have an innate knack for it and I've taken college classes pertinent to that interest. But I tend to seek out other types of information when trying to further my interest in understanding how people work. For example, negotiating, parenting and marketing are all areas that require you to understand how people work and are results oriented. You either get results or you don't. A good test for how solid your hypothesis is: how well does it predict results? This is a general rubric. We know that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is superior to Newtonian gravity because it more accurately predicts planetary positions in the future. Ability to predict outcomes accurately is fairly strongly tied to performance. So, to my mind, social things that are performance oriented set a higher bar than those that are generally descriptive in nature instead. Psychology's ability to genuinely reform people with serious mental health issues is notoriously poor. This suggests it probably isn't on especially firm footing. In addition to the above areas of interest, I also find some harder sciences, such as neurological studies, much more generally useful for understanding social phenomenon than most psych or sociology things I've seen. I've also found books written by primatologists very good. A person I knew with a psych degree told me once that psych majors are mostly people who don't really understand people and are hoping to get a clue. Sadly, this hit a nerve for me. Some psych majors I've personally known fit that description all too well. Maybe someday these areas of study will be better than they are currently. But their current state leaves much to be desired.