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This is such a beautiful example of how isolated academic fields are from each other. Any art, philosophy, literature, critical theory, culture studies, or soc

This is such a beautiful example of how isolated academic fields are from each other. Any art, philosophy, literature, critical theory, culture studies, or sociology journal has hundreds of articles tracking and analyzing this phenomenon over the last 200 years from all sorts of different perspectives, but here we see some data scientists just drop into the problem and their most salient reference is Max Weber. And I don’t mean to be criticizing the work. It’s a cool illustration and it’s interesting to see this kind of quantitative analysis of the topic and what research in this style can uncover — it’s just striking how disconnected it seems to be from so many richly developed ongoing discussions elsewhere.

jrumbut 4y ago
And, to make more explicit what is implicit in your post, this practice of data analysis without much theoretical underpinning might lead you to say "I believe" instead of "I conclude."
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > And, to make more explicit what is implicit in your post, this practice of data analysis without much theoretical underpinning might lead you to say "I believe" instead of "I conclude." Strike that. Reverse it. That's the threat.
Groxx 4y ago
Any links to those articles? I'm kinda curious what they think the cause/meaning/etc of it all is. Personally it doesn't seem particularly worrying. E.g. you'd expect to see fewer grand, unsubstantiated claims when people's use of language / society's critical analysis of what they are claiming becomes more precise. And in some places this has definitely happened. Not that I think that's what it is. Just that there are lots of good and bad contributors, and I don't want to ignore the clearly negative and alarmist implications of "rationality declined" and "post-truth era".
mrbungie 4y ago
Some (or maybe a lot depending on your environment and domain) data "scientists" focus more on analyzing/processing data than reviewing the state-of-the-art and main ideas/discussions about the domain in question. Quite amusing, but even more amusing is that those backward ways of studying a subject almost always introduce biases.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  On the other hand, reviewing raw statistical correlations can also uncover relations which theory in the field say cannot exist.
  - mrbungie 4y ago
    Yeah, sure. I'm not saying quantitative methods are not useful. Just that checking the field's SOTA and theory is an important first step that facilitates hypothesis making, even if those hypothesis are an alternative to what knowledge already exists in the field.
    - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      We seem to have opposite approaches to when hypotheses are formed—look at data, then form hypotheses vs. understand SOTA to form a hypothesis before looking at the data.
Haga 4y ago
[dead]
sdwr 4y ago
You kidding me? They're arguing for a long term trend reversing, and use an example contemporaneous with the trend beginning! There's literally no better source to use. The trend tracks with my experience. I (with influence from my parents) caught the tail end of the academic rational movement, was over it by the time it moved online as lesswrong and EA, and like to think I'm at least a bit ahead of the curve on the counter-swing.

jrumbut 4y ago

And, to make more explicit what is implicit in your post, this practice of data analysis without much theoretical underpinning might lead you to say "I believe" instead of "I conclude."

drewcoo 4y ago
> And, to make more explicit what is implicit in your post, this practice of data analysis without much theoretical underpinning might lead you to say "I believe" instead of "I conclude." Strike that. Reverse it. That's the threat.

Groxx 4y ago

Any links to those articles? I'm kinda curious what they think the cause/meaning/etc of it all is. Personally it doesn't seem particularly worrying. E.g. you'd expect to see fewer grand, unsubstantiated claims when people's use of language / society's critical analysis of what they are claiming becomes more precise. And in some places this has definitely happened. Not that I think that's what it is. Just that there are lots of good and bad contributors, and I don't want to ignore the clearly negative and alarmist implications of "rationality declined" and "post-truth era".

mrbungie 4y ago

Some (or maybe a lot depending on your environment and domain) data "scientists" focus more on analyzing/processing data than reviewing the state-of-the-art and main ideas/discussions about the domain in question. Quite amusing, but even more amusing is that those backward ways of studying a subject almost always introduce biases.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
On the other hand, reviewing raw statistical correlations can also uncover relations which theory in the field say cannot exist.
- mrbungie 4y ago
  Yeah, sure. I'm not saying quantitative methods are not useful. Just that checking the field's SOTA and theory is an important first step that facilitates hypothesis making, even if those hypothesis are an alternative to what knowledge already exists in the field.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    We seem to have opposite approaches to when hypotheses are formed—look at data, then form hypotheses vs. understand SOTA to form a hypothesis before looking at the data.

Haga 4y ago

[dead]

sdwr 4y ago

You kidding me? They're arguing for a long term trend reversing, and use an example contemporaneous with the trend beginning! There's literally no better source to use. The trend tracks with my experience. I (with influence from my parents) caught the tail end of the academic rational movement, was over it by the time it moved online as lesswrong and EA, and like to think I'm at least a bit ahead of the curve on the counter-swing.