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    <title>Pinboard (cshalizi)</title>
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    <description>recent bookmarks from cshalizi</description>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08925"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v7-18-433/"/>
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  </channel><item rdf:about="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ep3ub_v3">
    <title>OSF | Network structure explains intellectual discourse across human history</title>
    <dc:date>2025-10-28T17:50:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ep3ub_v3</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The production of knowledge is a collective endeavor. Scientific discovery, for instance, reflects not only the insights of individual scientists but also interactions among scientists. This is often taken to reflect social influences on collective epistemic vitality, the capacity to generate and synthesize new ideas. However, in science, it is difficult to separate intellectual influence from access to material resources, such as equipment and grant funding, since networks of collaboration influence the circulation of both intellectual and non-intellectual resources. Here, as a strict test of how social structure shapes intellectual discourse, we use the three-thousand-year history of a human debate in communities that relied on intellectual argumentation (rather than, say, empirical experiments). Building on the work of historians and sociologists, we digitized and quantified the time-evolving network structure of interaction among intellectuals (N = 3187), broadly construed, from religious debate in ancient India (c. 800 BCE) to 20th century debates about the logical foundations of mathematics in Europe and North America. We find that the production or preservation of knowledge by a community is explained by its network structure but not with overall levels of antagonism, suggesting that how communities are organized matters more for intellectual progress than how contentious they are. Extending tools from collective intelligence to intellectual history, we call for an integration of the science of science, the philosophy of science, and the history of ideas to forge a comprehensive understanding of the social dynamics of knowledge."

--- These are ambitious conclusions to draw from four cases.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to_read color_me_skeptical social_networks social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:581c5eeb9956/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0273-4">
    <title>Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds | Nature Human Behaviour</title>
    <dc:date>2025-10-15T17:26:40+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0273-4</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The aggregation of many independent estimates can outperform the most accurate individual judgement1,2,3. This centenarian finding1,2, popularly known as the 'wisdom of crowds'3, has been applied to problems ranging from the diagnosis of cancer4 to financial forecasting5. It is widely believed that social influence undermines collective wisdom by reducing the diversity of opinions within the crowd. Here, we show that if a large crowd is structured in small independent groups, deliberation and social influence within groups improve the crowd’s collective accuracy. We asked a live crowd (N = 5,180) to respond to general-knowledge questions (for example, "What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?"). Participants first answered individually, then deliberated and made consensus decisions in groups of five, and finally provided revised individual estimates. We found that averaging consensus decisions was substantially more accurate than aggregating the initial independent opinions. Remarkably, combining as few as four consensus choices outperformed the wisdom of thousands of individuals."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition social_life_of_the_mind via:henry_farrell</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:fcafe9ae64db/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
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<item rdf:about="https://brill.com/view/journals/mesr/1/2/article-p231_003.xml">
    <title>AI As Artificial Memory: A Global Reconfiguration of Our Collective Memory Practices? in: Memory Studies Review Volume 1 Issue 2 (2024)</title>
    <dc:date>2025-09-15T12:40:59+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://brill.com/view/journals/mesr/1/2/article-p231_003.xml</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["ai’s evolution has drastically reshaped our relationship with collective memory. Large ai models, like gpt and dall·E, have emerged as memory agents, assimilating vast cultural and historical data across centuries. Unlike traditional digital repositories, these tools employ an analogical approach, capturing the complexity of human memory. Their potential to weave together fragmented pieces of the past offers new ways to delve into historical and cultural data. Tech giants are ambitiously positioning these ai models as primary mediators for information access, integrating them into popular platforms. While they present new forms of collective memory, their widespread use raises profound ethical concerns. Challenges arise regarding historical truth, representativeness, and data reuse, leading to debates on data ownership and the governance of digital collective memory."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB large_language_models_(so_called) social_life_of_the_mind via:aeo re:gopnikism</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:fe9f6f5f1357/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="https://osf.io/xra56">
    <title>Community Competition and Political Extremism</title>
    <dc:date>2025-09-05T16:02:43+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://osf.io/xra56</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Online extremist movements, although appearing monolithic from the outside, are composed of competing ideologies and strategies. Commitment to and promotion of extremist violence varies widely between the communities that make up the wider movement. What explains this variation? I argue that community-level extremism is driven by competition between online communities for attention and engagement on social media platforms. To support this argument, I construct a theoretical framework for understanding social media platforms as sites of political contestation and distribution of public goods. I gather two novel datasets, using an overlapping snowball chain sampling algorithm and transformer-based classifier to capture community competition and extremist content. I show that inter-movement competition between communities drives the share of extremism expressed in communities, as well as the level of out-group-focused extremism."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB networked_life sociology social_life_of_the_mind network_data_analysis re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:605b6b96aca1/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25858/">
    <title>Belief and Social Networks - PhilSci-Archive</title>
    <dc:date>2025-08-16T00:17:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25858/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Network epistemology is a growing field which studies the relationship between social network structure and belief. The field draws on work from many disciplines, including computer science, economics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, and sociology. While the conclusions of the field suggest that the relationship between network structure and belief is quite complex, there are a few general lessons that can be drawn. This chapter discusses what is known, and where fruitful new interdisciplinary work could help expand our understanding."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB epistemology social_life_of_the_mind social_networks philosophy_of_science zollman.kevin</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f411eb7777f9/</dc:identifier>
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    <title>How Twitter activism turned the fight against Boko Haram upside down - The Washington Post</title>
    <dc:date>2025-03-10T17:24:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/slacktivism-chibok-twitter-our-girls/2021/04/16/0e3b9fee-9e1f-11eb-8005-bffc3a39f6d3_story.html</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>have_read terrorism crime social_media social_life_of_the_mind our_decrepit_institutions re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator nigeria boko_haram tab_closure</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:7d77e091fa1c/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:crime"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:our_decrepit_institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:nigeria"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:boko_haram"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:tab_closure"/>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis">
    <title>We're getting the social media crisis wrong</title>
    <dc:date>2025-01-09T15:05:51+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[--- I think HF is mostly on target here (it'd be surprising if I didn't), but I think could be improved on.
(1) The distribution of output (# of posts) etc. over users is strongly right-skewed.  Even if everyone's content is equally engaging, and equally likely to be encountered, this will lead to a small minority having a really disproportionate impact on what people perceive in their feeds.
(2) Connectivity is _also_ strongly right-skewed.  This is somewhat endogenous to algorithmic choices [https://kieranhealy.org/files/drafts/performativity.pdf] but not entirely.)
(3) Volume of output, and connectivity, are at the very least not _negatively_ associated.  (I'd be astonished if they're not positively associated but I can't immediately lay hands on relevant figures.)
(4) People who write a lot are _weird_.  As a sub-population, they are, let us say, enriched for those who are obsessed with niche interests.  This of course continues HF's analogy to porn; "Proof is left as an exercise for the reader's killfile", as we used to say on Usenet.
(Someone sufficiently flame-proof could make a genuinely valuable study of this point by scraping the various fora for written erotica and doing automated content analysis.  I'd bet good money that the right tail of prolificness is dominated by authors with _very_ niche interests.  But I could not, in good conscience, advise anyone to actually do this study, since it'd be too cancellable from too many directions at once.)
(5) Consequence: even if the owners of the systems didn't put their thumbs on the scales, what people see in their feeds would tend to reflect the pre-occupations of a comparatively small number of weirdos.  HF's points about distorted collective understandings follow.
--- This conclusion could be avoided, maybe, if what those prolific weirdos wrote about tended to be a matter of deep indifference to almost everyone else.  I'd contend that in a world of hate-following, outrage-bait and lolcows, that's not very plausible.

--- Slightly elaborated: [http://bactra.org/weblog/inherent-distortion.html]]]></description>
<dc:subject>have_read kith_and_kin farrell.henry re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator networked_life social_networks social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition our_decrepit_institutions</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:bffaf67bb2f9/</dc:identifier>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:farrell.henry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:our_decrepit_institutions"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X24001313">
    <title>Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms - ScienceDirect</title>
    <dc:date>2024-12-11T19:43:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X24001313</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The current paper explains how modern technology interacts with human psychology to create a funhouse mirror version of social norms. We argue that norms generated on social media often tend to be more extreme than offline norms which can create false perceptions of norms–known as pluralistic ignorance. We integrate research from political science, psychology, and cognitive science to explain how online environments become saturated with false norms, who is misrepresented online, what happens when online norms deviate from offline norms, where people are affected online, and why expressions are more extreme online. We provide a framework for understanding and correcting for the distortions in our perceptions of social norms that are created by social media platforms. We argue the funhouse mirror nature of social media can be pernicious for individuals and society by increasing pluralistic ignorance and false polarization."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB networked_life social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f32d74f8baac/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy-of-science/article/landscapes-and-bandits-a-unified-model-of-functional-and-demographic-diversity/7D6ADD1049AF38C3F34AC2DF64A76FF1?WT.mc_id=New%2520Cambridge%2520Alert%2520-%2520Issues">
    <title>Landscapes and Bandits: A Unified Model of Functional and Demographic Diversity | Philosophy of Science | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2024-10-09T19:45:58+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy-of-science/article/landscapes-and-bandits-a-unified-model-of-functional-and-demographic-diversity/7D6ADD1049AF38C3F34AC2DF64A76FF1?WT.mc_id=New%2520Cambridge%2520Alert%2520-%2520Issues</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Two types of formal models—landscape search tasks and two-armed bandit models—are often used to study the effects that various social factors have on epistemic performance. I argue that they can be understood within a single framework. In this unified framework, I develop a model that may be used to understand the effects of functional and demographic diversity and their interaction. Using the unified model, I find that the benefit of demographic diversity is most pronounced in a functionally homogeneous group, and decreases with increasing functional diversity."]]></description>
<dc:subject>collective_cognition social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition to_read in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f42f1bbd1771/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://philarchive.org/rec/ROSHIC">
    <title>Lewis D. Ross, How Intellectual Communities Progress - PhilArchive</title>
    <dc:date>2024-10-09T19:45:33+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://philarchive.org/rec/ROSHIC</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Recent work takes both philosophical and scientific progress to consist in acquiring factive epistemic states such as knowledge. However, much of this work leaves unclear what entity is the subject of these epistemic states. Furthermore, by focusing only on states like knowledge, we overlook progress in intermediate cases between ignorance and knowledge—for example, many now celebrated theories were initially so controversial that they were not known. This paper develops an improved framework for thinking about intellectual progress. Firstly, I argue that we should think of progress relative to the epistemic position of an intellectual community rather than individual inquirers. Secondly, I show how focusing on the extended process of inquiry (rather than the mere presence or absence of states like knowledge) provides a better evaluation of different types of progress. This includes progress through formulating worthwhile questions, acquiring new evidence, and increasing credence on the right answers to these questions. I close by considering the ramifications for philosophical progress, suggesting that my account supports rejecting the most negative views while allowing us to articulate different varieties of optimism and pessimism."]]></description>
<dc:subject>philosophy_of_science social_life_of_the_mind via:lastpositivist in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:18cc407c6c3b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:philosophy_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:lastpositivist"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2022.2122756">
    <title>Full article: Epistemic Bunkers</title>
    <dc:date>2024-09-19T20:03:31+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2022.2122756</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["One reason that fake news and other objectionable views gain traction is that they often come to us in the form of testimony from those in our immediate social circles – from those we trust. A language around this phenomenon has developed which describes social epistemic structures in terms of ‘epistemic bubbles’ and ‘epistemic echo chambers’. These concepts involve the exclusion of external evidence in various ways. While these concepts help us see the ways that evidence is socially filtered, it doesn’t help us understand the social functions that these structures play, which limits our ability to intervene on them. In this paper, I introduce a new concept – that of the epistemic bunker. This concept helps us better account for a central feature of the phenomenon, which is that exclusionary social epistemic structures are often constructed to offer their members safety, either actual or perceived. Recognising this allows us to develop better strategies to mitigate their negative effects."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind epidemiology_of_representations re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:540ce4b716fb/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://philarchive.org/rec/NGUTIS">
    <title>C. Thi Nguyen, Transparency is Surveillance - PhilArchive</title>
    <dc:date>2024-06-15T19:58:51+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://philarchive.org/rec/NGUTIS</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind via:csantos</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ef8d90e2f863/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:csantos"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/L/Legend-Tripping-Online2">
    <title>Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat | University Press of Mississippi</title>
    <dc:date>2024-01-18T20:18:13+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/L/Legend-Tripping-Online2</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["On the Internet, seekers investigate anonymous manifestos that focus on the findings of brilliant scientists said to have discovered pathways into alternate realities. Gathering on web forums, researchers not only share their observations, but also report having anomalous experiences, which they believe come from their online involvement with these veiled documents. Seeming logic combines with wild twists of lost Moorish science and pseudo-string theory. Enthusiasts insist any obstacle to revelation is a sure sign of great and wide-reaching efforts by consensus powers wishing to suppress all the liberating truths in the Incunabula Papers (included here in complete form).
"In Legend-Tripping Online, Michael Kinsella explores these and other extraordinary pursuits. This is the first book dedicated to legend-tripping, ritual quests in which people strive to explore and find manifest the very events described by supernatural legends. Through collective performances, legend-trippers harness the interpretive frameworks these stories provide and often claim incredible, out-of-this-world experiences that in turn perpetuate supernatural legends.
"Legends and legend-tripping are assuming tremendous prominence in a world confronting new speeds of diversification, connection, and increasing cognitive load. As guardians of tradition as well as agents of change, legends and the ordeals they inspire contextualize ancient and emergent ideas, behaviors, and technologies that challenge familiar realities. This book analyzes supernatural legends and the ways in which the sharing spirit of the internet collectivizes, codifies, and makes folklore of fantastic speculation."

--- In JSTOR [https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2tvcgr] but not in our library's subscription. Try ILL?]]></description>
<dc:subject>conspiracy_theories folklore networked_life books:noted epidemiology_of_representations social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a5ee6fad02b9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:conspiracy_theories"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:folklore"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/22510/">
    <title>Fake News! - PhilSci-Archive</title>
    <dc:date>2023-09-22T00:56:50+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/22510/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We review several topics of philosophical interest connected to misleading online content. First we consider proposed definitions of different types of misleading content. Then we consider the epistemology of misinformation, focusing on approaches from virtue epistemology and social epistemology. Finally we discuss how misinformation is related to belief polarization, and argue that models of rational polarization present special challenges for conceptualizing fake news and misinformation."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB epistemology epidemiology_of_representations social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator via:henry_farrell</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6c61749d098b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epistemology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.02950">
    <title>[2202.02950] Jury Learning: Integrating Dissenting Voices into Machine Learning Models</title>
    <dc:date>2023-08-10T19:33:54+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.02950</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Whose labels should a machine learning (ML) algorithm learn to emulate? For ML tasks ranging from online comment toxicity to misinformation detection to medical diagnosis, different groups in society may have irreconcilable disagreements about ground truth labels. Supervised ML today resolves these label disagreements implicitly using majority vote, which overrides minority groups' labels. We introduce jury learning, a supervised ML approach that resolves these disagreements explicitly through the metaphor of a jury: defining which people or groups, in what proportion, determine the classifier's prediction. For example, a jury learning model for online toxicity might centrally feature women and Black jurors, who are commonly targets of online harassment. To enable jury learning, we contribute a deep learning architecture that models every annotator in a dataset, samples from annotators' models to populate the jury, then runs inference to classify. Our architecture enables juries that dynamically adapt their composition, explore counterfactuals, and visualize dissent."

--- This sounds like a potentially interesting way of dealing with inter-rater disagreement, if nothing else.
--- The very simple approach to not relying on majority vote would be to see what % of human raters labeled each training item as toxic, and then try to match that, i.e., to do regression limited to [0,1] rather than simply classification.  (This would avoid the unwarranted presupposition, or at least suggestion, that currently-salient identity groups are always homogeneous in their ratings.)  I will be interested to see if they give reasons for not just doing that.
--- The understanding of juries in this abstract is... curious, to say the least.
--- Also, per [https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:eb483f873534], the % difference in incidence of harassment by gender is actually pretty small, though the _forms_ of harassment are different in perhaps-relevant ways.  Similarly for racial/ethnic disparities, though the statistics are necessarily noisier for minority groups there.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read ensemble_methods text_mining networked_life social_life_of_the_mind via:henry_farrell</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:dcc0ae80623f/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ensemble_methods"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:text_mining"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://peterlevine.ws/?p=28885">
    <title>against the idea of viewpoint diversity « Peter Levine</title>
    <dc:date>2023-06-08T22:07:26+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://peterlevine.ws/?p=28885</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>have_read diversity ideology public_opinion social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition via:henry_farrell tracked_down_references</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:0cd6473d41c1/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diversity"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ideology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:public_opinion"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:tracked_down_references"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12644">
    <title>The Emergence of Specialized Roles Within Groups - Goldstone - Topics in Cognitive Science - Wiley Online Library</title>
    <dc:date>2023-05-02T20:15:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12644</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Humans routinely form groups to achieve goals that no individual can accomplish alone. Group coordination often brings to mind synchrony and alignment, where all individuals do the same thing (e.g., driving on the right side of the road, marching in lockstep, or playing musical instruments on a regular beat). Yet, effective coordination also typically involves differentiation, where specialized roles emerge for different members (e.g., prep stations in a kitchen or positions on an athletic team). Role specialization poses a challenge for computational models of group coordination, which have largely focused on achieving synchrony. Here, we present the CARMI framework, which characterizes role specialization processes in terms of five core features that we hope will help guide future model development: Communication, Adaptation to feedback, Repulsion, Multi-level planning, and Intention modeling. Although there are many paths to role formation, we suggest that roles emerge when each agent in a group dynamically allocates their behavior toward a shared goal to complement what they expect others to do. In other words, coordination concerns beliefs (who will do what) rather than simple actions. We describe three related experimental paradigms—“Group Binary Search,” “Battles of the Exes,” and “Find the Unicorn”—that we have used to study differentiation processes in the lab, each emphasizing different aspects of the CARMI framework."]]></description>
<dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind collective_cognition to_read via:? re:democratic_cognition goldstone.robert_l. in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:c6010a66dc9d/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:goldstone.robert_l."/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://psyarxiv.com/sfubr">
    <title>PsyArXiv Preprints | Even When Ideologies Align, People Distrust Politicized Institutions</title>
    <dc:date>2023-05-02T20:14:27+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://psyarxiv.com/sfubr</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In three studies (two preregistered; total n = 3,490 ideologically balanced U.S. adults), we examined attitudes toward 40 institutions, organizations, and groups of professionals (e.g., journalists, scientists, the Supreme Court, the World Health Organization, professors, police officers, doctors, the Catholic Church, banks, pharmaceutical companies, psychologists, Facebook), and tested the associations between (1) perceived ideological slant (the percentage of people in those institutions that lean politically left or right), (2) perceived politicization (the extent to which political values impact the work they do), and (3) public trust and willingness to support and defer to the institution’s expertise. Higher congruence between participant ideology and perceived institutional slant predicted higher trust and deference. And higher perceived politicization of institutions consistently predicted lower trust, often with large effect sizes. Similar patterns were observed between institutions, such that the institutions perceived as the most politicized were also the least trusted, with a very large effect, r = -0.76. Studies 2 and 3 found that perceived politicization also predicted lower support and willingness to defer to institutions’ expertise. Across studies, these negative relationships were observed among both participants who shared and opposed the institution’s ideological slant. In other words, even left-leaning participants were less trusting and less willing to support and defer to left-leaning institutions that appeared more politicized, and even right-leaning participants were less trusting and less willing to support and defer to right-leaning institutions that appeared more politicized. Studies 2 and 3 attempted to experimentally manipulate perceived politicization and failed to do so. We thus post this preprint in hopes of initiating discussion of these findings and identifying promising avenues for future research and possible interventions."]]></description>
<dc:subject>partisanship_and_polarization institutions our_decrepit_institutions social_life_of_the_mind in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:b9e9e9a8d5ed/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:partisanship_and_polarization"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:our_decrepit_institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.02667">
    <title>[2206.02667] Multi-learner risk reduction under endogenous participation dynamics</title>
    <dc:date>2023-03-18T14:35:55+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.02667</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Prediction systems face exogenous and endogenous distribution shift -- the world constantly changes, and the predictions the system makes change the environment in which it operates. For example, a music recommender observes exogeneous changes in the user distribution as different communities have increased access to high speed internet. If users under the age of 18 enjoy their recommendations, the proportion of the user base comprised of those under 18 may endogeneously increase. Most of the study of endogenous shifts has focused on the single decision-maker setting, where there is one learner that users either choose to use or not.
"This paper studies participation dynamics between sub-populations and possibly many learners. We study the behavior of systems with \emph{risk-reducing} learners and sub-populations. A risk-reducing learner updates their decision upon observing a mixture distribution of the sub-populations  in such a way that it decreases the risk of the learner on that mixture. A risk reducing sub-population updates its apportionment amongst learners in a way which reduces its overall loss.
"Previous work on the single learner case shows that myopic risk minimization can result in high overall loss~\citep{perdomo2020performative, miller2021outside} and representation disparity~\citep{hashimoto2018fairness, zhang2019group}. Our work analyzes the outcomes of multiple myopic learners and market forces, often leading to better global loss and less representation disparity."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB algorithmic_fairness machine_learning recommender_systems to_read to_teach:data-mining distributed_systems re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition diversity</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ae99da06e897/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:algorithmic_fairness"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:machine_learning"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:recommender_systems"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_teach:data-mining"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:distributed_systems"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diversity"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-deliberation-happens-enabling-deliberative-reason/6558F69855ADA8B15BF2EC2E5D403E71">
    <title>How Deliberation Happens: Enabling Deliberative Reason | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2023-03-18T12:28:29+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-deliberation-happens-enabling-deliberative-reason/6558F69855ADA8B15BF2EC2E5D403E71</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We show, against skeptics, that however latent it may be in everyday life, the ability to reason effectively about politics can readily be activated when conditions are right. We justify a definition of deliberative reason, then develop and apply a Deliberative Reason Index (DRI) to analysis of 19 deliberative forums. DRI increases over the course of deliberation in the vast majority of cases, but the extent of this increase depends upon enabling conditions. Group building that activates deliberative norms makes the biggest difference, particularly in enabling participants to cope with complexity. Without group building, complexity becomes more difficult to surmount, and planned direct impact on policy decisions may actually impede reasoning where complexity is high. Our findings have implications beyond forum design for the staging of political discourse in the wider public sphere."]]></description>
<dc:subject>collective_cognition democracy social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition via:henry_farrell in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:bcf00cb9d9e9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:democracy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.13230">
    <title>Beyond Single‐Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences - Dingemanse - 2023 - Cognitive Science - Wiley Online Library</title>
    <dc:date>2023-01-17T05:49:16+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.13230</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists."

--- The first sentence seems obviously false.  (Some people need to go sit in the woods and meditate in silence.)  But there may be interesting stuff in here nonetheless.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind cognitive_science color_me_skeptical</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6be847a337d7/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://crookedtimber.org/2023/01/03/skepticism-and-human-reason/">
    <title>Skepticism and human reason — Crooked Timber</title>
    <dc:date>2023-01-06T02:33:25+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://crookedtimber.org/2023/01/03/skepticism-and-human-reason/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind kith_and_kin farrell.henry have_read re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6fdab2d341d7/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:farrell.henry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://mattbruenig.com/2022/12/30/the-contradictions-of-deliberative-democracy/">
    <title>The Contradictions of Deliberative Democracy – Matt Bruenig Dot Com</title>
    <dc:date>2023-01-01T04:30:09+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://mattbruenig.com/2022/12/30/the-contradictions-of-deliberative-democracy/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>democracy social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition via:absfac have_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:080feebb75c7/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:democracy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:absfac"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/First-Submission-Versions.pdf">
    <title>How should we promote transient diversity in science?</title>
    <dc:date>2022-12-29T02:23:49+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/First-Submission-Versions.pdf</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Diversity of practice is widely recognized as crucial to scientific progress.
If all scientists perform the same tests in their research, they might miss
important insights that other tests would yield. If all scientists adhere
to the same theories, they might fail to explore other options which, in
turn, might be superior. But the mechanisms that lead to this sort of
diversity can also generate epistemic harms when scientific communities
fail to reach swift consensus on successful theories. In this paper, we draw
on extant literature using network models to investigate diversity in science. We evaluate different mechanisms from the modeling literature that
can promote transient diversity of practice, keeping in mind ethical and
practical constraints posed by real epistemic communities. We ask: what
are the best ways to promote the right amount of diversity of practice in
such communities?"]]></description>
<dc:subject>in_NB downloaded philosophy_of_science social_life_of_the_mind sociology_of_science o'connor.cailin re:democratic_cognition diversity</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f9e8b34b7131/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:philosophy_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:o'connor.cailin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diversity"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://academic.oup.com/restud/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/restud/rdac077/6835695?redirectedFrom=fulltext&amp;login=false">
    <title>LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORS ABOUT A CHANGING STATE | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford Academic</title>
    <dc:date>2022-12-27T19:10:27+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://academic.oup.com/restud/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/restud/rdac077/6835695?redirectedFrom=fulltext&amp;login=false</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Agents learn about a changing state using private signals and their neighbors’ past estimates of the state. We present a model in which Bayesian agents in equilibrium use neighbors’ estimates simply by taking weighted sums with time-invariant weights. The dynamics thus parallel those of the tractable DeGroot model of learning in networks, but arise as an equilibrium outcome rather than a behavioral assumption. We examine whether information aggregation is nearly optimal as neighborhoods grow large. A key condition for this is signal diversity: each individual’s neighbors have private signals that not only contain independent information, but also have sufficiently different distributions. Without signal diversity—e.g., if private signals are i.i.d.—learning is suboptimal in all networks and highly inefficient in some. Turning to social influence, we find it is much more sensitive to one’s signal quality than to one’s number of neighbors, in contrast to standard models with exogenous updating rules."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_learning networks golub.ben social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6403057a4722/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_learning"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:golub.ben"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/09/05/the-focus-on-misinformation-leads-to-a-profound-misunderstanding-of-why-people-believe-and-act-on-bad-information/">
    <title>The focus on misinformation leads to a profound misunderstanding of why people believe and act on bad information | Impact of Social Sciences</title>
    <dc:date>2022-12-15T06:12:10+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/09/05/the-focus-on-misinformation-leads-to-a-profound-misunderstanding-of-why-people-believe-and-act-on-bad-information/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator have_read epidemiology_of_representations via:? social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a77233eb4f83/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now">
    <title>Reality Is Just a Game Now — The New Atlantis</title>
    <dc:date>2022-08-17T22:17:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind networked_life role-playing_games re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator have_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:1c3971438eec/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:role-playing_games"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-030320-102739">
    <title>Culture and Durable Inequality | Annual Review of Sociology</title>
    <dc:date>2022-08-06T16:27:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-030320-102739</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In recent decades, sociologists have generally avoided explicitly discussing the role of culture in processes of social inequality. We argue that the prevailing disciplinary theory of inequality, the framework laid out in Charles Tilly's Durable Inequality, necessarily relies on cognitive processes and cultural concepts. The four primary mechanisms driving inequality—exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation—involve justification, categorization, coordination, and (e)valuation. We survey research on social inequality that illustrates each of these four processes. Our review reveals important empirical patterns about how disparities between groups emerge and endure. We observe that while sociologists often conduct work that implicitly relies on cultural concepts, other social science disciplines are also doing vital work in this area because they engage directly with cultural concepts. We identify key areas where sociologists are well positioned to use cultural concepts to uncover important findings regarding inequality, as well as to propose interventions for mitigating or preventing inequality."

--- Of course I don't mean the last tag literally.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to_read inequality transmission_of_inequality social_life_of_the_mind tilly.charles to_teach:statistics_of_inequality_and_discrimination in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f4b80dafe683/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:transmission_of_inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:tilly.charles"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_teach:statistics_of_inequality_and_discrimination"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/analytical-democratic-theory-a-microfoundational-approach/739A9A928A99A47994E4585059B03398">
    <title>Analytical Democratic Theory: A Microfoundational Approach | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2022-08-04T14:15:33+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/analytical-democratic-theory-a-microfoundational-approach/739A9A928A99A47994E4585059B03398</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["A prominent and publicly influential literature challenges the quality of democratic decision making, drawing on political science findings with specific claims about the ubiquity of cognitive bias to lament citizens’ incompetence. A competing literature in democratic theory defends the wisdom of crowds, drawing on a cluster of models in support of the capacity of ordinary citizens to produce correct outcomes. In this Letter, we draw on recent findings in psychology to demonstrate that the former literature is based on outdated and erroneous claims and that the latter is overly sanguine about the circumstances that yield reliable collective decision making. By contrast, “interactionist” scholarship shows how individual-level biases are not devastating for group problem solving, given appropriate conditions. This provides possible microfoundations for a broader research agenda similar to that implemented by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues on common-good provision, investigating how different group structures are associated with both success and failure in democratic decision making. This agenda would have implications for both democratic theory and democratic practice."

--- I am very happy to see this loosed upon the world.]]></description>
<dc:subject>in_NB democracy political_science political_philosophy collective_cognition kith_and_kin farrell.henry schwartzberg.melissa mercier.hugo re:democratic_cognition social_life_of_the_mind have_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:647cadab93a4/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:democracy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:political_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:political_philosophy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:farrell.henry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:schwartzberg.melissa"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mercier.hugo"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10434631221113403">
    <title>Divisiveness, splintering, and the rational interpretation of text - Jacqueline Joslyn, 2022</title>
    <dc:date>2022-07-19T14:13:33+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10434631221113403</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In a historical case study, this paper explores the mechanisms by which the rational interpretation of written text can produce divisiveness and splintering. The mechanisms of division are derived from theories of organizational rationality, cultural logics, organizational memory, and group conflict. The propositions are explored in an analysis of common sense rationality with a focus on the 19th century Stone-Campbell movement. When emotions are not adequately integrated into the culture of rational interpretation, group conflict can arise. The material characteristics of written text combined with a high-diffusion, low-hierarchy, highly recorded and publicized, and proactively contentious, emotionally triggering environment creates a breeding ground for division. The analysis paints a multi-dimensional picture of division and splintering from a sociomaterial standpoint."

--- "The material characteristics of written text combined with a high-diffusion, low-hierarchy, highly recorded and publicized, and proactively contentious, emotionally triggering environment creates a breeding ground for division": [as I was saying](http://bactra.org/weblog/dont-at-me.html).
]]></description>
<dc:subject>in_NB sociology social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a4d7295c336f/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/27/1/zmab019/6427305?login=false">
    <title>Beyond Anonymity: Network Affordances, Under Deindividuation, Improve Social Media Discussion Quality | Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication | Oxford Academic</title>
    <dc:date>2022-07-03T04:36:17+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/27/1/zmab019/6427305?login=false</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The online sphere allows people to be personally anonymous while simultaneously being socially identifiable. Twitter users can use a pseudonym but signal allegiance to a political party in their profile (e.g., #MAGA). We explore the interplay of these two dimensions of anonymity on a custom-built social media platform that allowed us to examine the causal effects of personal and social anonymity on discussion quality. We find no support for the hypothesis that personal anonymity breeds incivility or lowers discussion quality in discussions on gun rights. On the other hand, when personal anonymity is combined with social identifiability (operationalized as political party visibility), it improves several features linked to discussion quality, that is, higher rationality and lower incivility. We discuss the mechanisms that might explain the results and offer recommendations for future experiments about the design of social media platforms."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB networked_life social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator color_me_skeptical</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:4ca1475b5ae5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6kkpknh6qbibgx/Democracy%20as%20a%20knowledge%20system%20%200.2.docx?dl=0">
    <title>Democracy as a knowledge system 0.2.docx</title>
    <dc:date>2022-04-24T04:59:25+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6kkpknh6qbibgx/Democracy%20as%20a%20knowledge%20system%20%200.2.docx?dl=0</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>farrell.henry democracy social_life_of_the_mind have_read kith_and_kin in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ee1db2a8591e/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:farrell.henry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:democracy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29730">
    <title>Justifying Dissent | NBER</title>
    <dc:date>2022-04-24T04:58:56+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nber.org/papers/w29730</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Dissent plays an important role in any society, but dissenters are often silenced through social sanctions. Beyond their persuasive effects, rationales providing arguments supporting dissenters' causes can increase the public expression of dissent by providing a “social cover” for voicing otherwise-stigmatized positions. Motivated by a simple theoretical framework, we experimentally show that liberals are more willing to post a Tweet opposing the movement to defund the police, are seen as less prejudiced, and face lower social sanctions when their Tweet implies they had first read scientific evidence supporting their position. Analogous experiments with conservatives demonstrate that the same mechanisms facilitate anti-immigrant expression. Our findings highlight both the power of rationales and their limitations in enabling dissent and shed light on phenomena such as social movements, political correctness, propaganda, and anti-minority behavior."

--- This seems like a very weird and uninformative pair of cases to test the hypothesis.  At the very least you'd want to probe whether people like having rationales for ideas they think are socially approved!]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind economistic_imperialism</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:1e3ed6f0856c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:economistic_imperialism"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn0915">
    <title>Complex cognitive algorithms preserved by selective social learning in experimental populations</title>
    <dc:date>2022-04-13T02:38:25+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn0915</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Many human abilities rely on cognitive algorithms discovered by previous generations. Cultural accumulation of innovative algorithms is hard to explain because complex concepts are difficult to pass on. We found that selective social learning preserved rare discoveries of exceptional algorithms in a large experimental simulation of cultural evolution. Participants (N = 3450) faced a difficult sequential decision problem (sorting an unknown sequence of numbers) and transmitted solutions across 12 generations in 20 populations. Several known sorting algorithms were discovered. Complex algorithms persisted when participants could choose who to learn from but frequently became extinct in populations lacking this selection process, converging on highly transmissible lower-performance algorithms. These results provide experimental evidence for hypothesized links between sociality and cognitive function in humans."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools experimental_sociology social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:08fcd8325fca/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:experimental_sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29897">
    <title>Consensus and Disagreement: Information Aggregation under (not so) Naive Learning | NBER</title>
    <dc:date>2022-04-04T12:58:55+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nber.org/papers/w29897</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We explore a model of non-Bayesian information aggregation in networks. Agents non-cooperatively choose among Friedkin-Johnsen type aggregation rules to maximize payoffs. The DeGroot rule is chosen in equilibrium if and only if there is noiseless information transmission...leading to consensus. With noisy transmission, while some disagreement is inevitable, the optimal choice of rule blows up disagreement: even with little noise, individuals place substantial weight on their own initial opinion in every period, which inflates the disagreement. We use this framework to think about equilibrium versus socially efficient choice of rules and its connection to polarization of opinions across groups."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read social_life_of_the_mind social_learning</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d7728eac39ce/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_learning"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780197568750.001.0001/oso-9780197568750">
    <title>Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments - Oxford Scholarship</title>
    <dc:date>2022-03-27T04:02:31+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780197568750.001.0001/oso-9780197568750</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Designing for Democracy addresses the question of how to “fix” digital technologies for democracy by examining how the design of the built environment (whether streets, sidewalks, or social media platforms) informs how, and whether, citizens can engage in democratic practices. “Democratic spaces”—built environments that support democratic politics—must have three characteristics: they must be clearly bounded, durable, and flexible. Each corresponds to a necessary democratic practice. Clearly bounded spaces make it easier to recognize what we share and with whom we share; they help us form communities. Durable spaces facilitate our attachments to the communities they house and the other members within them; they help us sustain communities. And flexible spaces facilitate the experimental habits required for democratic politics; they help us improve our communities. These three practices—recognition, attachment, and experimentalism—are the affordances a built environment must provide in order to be a “democratic space”; they are the criteria to which designers and users should be attentive when building and inhabiting the spaces of the built environment, both physical and digital. Using this theoretical framework, Designing for Democracy provides new insights into the democratic potential of digital technologies. Through extended discussions of examples like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, it suggests architectural responses to problems often associated with digital technologies—loose networks, the “personalization of politics,” and “echo chambers.” In connecting the built environment, digital technologies, and democratic theory, Designing Democracy provides blueprints for democracy in a digital age."

--- Brief self-presentation: https://www.andrewchadwick.com/blog/2021/12/07/guest-post-jennifer-forestal-writes-about-her-new-book-designing-for-democracy-how-to-build-community-in-digital-environments]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted downloaded democracy networked_life social_media social_life_of_the_mind political_philosophy dewey.john re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator re:democratic_cognition in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:cc8bcb7554f4/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:democracy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:political_philosophy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:dewey.john"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ru4b8/">
    <title>SocArXiv Papers | Constructing Alternative Facts: Populist Expertise and the QAnon Conspiracy</title>
    <dc:date>2022-03-23T00:36:54+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ru4b8/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Communication research is increasingly concerned with the relationship between epistemological fragmentation and polarization. Even so, explanations for why partisans take up fringe beliefs are limited. This paper examples the right-wing conspiracy QAnon, which posits that the anonymous poster “Q” is a Trump administration insider who encourages followers (“Bakers”) to research hidden truths behind current events. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork on the 8chan imageboard, we position baking as a collective, knowledge-making activity, built on the affordances of social media, designed to construct specific facts and theories that maintain QAnon’s cohesion over time. Bakers demonstrate populist expertise, the rejection of legacy media accounts of current events in favor of the “alternative facts” constructed through their systematic research program. We emphasize the politically ambivalent nature of participatory culture and argue that baking casts doubt on critical thinking or media literacy as solutions to “post-truth” dilemmas like hyper-partisan media and disinformation."]]></description>
<dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind conspiracy_theories re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator via:henry_farrell epidemiology_of_representations</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:fcf184b1aaf9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:conspiracy_theories"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/1/15686/files/2021/11/Cultural_sociology_meets_the.pdf">
    <title>Cultural sociology meets the cognitive wild: advantages of the distributed cognition framework for analyzing the intersection of culture and cognition</title>
    <dc:date>2022-03-14T18:16:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/1/15686/files/2021/11/Cultural_sociology_meets_the.pdf</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition sociology cultural_transmission via:? social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a637f938ccb8/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/economics-and-philosophy/article/marketplace-of-rationalizations/41FB096344BD344908C7C992D0C0C0DC">
    <title>The marketplace of rationalizations | Economics &amp; Philosophy | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2022-03-07T15:53:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/economics-and-philosophy/article/marketplace-of-rationalizations/41FB096344BD344908C7C992D0C0C0DC</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Recent work in economics has rediscovered the importance of belief-based utility for understanding human behaviour. Belief ‘choice’ is subject to an important constraint, however: people can only bring themselves to believe things for which they can find rationalizations. When preferences for similar beliefs are widespread, this constraint generates rationalization markets, social structures in which agents compete to produce rationalizations in exchange for money and social rewards. I explore the nature of such markets, I draw on political media to illustrate their characteristics and behaviour, and I highlight their implications for understanding motivated cognition and misinformation."

]]></description>
<dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind influence re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator via:henry_farrell have_read in_NB intellectuals</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:4f1f6824fdf0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:intellectuals"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-017-1414-z">
    <title>Mandevillian intelligence | SpringerLink</title>
    <dc:date>2022-03-05T14:08:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-017-1414-z</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive vices (i.e., shortcomings, limitations, constraints and biases) are seen to play a positive functional role in yielding collective forms of cognitive success. The present paper introduces the concept of mandevillian intelligence and reviews a number of strands of empirical research that help to shed light on the phenomenon. The paper also attempts to highlight the value of the concept of mandevillian intelligence from a philosophical, scientific and engineering perspective. Inasmuch as we accept the notion of mandevillian intelligence, then it seems that the cognitive and epistemic value of a specific social or technological intervention will vary according to whether our attention is focused at the individual or collective level of analysis. This has a number of important implications for how we think about the design and evaluation of collective cognitive systems. For example, the notion of mandevillian intelligence forces us to take seriously the idea that the exploitation (or even the accentuation) of individual cognitive shortcomings could, in some situations, provide a productive route to collective forms of cognitive and epistemic success."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition social_life_of_the_mind cunning_of_reason via:henry_farrell to_read re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a07a13cbff6c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cunning_of_reason"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pDtzV7OzH3cnB64EPj1iyk3JUpmWqhOK/view">
    <title>Precis Mercier &amp; Sperber.pdf - Google Drive</title>
    <dc:date>2022-01-11T15:37:53+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pDtzV7OzH3cnB64EPj1iyk3JUpmWqhOK/view</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Precis of their great, great book.
--- Probably via:henryfarrell but tab has been hanging open so long I can't recall]]></description>
<dc:subject>have_skimmed sperber.dan mercier.hugo psychology social_life_of_the_mind rationality rhetoric evolutionary_psychology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:886a004f9b58/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_skimmed"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sperber.dan"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mercier.hugo"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:rationality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:rhetoric"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_psychology"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qWE9RR4A-6W_Tj6XOdQQ110cLQDUPHAh/view">
    <title>Mercier et Claidière Does discussion make crowds any wiser?.pdf - Google Drive</title>
    <dc:date>2022-01-11T15:36:26+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qWE9RR4A-6W_Tj6XOdQQ110cLQDUPHAh/view</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Does discussion in large groups help or hinder the wisdom of crowds? To give rise to the wisdom of crowds, by
which large groups can yield surprisingly accurate answers, aggregation mechanisms such as averaging of
opinions or majority voting rely on diversity of opinions, and independence between the voters. Discussion tends
to reduce diversity and independence. On the other hand, discussion in small groups has been shown to improve
the accuracy of individual answers. To test the effects of discussion in large groups, we gave groups of participants (N = 1958 participants in groups of size ranging from 22 to 212; mean 59) one of three types of problems
(demonstrative, factual, ethical) to solve, first individually, and then through discussion. For demonstrative
(logical or mathematical) problems, discussion improved individual answers, as well as the answers reached
through aggregation. For factual problems, discussion improved individual answers, and either improved or had
no effect on the answers reached through aggregation. Our results suggest that, for problems which have a
correct answer, discussion in large groups does not detract from the effects of the wisdom of crowds, and tends on
the contrary to improve on it."

--- Probably via:henryfarrell but tab has been hanging open so long I can't recall]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition re:democratic_cognition social_life_of_the_mind experimental_psychology experimental_sociology mercier.hugo via:? to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:12fa34564f26/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:experimental_psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:experimental_sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mercier.hugo"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://yair.substack.com/p/how-social-media-forges-false-consensus">
    <title>How Social Media Forges False Consensus and Erodes Our Public Discourse - Yair's Newsletter</title>
    <dc:date>2021-06-11T18:11:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://yair.substack.com/p/how-social-media-forges-false-consensus</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>social_media social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator information_cascades</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:9edd5319ec4a/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:information_cascades"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/">
    <title>The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill | WIRED</title>
    <dc:date>2021-06-11T18:04:47+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>epidemiology history_of_science coronavirus_pandemic_of_2019-- have_read social_life_of_the_mind epidemiology_of_representations</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:bcb108f028b5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:history_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:coronavirus_pandemic_of_2019--"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nber.org/papers/w28887">
    <title>Information Cascades and Social Learning | NBER</title>
    <dc:date>2021-06-07T14:31:40+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nber.org/papers/w28887</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["An information cascade is a situation in which an agent who observes others chooses the same action irrespective of the value of the agent’s private information signal. Theoretical models have found that cascades result in poor information aggregation, inaccurate decisions, and fragility of mass behaviors. We review the theory of information cascades and social learning. Our goal is to describe in a relatively integrated and accessible way the more important themes, insights and applications of the literature as it has developed over the last thirty years. We also highlight open questions and promising directions for further theoretical and empirical exploration."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB information_cascades social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator re:do-institutions-evolve to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6deddd735c6b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:information_cascades"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.12471">
    <title>[2006.12471] When social influence promotes the wisdom of crowds</title>
    <dc:date>2021-05-30T21:10:45+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.12471</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Whether, and under what conditions, groups exhibit "crowd wisdom" has been a major focus of research across the social and computational sciences. Much of this work has focused on the role of social influence in promoting the wisdom of the crowd versus leading the crowd astray, resulting in conflicting conclusions about how the social network structure determines the impact of social influence. Here, we demonstrate that it is not enough to consider the network structure in isolation. Using theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and reanalysis of four experimental datasets (totaling 2,885 human subjects), we find that the wisdom of crowds critically depends on the interaction between (i) the centralization of the social influence network and (ii) the distribution of the initial, individual estimates. By adopting a framework that integrates both the structure of the social influence and the distribution of the initial estimates, we bring previously conflicting results under one theoretical framework and clarify the effects of social influence on the wisdom of crowds."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind collective_cognition re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:91956b436aa9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00995">
    <title>[1812.00995] Computational Chemistry as Voodoo Quantum Mechanics : Models, Parameterization, and Software</title>
    <dc:date>2021-04-22T15:30:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00995</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Computational chemistry grew in a new era of "desktop modeling", which coincided with a growing demand for modeling software, especially from the pharmaceutical industry. Parameterization of models in computational chemistry is an arduous enterprise, and we argue that this activity leads, in this specific context, to tensions among scientists regarding the lack of epistemic transparency of parameterized methods and the software implementing them. To explicit these tensions, we rely on a corpus which is suited for revealing them, namely the Computational Chemistry mailing List (CCL), a professional scientific discussion forum. We relate one flame war from this corpus in order to assess in detail the relationships between modeling methods, parameterization, software and the various forms of their enclosure or disclosure. Our claim is that parameterization issues are a source of epistemic opacity and that this opacity is entangled in methods and software alike. Models and software must be addressed together to understand the epistemological tensions at stake."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB macro_from_micro chemistry physics sociology_of_science networked_life social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:01ced07d4c69/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:macro_from_micro"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:chemistry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:physics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07175">
    <title>[2104.07175] Community-Based Fact-Checking on Twitter's Birdwatch Platform</title>
    <dc:date>2021-04-16T16:07:57+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07175</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Misinformation undermines the credibility of social media and poses significant threats to modern societies. As a countermeasure, Twitter has recently introduced "Birdwatch," a community-driven approach to address misinformation on Twitter. On Birdwatch, users can identify tweets they believe are misleading, write notes that provide context to the tweet and rate the quality of other users' notes. In this work, we empirically analyze how users interact with this new feature. For this purpose, we collect all Birdwatch notes and ratings since the introduction of the feature in early 2021. We then map each Birdwatch note to the fact-checked tweet using Twitter's historical API. In addition, we use text mining methods to extract content characteristics from the text explanations in the Birdwatch notes (e.g., sentiment). Our empirical analysis yields the following main findings: (i) users more frequently file Birdwatch notes for misleading than not misleading tweets. These misleading tweets are primarily reported because of factual errors, lack of important context, or because they contain unverified claims. (ii) Birdwatch notes are more helpful to other users if they link to trustworthy sources and if they embed a more positive sentiment. (iii) The helpfulness of Birdwatch notes depends on the social influence of the author of the fact-checked tweet. For influential users with many followers, Birdwatch notes yield a lower level of consensus among users and community-created fact checks are more likely to be seen as being incorrect. Altogether, our findings can help social media platforms to formulate guidelines for users on how to write more helpful fact checks. At the same time, our analysis suggests that community-based fact-checking faces challenges regarding biased views and polarization among the user base."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind social_media epidemiology_of_representations deceiving_us_has_become_an_industrial_process the_problem_with_peer_review_is_the_peers re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator twitter</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:61408b60873a/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:deceiving_us_has_become_an_industrial_process"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:the_problem_with_peer_review_is_the_peers"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:twitter"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10434631211008635">
    <title>Faith struggles in science: Academic schools as religious sects - Florian Follert, Frank Daumann, 2021</title>
    <dc:date>2021-04-14T19:36:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10434631211008635</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Particularly in the social sciences, scientific debates can be understood as a special expression of academic discourse and ideally support the progress of knowledge within a discipline. Very often, there are competing academic schools with greatly differing theoretical foundations, like we have seen, for example, in social sciences especially by the “Methodenstreit” in economics, or the “Positivismusstreit” in Sociology. This paper aims to introduce a new approach to study academic schools and would like to contribute to the literature on the economics of science. To this end, the paper uses the economic theory of religion in general and the economics of sects in particular by transferring the approach to academic schools for the first time. Our results can help to extend the understanding of scientifical decision-making and to explain the membership to an academic school. Although, the model is presented in relationship to social sciences in general and economics in particular, the basic model of academic schools is generally transferable."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB academia social_life_of_the_mind sociology_of_science cults to_read collective_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:46d6fbffd996/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:academia"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cults"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2">
    <title>Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online | Nature</title>
    <dc:date>2021-03-19T13:08:11+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In recent years, there has been a great deal of concern about the proliferation of false and misleading news on social media1,2,3,4. Academics and practitioners alike have asked why people share such misinformation, and sought solutions to reduce the sharing of misinformation5,6,7. Here, we attempt to address both of these questions. First, we find that the veracity of headlines has little effect on sharing intentions, despite having a large effect on judgments of accuracy. This dissociation suggests that sharing does not necessarily indicate belief. Nonetheless, most participants say it is important to share only accurate news. To shed light on this apparent contradiction, we carried out four survey experiments and a field experiment on Twitter; the results show that subtly shifting attention to accuracy increases the quality of news that people subsequently share. Together with additional computational analyses, these findings indicate that people often share misinformation because their attention is focused on factors other than accuracy—and therefore they fail to implement a strongly held preference for accurate sharing. Our results challenge the popular claim that people value partisanship over accuracy8,9, and provide evidence for scalable attention-based interventions that social media platforms could easily implement to counter misinformation online."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB epidemiology_of_representations networked_life social_media social_life_of_the_mind eckles.dean to_read re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator experimental_psychology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:e902ca1d01cc/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:eckles.dean"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:experimental_psychology"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.02382">
    <title>[2102.02382] Mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and misinformation</title>
    <dc:date>2021-02-05T20:23:04+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.02382</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Parents - particularly moms - increasingly consult social media for support when taking decisions about their young children, and likely also when advising other family members such as elderly relatives. Minimizing malignant online influences is therefore crucial to securing their assent for policies ranging from vaccinations, masks and social distancing against the pandemic, to household best practices against climate change, to acceptance of future 5G towers nearby. Here we show how a strengthening of bonds across online communities during the pandemic, has led to non-Covid-19 conspiracy theories (e.g. fluoride, chemtrails, 5G) attaining heightened access to mainstream parent communities. Alternative health communities act as the critical conduits between conspiracy theorists and parents, and make the narratives more palatable to the latter. We demonstrate experimentally that these inter-community bonds can perpetually generate new misinformation, irrespective of any changes in factual information. Our findings show explicitly why Facebook's current policies have failed to stop the mainstreaming of non-Covid-19 and Covid-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation, and why targeting the largest communities will not work. A simple yet exactly solvable and empirically grounded mathematical model, shows how modest tailoring of mainstream communities' couplings could prevent them from tipping against establishment guidance. Our conclusions should also apply to other social media platforms and topics."]]></description>
<dc:subject>epidemiology_of_representations social_networks social_influence social_life_of_the_mind psychoceramics re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator networked_life in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ff7320ecec8b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:psychoceramics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0392192116669288?journalCode=dioa">
    <title>Conspiracy Theories as Stigmatized Knowledge - Michael Barkun, 2016</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-21T15:01:09+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0392192116669288?journalCode=dioa</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Most conspiracy theories exist as part of “stigmatized knowledge” – that is, knowledge claims that have not been accepted by those institutions we rely upon for truth validation. Not uncommonly, believers in conspiracy theories also accept other forms of stigmatized knowledge, such as unorthodox forms of healing and beliefs about Atlantis and UFOs. Rejection by authorities is for them a sign that a belief must be true. However, the linkage of conspiracy theories with stigmatized knowledge has been weakening, because stigmatized knowledge itself is growing more problematic. What was once clearly recognizable as “the fringe” is now beginning to merge with the mainstream. This process of “mainstreaming the fringe” is the result of numerous factors, including the ubiquity of the Internet, the growing suspicion of authority, and the spread of once esoteric themes in popular culture. Only a permeable membrane now separates the fringe from the mainstream. Thus conspiracism is no longer the province only of small, isolated coteries. It now has the potential to make the leap into public discourse. This, of course, does not apply to every conspiracy theory, but it happens enough to suggest that we are at an important transition point. The recent controversy in the United States over whether a conspiracy existed to hide President Obama’s alleged foreign birth – a claim that years earlier would never have emerged beyond small radical groups – suggests the nature of the change. It also suggests the dangers that political cultures may face in the future."


--- Note the date.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to_read barkun.michael conspiracy_theories epidemiology_of_representations social_life_of_the_mind us_culture_wars whats_gone_wrong_with_america via:aelkus re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:301faed2f5cf/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:barkun.michael"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:conspiracy_theories"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:us_culture_wars"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:whats_gone_wrong_with_america"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:aelkus"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://aelkus.github.io/theory/2021/01/16/opop.html">
    <title>Vampire-Hunting As An Vocation - Adam Elkus</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-19T20:45:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://aelkus.github.io/theory/2021/01/16/opop.html</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind organization_of_inquiry science_as_a_social_process vampires</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:112759b05f17/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:organization_of_inquiry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:science_as_a_social_process"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:vampires"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01106">
    <title>[2004.01106] The Paradox of Information Access: On Modeling Social-Media-Induced Polarization</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-19T18:49:37+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01106</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The paper develops a stochastic model of drift in human beliefs that shows that today's sheer volume of accessible information, combined with consumers' confirmation bias and natural preference to more outlying content, necessarily lead to increased polarization. The model explains the paradox of growing ideological fragmentation in the age of increased sharing. As social media, search engines, and other real-time information sharing outlets purport to facilitate access to information, a need for content filtering arises due to the ensuing information overload. In general, consumers select information that matches their individual views and values. The bias inherent in such selection is echoed by today's information curation services that maximize user engagement by filtering new content in accordance with observed consumer preferences. Consequently, individuals get exposed to increasingly narrower bands of the ideology spectrum, thus fragmenting society into increasingly ideologically isolated enclaves. We call this dynamic the paradox of information access. The model also suggests the disproportionate damage attainable with a small infusion of well-positioned misinformation. The paper describes the modeling methodology, and evaluates modeling results for different population sizes and parameter settings."

--- Before reading, I have to say that "natural preference for more outlying content" has got to be doing a lot of work here, and is not at all an obvious or innocent assumption.  Why not posit a natural _aversion_ to outlying content?  Or, again, if you assume that what people prefer is located about where they currently are, you get some kind of martingale process which will lead to convergence on random limits, but not spreading out to infinity.  OTOH, some of this may be carping because I've been playing with related ideas for years without ever having gotten them into shareable form.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to_read re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator social_life_of_the_mind epidemiology_of_representations</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:06455297871d/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/hystories/9780231104593">
    <title>Hystories | Columbia University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-12T23:52:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://cup.columbia.edu/book/hystories/9780231104593</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["This provocative and illuminating book charts the persistence of a cultural phenomenon. Tales of alien abduction, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, and the resurgence of repressed memories in psychotherapy are just a few of the signs that we live in an age of hysterical epidemics.
"As Elaine Showalter demonstrates, the triumphs of the therapeutic society have not been able to prevent the appearance of hysterical disorders, imaginary illnesses, rumor panics, and pseudomemories that mark the end of the millenium.
"Like the witch-hunts of the 1690s and the hypnotic cures of the 1980s, the hysterical syndromes of the 1990s reflect the fears and anxieties of a culture on the edge of change. Showalter highlights the full range of contemporary syndromes and draws connections to earlier times and settings, showing that hysterias mutate and are renamed; under the right circumstances, everyone is susceptible.
"Today, hysterical epidemics are not spread by viruses or vapors but by stories, narratives Showalter calls hystories that are created "in the interaction of troubled patients and sympathetic therapists... circulated through self-help books, articles in newspapers and magazines, TV talk shows, popular films, the Internet, even literary criticism." Though popular stereotypes of hysteria are still stigmatizing, largely because of their associations with women, many of the most recent manifestations receive respectful and widespread coverage. In an age skeptical of Freud and the power of unconscious desires and conflicts, personal troubles are blamed on everything from devil-worshipping sadists to conspiring governments. The result is the potential for paranoia and ignorance on a massive scale.
"Skillfully surveying the condition of hysteria—its causes, cures, famous patients, and doctors—in the twentieth century, Showalter also looks at literature, drama, and feminist representations of the hysterical. Hysterias, she shows, are always with us, a kind of collective coping mechanism for changing times; all that differs are names and labels, and at times of crisis, individual hysterias can become contagious.
"Insightful and sensitive, filled with fascinating new perspectives on a culture saturated with syndromes of every sort, Hystories is a gift of good sense from one of our best critics."

--- I still remember deciding not to read this based on a review in _Nature_ [https://www.nature.com/articles/40792], which is probably right about a lot of stuff but I think I should make the attempt.

--- ETA after reading: I am a big fan: http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2021-07.html#hystories]]></description>
<dc:subject>epidemiology_of_representations psychoceramics in_NB books:recommended hysteria social_contagion social_life_of_the_mind conspiracy_theories books:reviewed books:owned</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6966137c9f00/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:psychoceramics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:recommended"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:hysteria"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_contagion"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:conspiracy_theories"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:reviewed"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:owned"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.waggish.org/2021/the-bloodsport-of-the-hive-mind-common-knowledge-in-the-age-of-many-to-many-broadcast-networks/">
    <title>The Bloodsport of the Hive Mind: Common Knowledge in the Age of Many-to-Many Broadcast Networks – Waggish</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-12T20:49:01+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.waggish.org/2021/the-bloodsport-of-the-hive-mind-common-knowledge-in-the-age-of-many-to-many-broadcast-networks/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[This is good, so I'm going to pick nits.  What D.A. is really relying on here is not so much common knowledge (in the technical sense he ably explains) as _the appearance of popularity_.  (Notice his completely-correct point about how this appearance is slanted towards the loudest voices --- true and important, but not something that can happen when establishing actual common knowledge.)  The more apt presiding spirits here are Granovetter (1978) [https://sociology.stanford.edu/publications/threshold-models-collective-behavior], Lohmann (1994a,b) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118065] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2950679] and Kuran (1995) [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580]. ]]></description>
<dc:subject>us_politics our_decrepit_institutions networked_life social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator epidemiology_of_representations auerbach.david</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:441993a87885/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:us_politics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:our_decrepit_institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:auerbach.david"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/17088/">
    <title>The Dynamics of Retraction in Epistemic Networks - PhilSci-Archive</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-10T03:21:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/17088/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Sometimes retracted or thoroughly refuted scientific information is used and propagated long after it is understood to be misleading. Likewise, sometimes retracted news items spread and persist, even after it has been publicly established that they are false. In this paper, we use agent-based models of epistemic networks to explore the dynamics of retraction.In particular, we focus on why false beliefs might persist, even in the face of retraction.Surprisingly, we find that in some cases delaying retraction may increase its impact. We also find that retractions are most successful when issued by the original source of misinformation rather than a separate source."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read re:democratic_cognition social_life_of_the_mind epidemiology_of_representations</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:22a1036b758d/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axy062">
    <title>How to Beat Science and Influence People: Policymakers and Propaganda in Epistemic Networks | The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | Oxford Academic</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-10T03:17:37+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axy062</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In their recent book, Oreskes and Conway ([2010]) describe the ‘tobacco strategy’, which was used by the tobacco industry to influence policymakers regarding the health risks of tobacco products. The strategy involved two parts, consisting of (i) promoting and sharing independent research supporting the industry’s preferred position and (ii) funding additional research, but selectively publishing the results. We introduce a model of the tobacco strategy, and use it to argue that both prongs of the strategy can be extremely effective—even when policymakers rationally update on all evidence available to them. As we elaborate, this model helps illustrate the conditions under which the tobacco strategy is particularly successful. In addition, we show how journalists engaged in ‘fair’ reporting can inadvertently mimic the effects of industry on public belief."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read deceiving_us_has_become_an_industrial_process epidemiology_of_representations social_life_of_the_mind re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3d83a944fbf6/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:deceiving_us_has_become_an_industrial_process"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14524">
    <title>[2012.14524] Why does individual learning endure when crowds are wiser?</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-03T20:01:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14524</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The ability to learn from others (social learning) is often deemed a cause of human species success. But if social learning is indeed more efficient (whether less costly or more accurate) than individual learning, it raises the question of why would anyone engage in individual information seeking, which is a necessary condition for social learning's efficacy. We propose an evolutionary model solving this paradox, provided agents (i) aim not only at information quality but also vie for audience and prestige, and (ii) do not only value accuracy but also reward originality -- allowing them to alleviate herding effects. We find that under some conditions (large enough success rate of informed agents and intermediate taste for popularity), both social learning's higher accuracy and the taste for original opinions are evolutionary-stable, within a mutually beneficial division of labour-like equilibrium. When such conditions are not met, the system most often converges towards mutually detrimental equilibria."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB evolutionary_game_theory evolution_of_cognition social_life_of_the_mind collective_cognition re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ab63dca78864/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_game_theory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolution_of_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050718-032814">
    <title>Political Misinformation | Annual Review of Political Science</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-03T19:28:38+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050718-032814</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Misinformation occurs when people hold incorrect factual beliefs and do so confidently. The problem, first conceptualized by Kuklinski and colleagues in 2000, plagues political systems and is exceedingly difficult to correct. In this review, we assess the empirical literature on political misinformation in the United States and consider what scholars have learned since the publication of that early study. We conclude that research on this topic has developed unevenly. Over time, scholars have elaborated on the psychological origins of political misinformation, and this work has cumulated in a productive way. By contrast, although there is an extensive body of research on how to correct misinformation, this literature is less coherent in its recommendations. Finally, a nascent line of research asks whether people's reports of their factual beliefs are genuine or are instead a form of partisan cheerleading. Overall, scholarly research on political misinformation illustrates the many challenges inherent in representative democracy."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB epidemiology_of_representations networked_life deceiving_us_has_become_an_industrial_process social_life_of_the_mind re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:5e639bee9646/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:deceiving_us_has_become_an_industrial_process"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/22193679/who-should-get-covid-19-vaccine-first-debate-explained">
    <title>Who should get the Covi-19 vaccine first? The debate over a CDC panel’s guidelines, explained. - Vox</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-23T15:15:53+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/22193679/who-should-get-covid-19-vaccine-first-debate-explained</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[--- It's completely unrelated to the topic, but I want to note that my ad blocker stopped 445 distinct ads on this page (which is supposedly the mobile-optimized version), or about one ad per six words of content.  (Which may go some way towards answering the question in my last tag.)]]></description>
<dc:subject>coronavirus_pandemic_of_2019-- our_decrepit_institutions social_life_of_the_mind why_oh_why_cant_we_have_a_better_intelligentsia</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:2bf1940d74dc/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:coronavirus_pandemic_of_2019--"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:our_decrepit_institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:why_oh_why_cant_we_have_a_better_intelligentsia"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo50729564">
    <title>Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia, Robson</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-22T06:04:47+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo50729564</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["With Ancient Knowledge Networks, Eleanor Robson investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to adapt and endure over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments, and scholarship in the ancient Middle East, Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria, north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia, south of modern-day Baghdad. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day."

--- Open access PDF: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/125022]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted mesopotamia history_of_scholarship social_life_of_the_mind downloaded</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:7d4d93fd0450/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mesopotamia"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:history_of_scholarship"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2020.1364">
    <title>Who Contributes Knowledge? Core-Periphery Tension in Online Innovation Communities | Organization Science</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-22T05:38:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2020.1364</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Where do valuable contributions originate from in online innovation communities? Prior research provides conflicting answers. One view, consistent with a community of practice perspective, is that valued knowledge contributions are primarily provided by central participants at the core of a community. In contrast, other research—including work adopting an open innovation perspective—predicts that valuable ideas primarily emerge from peripheral participants, those at the margins of a field of knowledge who provide novel ideas and viewpoints. We integrate these contrasting perspectives by considering two distinct forms of position: social embeddedness (a core social position within the social network of participants interacting within a community) and epistemic marginality (a peripheral epistemic position based on the network of topics discussed by a community). Analyzing contributions by 697,412 participants of 52 Stack Exchange online innovation communities, we find that both participants who are socially embedded and participants who are epistemically marginal provide knowledge contributions that are highly valued by fellow community participants. Importantly, among epistemically marginal participants, those with high social embeddedness are more likely to provide contributions valued by the community; by virtue of their epistemic marginality, these participants may offer novel ideas while by virtue of their social embeddedness they may be able to more effectively communicate their ideas to the community. Thus, the production of knowledge in an online innovation community involves a complex interaction between the novelty emanating from the epistemic periphery and the social embeddedness required to make ideas congruent with existing social and epistemic norms."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind collective_cognition social_networks to_teach:baby-nets re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:32c8b57c2681/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_teach:baby-nets"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/expertise-and-authority/6187B0E16045C6AA4CD1594B6001AC5D">
    <title>EXPERTISE AND AUTHORITY | Episteme | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-21T14:15:23+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/expertise-and-authority/6187B0E16045C6AA4CD1594B6001AC5D</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Experts use their superior skills and understanding to mediate between evidence in some domain and non-experts. But how should we understand the proper relationship between experts and non-experts? In this paper, I present two ways of conceiving experts’ mediating role from the perspective of non-experts: the Authority View and the Advisor View. Jennifer Lackey (2018) has criticized the Authority View and defended the Advisor View. I defend an account of epistemic authority that avoids her criticisms while arguing the Advisor View lacks the advantages she claims. Ultimately, I present a hybrid approach according to which whether we should treat experts as authorities or advisors varies depending upon the presence of certain epistemic and moral concerns."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB moral_philosophy authority expertise social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:b8cfddca84cf/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:moral_philosophy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:authority"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:expertise"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/representation-in-models-of-epistemic-democracy/DD99118293B04CCE5D0D124B660E7961">
    <title>REPRESENTATION IN MODELS OF EPISTEMIC DEMOCRACY | Episteme | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-21T14:13:51+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/representation-in-models-of-epistemic-democracy/DD99118293B04CCE5D0D124B660E7961</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Epistemic justifications for democracy have been offered in terms of two different forms of information aggregation and decision-making. The Condorcet Jury Theorem is appealed to as a justification in terms of votes, and the Hong–Page ‘diversity trumps ability’ result is appealed to as a justification in terms of deliberation in the form of collaborative search. Both results, however, are models of full and direct participation across a population. In this paper, we contrast how these results hold up within the familiar structure of a representative hierarchy. We first consider extant analytic work that shows that representation inevitably weakens the voting results of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. We then go on to show that collaborative search, as modeled by Hong and Page, holds its own within hierarchical representation. In a variation on the dynamics of group search, representation even shows a slight edge over direct participation. This contrast illustrates how models of information aggregation vary when put into a representative structure. While some of the epistemic merits of democracy are lost when voting is done hierarchically, modeling results show that representation can preserve and even slightly amplify the epistemic virtues of collaborative search."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition social_life_of_the_mind diversity re:democratic_cognition page.scott_e. kith_and_kin</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:777ee971996c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diversity"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:page.scott_e."/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/improving-deliberations-by-reducing-misrepresentation-effects/8F7289E47C9F7D7BE6DF38B9C01D791F">
    <title>IMPROVING DELIBERATIONS BY REDUCING MISREPRESENTATION EFFECTS | Episteme | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-21T14:12:55+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/improving-deliberations-by-reducing-misrepresentation-effects/8F7289E47C9F7D7BE6DF38B9C01D791F</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Deliberative and decisional groups play crucial roles in most aspects of social life. But it is not obvious how to organize these groups and various socio-cognitive mechanisms can spoil debates and decisions. In this paper we focus on one such important mechanism: the misrepresentation of views, i.e. when agents express views that are aligned with those already expressed, and which differ from their private opinions. We introduce a model to analyze the extent to which this behavioral pattern can warp deliberations and distort the decisions that are finally taken. We identify types of situations in which misrepresentation can have major effects and investigate how to reduce these effects by adopting appropriate deliberative procedures. We discuss the beneficial effects of (i) holding a sufficient number of rounds of expression of views; (ii) choosing an appropriate order of speech, typically a random one; (iii) rendering the deliberation dissenter-friendly; (iv) having agents express fined-grained views. These applicable procedures help improve deliberations because they dampen conformist behavior, give epistemic minorities more opportunities to be heard, and reduce the number of cases in which an inadequate consensus or majority develops."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_life_of_the_mind collective_cognition institutions re:democratic_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ab8ba91a3467/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08925">
    <title>[2012.08925] Analysing the Social Spread of Behaviour: Integrating Complex Contagions into Network Based Diffusions</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-17T15:20:31+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08925</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The spread of socially-learnt behaviours occurs in many animal species, and understanding how behaviours spread can provide novel insights into the causes and consequences of sociality. Within wild populations, behaviour spread is often assumed to occur as a "simple contagion". Yet, emerging evidence suggests behaviours may frequently spread as "complex contagions", and this holds significant ramifications for the modes and extent of transmission. We present a new framework enabling comprehensive examination of behavioural contagions by integrating social-learning strategies into network-based diffusion analyses. We show how our approach allows determination of the relationship between social bonds and behavioural transmission, identification of individual-level transmission rules, and examination of population-level social structure effects. We provide resources that allow general applications across diverse systems, and demonstrate how further study-specific developments can be made. Finally, we outline the new opportunities this framework facilitates, the conceptual contributions to understanding sociality, and its applications across fields."

--- The word "homophily" does not appear in this paper...]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_networks social_influence diffusion_of_innovations social_life_of_the_mind re:homophily_and_confounding re:do-institutions-evolve to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:4c2752227906/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diffusion_of_innovations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:homophily_and_confounding"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-adaptation-is-maximised-when-intelligent-individuals-rarely-think-for-themselves/9C06326BEAB863A1F165C5E592F839BB">
    <title>Cultural adaptation is maximised when intelligent individuals rarely think for themselves | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:51:31+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-adaptation-is-maximised-when-intelligent-individuals-rarely-think-for-themselves/9C06326BEAB863A1F165C5E592F839BB</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Humans are remarkable in their reliance on cultural inheritance, and the ecological success this has produced. Nonetheless, we lack a thorough understanding of how the cognitive underpinnings of cultural transmission affect cultural adaptation across diverse tasks. Here, we use an agent-based simulation to investigate how different learning mechanisms (both social and asocial) interact with task structure to affect cultural adaptation. Specifically, we compared learning through refinement, recombination or both, in tasks of different difficulty, with learners of different asocial intelligence. We find that for simple tasks all learning mechanisms are roughly equivalent. However, for hard tasks, performance was maximised when populations consisted of highly intelligent individuals who nonetheless rarely innovated and instead recombined existing information. Our results thus show that cumulative cultural adaptation relies on the combination of individual intelligence and ‘blind’ population-level processes, although the former may be rarely used. The counterintuitive requirement that individuals be highly intelligent, but rarely use this intelligence, may help resolve the debate over the role of individual intelligence in cultural adaptation."

]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition social_life_of_the_mind cultural_transmission re:democratic_cognition color_me_skeptical</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f73b60c11b72/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v7-18-433/">
    <title>The Meeting of Minds: Forging Social and Intellectual Networks within Universities | Sociological Science</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T14:50:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v7-18-433/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["How are social and intellectual relations structured and given shape within research universities? To answer these questions, we test to what extent various theoretically predicted processes explain the dynamics of academics’ networks of collaboration and shared language use in a unique longitudinal data set (1994 to 2005) of 2,631 faculty at a large private American university. Using the latest advances in stochastic actor-oriented models (in RSiena) and text analysis, we found that social and intellectual relations are clustered and centralized on bridging faculty who form a broader interdisciplinary hub of research in the university, and that, over time, this hub disseminated its style of (interdisciplinary) research to other faculty. These networks are shaped by selection based on age, gender, race, and academic rank as well as the coevolution of social and intellectual relations over time. Clear differences emerge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and are strongly driven by structural mechanisms of clustering and centralization, whereas non-STEM fields (social sciences and humanities) are strongly driven by personal preferences of faculty members."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB academia social_networks social_life_of_the_mind networks_in_and_over_time sociology social_influence re:homophily_and_confounding to_teach:baby-nets</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:bd443a6a31b9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:academia"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networks_in_and_over_time"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:homophily_and_confounding"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_teach:baby-nets"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoap/1607936461">
    <title>Peres , Rácz , Sly , Stuhl : How fragile are information cascades?</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-15T15:11:11+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoap/1607936461</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["It is well known that sequential decision making may lead to information cascades. That is, when agents make decisions based on their private information, as well as observing the actions of those before them, then it might be rational to ignore their private signal and imitate the action of previous individuals. If the individuals are choosing between a right and a wrong state, and the initial actions are wrong, then the whole cascade will be wrong. This issue is due to the fact that cascades can be based on very little information.
"We show that if agents occasionally disregard the actions of others and base their action only on their private information, then wrong cascades can be avoided. Moreover, we study the optimal asymptotic rate at which the error probability at time tt can go to zero. The optimal policy is for the player at time tt to follow their private information with probability pt=c/tpt=c/t, leading to a learning rate of c′/tc′/t, where the constants cc and c′c′ are explicit."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB information_cascades stochastic_processes social_life_of_the_mind sly.allan peres.yuval</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:9f85a2dab044/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:information_cascades"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:stochastic_processes"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sly.allan"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:peres.yuval"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
</rdf:RDF>