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Lumifer comments on What are your contrarian views? - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Metus 15 September 2014 09:17AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 19 September 2014 05:27:10PM 1 point [-]

Computational Social Science (CSS) is a subset of Data Science.

Ah, I see, so you're coming from that direction.

But let me ask a different question -- in what kind of business you're in? Are you in the business of making predictions? in the business of constructing explanations of how the world works? in the business of coming up with ways to manipulate the world to achieve desired ends?

Comment author: AABoyles 19 September 2014 06:05:49PM 0 points [-]

I'm in the business of modeling. I do all three of those tasks, but the emphasis is definitely on the last.

Comment author: ChristianKl 19 September 2014 07:37:01PM 1 point [-]

Could you give examples of successful interventions that you field has come up with, that wouldn't otherwise have been put into practice?

Comment author: AABoyles 19 September 2014 08:03:13PM 0 points [-]

Nope! Not to say that an intervention proposed by a computational social model has never influenced policy in real life--I just don't know of any examples. That said, I'm workin' on it.