The Social AtomPeople are atoms and life is physicsOnly in America...- August 14, 2007 ...could a mainstream newspaper mix up the views of scholars from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and a number of other real institutions -- institutions with a devotion to scientific standards -- with those of supposed "scholars" from the likes of the American Enterprise Institute. The Washington Post managed that in this article on research showing how Americans, once the tallest people in the world, have now fallen to being ranked ninth. The article quoted experts from various fields,..http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/only-in-america.html The chemistry of crime- August 14, 2007 I wrote a little in The Social Atom on the topic of crime and its dynamics. An old idea in the field holds that crime has economic origins; that it arises out of the cost-benefit analysis of the criminal, who decides, given his or her situation, that the benefits of breaking the law outweigh the risks. Read economist Gary Becker's 1992 Nobel Prize Lecture, and you see that this influential way of thinking about crime -- thrust upon him by a minor experience in his own life -- stimulated his...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/chemistry-of-crime.html The Bangladeshi Queen- August 10, 2007 An amusing anecdote to finish off this short Robert Putnam series. From an essay by John Lloyd in the Financial Times:When Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone six years ago, the book brought the Harvard professor such fame he was invited to speak at Camp David, 10 Downing Street - and Buckingham Palace.When he arrived to meet the Queen, he found Her Majesty absent but her top courtiers anxious to hear his advice for a multi-racial Britain. Noting that great royal houses had often used...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/bangladeshi-queen.html Diversity II- August 10, 2007 Just a few more comments on ethnic diversity and social cohesion. Robert Putnam's new study shows that more diversity tends to be correlated with lower levels of trust in a community, at least in the U.S. This is an important finding, and shows that diversity does come with a cost at least in the short run. Putnam shows that diversity in the long run has lots of benefits, even economic benefits, but in the short term, trust languishes as people learn to adapt and navigate a new social world...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/diversity-ii.html Ethnic diversity: good or bad- August 9, 2007 My agent Kerry Nugent Wells kindly alerted me to an article in the Boston Globe, covering the recent work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. Putnam is justifiably famous for his great book Bowling Alone, which explored how social activity and civic-mindedness in all forms have dwindled away in the U.S. over the past half-century. He's a very careful researcher, and presented masses of data showing how U.S. society has begin strongly "atomized" in recent decades (which, by the way,...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/diversity-good-or-bad.html James Hansen -- Declaration of Stewardship- August 8, 2007 As you all know, the Bush Administration tried hard to keep NASA climate scientist James Hansen from speaking out publically about climate change. Fortunately they didn't succeed, and he's still speaking. Last week Hansen gave a speech in Des Moines Iowa, outlining what he calls a Declaration of Stewardship that any candidate serious about preserving our environment ought to endorse. The speech (it's only three pages) is well worth a read, and I think it would be great if his proposed...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/james-hansen-declaration-of-stewardship.html Social infinity...- August 7, 2007 The image to the left (which I've borrowed from a website on social psychology) shows world population versus time, and has two obviously striking features. First, the number of people stayed almost constant for eons stretching into the remote past, only beginning a slow upward trend a few thousand years ago. Second, something definitively spectacular happened about 200 years ago, which has led to an explosion of human numbers that still shows no signs of abating. In strictly mathematical...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/social-infinity.html puzzlement....- August 6, 2007 I'm having real difficulty believing what I just read. Maybe I need to think some more about the logic of inconsistency, and how politicians can strategically place themselves all across the policy spectrum to appeal to the many all at once. At a meeting of young Republicans, Newt Gingrich, of all people, seems to have addressed the followers in what anyone would objectively describe as liberal (and reality-based) terms. As Julia Dahl reports at Salon,He began benignly enough, using an anecdote.http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/puzzlement.html The physics of crowds- August 3, 2007 In thinking of "social" behavior, we usually think of interactions with friends and community, social norms and so on. But these are fairly complicated human phenomena. In simplest terms, "social" merely implies some interaction between people, and maybe the simplest example is just walking around. You can walk on your own, as a lonely social atom wandering through empty space, or you can walk in the presence of others -- in which case interesting things start to happen.In a post a while back I.http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/physics-of-crowds.html See what you like...- August 1, 2007 One of the topics I touch on in The Social Atom is the embarrassingly loose relationship between observations and beliefs in social science, especially among those driven by ideology. I've always thought it odd that there are "conservative" and "liberal" economists, when economists are supposed to be scientists approaching the workings of economic systems with the same dispassionate methods as physical scientists do nature (or so I thought). Nothing can send you toward ridiculous conclusions...http://thesocialatom.blogspot.com/2007/08/see-what-you-like.html |