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The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

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Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#11

Post by bofadeez »

anigbrowl wrote: post #7
bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

People are not that complicated, and there's abundant evidence that physical models of social phenomena have decent predictive power, notwithstanding all the intervening complexity. The argument of statistical physics is not that people are particles, but that the equations we've found good at describing various natural phenomena work in social contexts because those processes tend toward efficiently conserving energ…

You should deploy a quant trading model based on your predictive behavior theory and compound your way to be the richest person on earth. It's not that complicated apparently!

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#12

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

Gas isn't a continuous medium, either; it's made up of particles. (Not even true particles, either, and sometimes that matters.) We can still create equations for sound waves, though.

Now, sure, humans are more complicated than gas molecules, and have an element of choice in what they do. But in bulk, they still behave in ways that can be modeled mathematically - perhaps not perfectly, but enough that it can still give some actual insight.

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#13

Post by vannevar »

bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

"All models are wrong; but some are useful." - George Box

Even particles aren't actually particles, nor spin states actually spin states. The map is not the territory. Physics models are only useful (and "correct") to the extent that they make successful predictions. If the adaptation of these principles to social communication yields useful predictions, then however inaccurate they may be in reproducing the exact nature of what they model, they are nonetheless useful and therefore worthwhile. FTA: "In summary, we review both empirical findings based on massive data analytics and theoretical advances, highlighting the valuable insights obtained from physics-based efforts to investigate these phenomena of high societal impact."

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#14

Post by strogonoff »

vannevar wrote: post #13
bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

"All models are wrong; but some are useful." - George Box Even particles aren't actually particles, nor spin states actually spin states. The map is not the territory. Physics models are only useful (and "correct") to the extent that they make successful predictions. If the adaptation of these principles to social communication yields useful predictions, then however inaccurate they may be in reproducing the exact na…

Natural scientific models use the vocabulary of pre-existing intuitions we have from interacting with the world: particles, rotation, etc. We try to simplify predictions by mapping experimental outcomes using things we already know and can directly perceive.

Using these abstractions as foundation for models of social dynamics and modern media feels a little wrong: the mapping is imperfect and incomplete, and as these physical models inevitably become outdated it will be more and more difficult to make sense of social dynamics models that use these physical models as a given.

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#15

Post by chermi »

bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

Did you read the paper? Or even the intro? If a model has predictive power, it's capturing something, end of story. What you do with it, popsci spins it, how you interpret it has nothing to do with whether or not it's useful. That's your projection. Everything you are saying it doesn't do as if it's an argument against the paper happens to overlap perfectly with the things it never claimed to do.

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#17

Post by soVeryTired »

vannevar wrote: post #13
bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

"All models are wrong; but some are useful." - George Box Even particles aren't actually particles, nor spin states actually spin states. The map is not the territory. Physics models are only useful (and "correct") to the extent that they make successful predictions. If the adaptation of these principles to social communication yields useful predictions, then however inaccurate they may be in reproducing the exact na…

The word “some” in the quote from Box is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

If a model is useful, I’d like to see it being used (outside academia, where there’s minimal penalty for complexity and a high emphasis on novelty).

If models like these are widely adopted at social media companies or news agencies, it’s fair to say OP’s take isn’t valid. Otherwise they may have a point.

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#18

Post by vannevar »

soVeryTired wrote: post #17
vannevar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All models are wrong; but some are useful." - George Box Even particles aren't actually particles, nor spin states actually spin states. The map is not the territory. Physics models are only useful (and "correct") to the extent that they make successful predictions. If the adaptation of these principles to social communication yields useful predictions, then however inaccurate they may be in reproducing the exact na…

The word “some” in the quote from Box is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If a model is useful, I’d like to see it being used (outside academia, where there’s minimal penalty for complexity and a high emphasis on novelty). If models like these are widely adopted at social media companies or news agencies, it’s fair to say OP’s take isn’t valid. Otherwise they may have a point.

Agreed. But these kinds of models almost always start in academia, that's one of the big reasons we have academia, to explore ideas that may (or may not) be useful. My point was that you can't prejudge the usefulness of a model simply because it doesn't fully replicate all the complexity of the phenomenon being modeled.

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#19

Post by gsf_emergency_4 »

bofadeez wrote: post #11
anigbrowl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are not that complicated, and there's abundant evidence that physical models of social phenomena have decent predictive power, notwithstanding all the intervening complexity. The argument of statistical physics is not that people are particles, but that the equations we've found good at describing various natural phenomena work in social contexts because those processes tend toward efficiently conserving energ…

You should deploy a quant trading model based on your predictive behavior theory and compound your way to be the richest person on earth. It's not that complicated apparently!

I think GP meant to say that people are not that sophisticated. Newtonian physics is not very sophisticated but fortunes have made and broke on deploying it (Roulette, dice, coinflipping etc)

statistical physics, otoh, is slightly more sophisticated than the median human so some experts have indeed made money building related models

Re: The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

#20

Post by bofadeez »

chermi wrote: post #15
bofadeez wrote: post #2

All this “physics of news” framing repeats the same mistake mainstream economics made decades ago, confusing human action with measurable physical phenomena. People aren’t particles, and opinions aren’t spin states. As Mises and Hazlitt argued, mathematical models give spurious precision when applied to purposeful behavior: they hide their "arbitrary assumptions" behind elegant equations. Treating communication, beli…

Did you read the paper? Or even the intro? If a model has predictive power, it's capturing something, end of story. What you do with it, popsci spins it, how you interpret it has nothing to do with whether or not it's useful. That's your projection. Everything you are saying it doesn't do as if it's an argument against the paper happens to overlap perfectly with the things it never claimed to do.

Predictive power alone doesn’t equal causal understanding. The paper models news and opinion spread as physical processes that may (over)fit observed data, but it never establishes why these patterns occur. No counterfactuals, no intervention logic, no identification strategy. As causal inference work (like Stefan Wager's) makes clear, explanation demands more than correlation. Treating human communication as node-to-node contagion might predict past outcomes, but it misses the purposive, context-driven nature of choice. So while the model captures statistical regularities, it lacks the causal rigor needed to claim genuine understanding of human behavior.

I'm assuming you've never predicted things in practice for a living? e.g. as a quant trader? Quants have something called a "deflated sharpe ratio" since p-hacking / overfitting historical data is such a common thing and results in losses when projected into the future.

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