Computing belongs within the social sciences • Hacker News Board

Re: Computing belongs within the social sciences

#61

Post by sharpneli » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #52

sharpneli wrote: post #43

Considering that Social Sciences are in midst of a replication crisis with no end in sight I'm not that sure they have anything useful to offer, except perhaps how to best do p-hacking to get results that one wants. The claim that computing is a social science because it has big effect on society is simply bollocks (This was explicitly claimed in the article, heck it had a subtitle "Why Computing Is a Social Science"…

Considering that Computer Sciences are in a software crisis since the 70ies, with no end in sight I'm not that sure they have anything useful to offer, except bloat, sidechannel attacks, cargo culting and enabling of BS-jobs, which they promised to eliminate. I really don't get your point.

We are having conversation with the engineering result from applying CS and physics.

Seems to work relatively well.

Re: Computing belongs within the social sciences

#62

Post by WkndTriathlete » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #2

Wow, ACM is taking a reputability hit for this piece. Who's editing that publication now? If it were how the social sciences need to embrace computing, that would be a legitimate claim from my experience at University.

I find some of what makes it into CACM is just absolute dreck. To be honest I think they are having trouble finding authors for articles. I can't tell you how many times I've seen articles from Kate Matsudaira prattling on about managing a software team (which, based on conversations with my wife, who is an actual director of software development for a large team, seem to convey naive entry-level management insights at best) or endless articles from Ivar Jacobson trying to evangelize the Next Big Thing to Replace Agile for software engineering.

At the same time there are usually 2-4 articles per issue that are very good. CACM also presents curated lists of interesting research articles, so (as practitioners) we do not need to sift through every article from every conference proceeding or journal publication talking about how some squeezed an extra tiny incremental fraction of x out of an O(n^x) algorithm or incremental papers discussing how compiler type inference algorithms could be improved this tiny little bit with this one weird trick.

And we occasionally get really insightful practitioner articles as well; for example, some interesting bits of how Google manages their code base, or what an incredibly difficult problems Coverity faces when statically-analyzing (supposedly)-compliant C/C++ code.

Re: Computing belongs within the social sciences

#63

Post by daveFNbuck » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

sharpneli wrote: post #43

Considering that Social Sciences are in midst of a replication crisis with no end in sight I'm not that sure they have anything useful to offer, except perhaps how to best do p-hacking to get results that one wants. The claim that computing is a social science because it has big effect on society is simply bollocks (This was explicitly claimed in the article, heck it had a subtitle "Why Computing Is a Social Science"…

I agree that computer science isn't a social science, but I think the social aspects of computer science have a lot more to do with what computer science grads do than upper bounds on algorithms. Most of what we're doing is about making products more attractive to customers.

Re: Computing belongs within the social sciences

#64

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 3:35 AM UTC

sharpneli wrote: post #61

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that Computer Sciences are in a software crisis since the 70ies, with no end in sight I'm not that sure they have anything useful to offer, except bloat, sidechannel attacks, cargo culting and enabling of BS-jobs, which they promised to eliminate. I really don't get your point.

We are having conversation with the engineering result from applying CS and physics. Seems to work relatively well.

Could also be said about (some) social sciences (in some contexts).