Computational Sociology

I think most of the people reading my blog have interest in ‘human’, human matters that are well-known in social issues like poverty or pop-culture development. Moreover, human matters have motivated several experts to form theories in human behavior that many of it are used to rule in our own society.

A research institute in Indonesia founded by several young prospective scientists has great concern in sociology and this is a tutorial about their works in computational sociology. This is a very resourceful and inspiring tutorial indeed to read and for whom interested in sociology please have the time to visit Bandung FE Institute website (www.bandungfe.net).

The tutorial is written basically in the following scheme:

Sociology = Social Interaction
Sociology is always discussing about the interaction among people that creates community dynamics. Many experts approached sociology to explain the motives of human interaction. Readers may recall theories like functionalism, social trade, structures, marxism, the control of conflict, and symbolical interaction. Accordingly, many neo-theories are based on their predecessors. Then, theories of sociology are modified, combined, or diminished according to the world’s relevancy and the opinion of new-aged philosophers, yet there is a captivating question; where do those theories come from?

Speculation Sociology
For many centuries, sociologist is also called philosopher, yet the philosopher terminology nowadays may have different meaning. Plato is a philosopher of the early centuries who observe community’s behavior (analyze), think about the motive-mechanism-effect, think (again) about the truth of his deduction by observing (again), and after that publicized his findings. With the on-going inventions of statistics or simulations (computational methodology) to test the truth of the deductions, is it still relevant to only think then deduce without proving? Philosopher (for me) is still an out-of-the box thinker, a contempt observer, and a social-sensitive person. Nevertheless, now it’s a new era, science has developed, and change is the only absolute thing; thus, sociologist must not developed theories by speculation. Speculation will only blur the truth and in effect will transform human life into badly chosen life (so, does Keynesian or Marxism ring a bell? :))

Sociology and Physics are the same…
Like many have considered sociology is full of many debatable aspects and those that wins in a debate is the one who have the strongest dialectics, plus I also thought that it is always contextual and very normative. However, computational sociology has made me believed that sociology is the same as physics, it is also science. Science produce theories from social phenomenon, need to be proved empirically, and renew by more accurate theories. The new concept of sociology eliminated my pessimistic opinion in the validity of sociology theories debates. Obviously, in the long term, sociologist (and hopefully us too) aren’t trapped by definitive debates that obstruct community’s understanding. Sociologist will be developing their theories by counterargument of proves against prove. (So do you really still think that the ‘invincible hand’ or socialism is still appropriate to be implemented? :))

Simulation or Statistics
There are many debates in using the method for sociology. Many economists also neo-sociologists use statistics, to find out correlation between variables yet seldom giving the direct causal relationship between it. Moreover, statistics also involved tight assumption that many real world data don’t comply to the method. On the other side, there is an emerging method of simulation in sociology. Simulation basically construct real world issue by capturing it’s mechanism through cause-effect relationship or if logics. Nevertheless, simulation gives the disadvantages of not finding the degree of correlation. The interesting part is ‘neo-simulation’ (please mind me, I make the term myself) is developing towards its integration with biology and physics, like neural network, genetic algorithm, and memetics.

Despite of the ongoing debates, based on my experience in Industrial Engineering department and Techno-Economics interest group, I believed that both must be used to find the pattern and explain the relationship. Both tools will give the benefit to comprehensively understand about the system and its behavior, so that experts can generate theories most suitable to the society. One thing that I most agree with the tutorials is the concept of KISS (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!!) hehe, if we get too involved IN the system then making it as simple as possible is very essential.

Computational Sociology
Computational sociology divided social system based on micro (individual) and macro (community/nation) level. One of the quotes from the tutorial is that ‘A simple micro pattern will emerge to a complex macro pattern’, that is why micro-modeling (or conceptualization) is fairly important for behavior study. Macro behaviors are mostly explained by macro-motives, yet never taking any account of micro-motives that is structured of the phenomena like the commodities-keeper during Ramadhan for price speculation. On the above picture, individual have decision system, behavioral psychology, and exchange theories that provoke each individual behavior or decision. Obviously, a simple reaction from each individual will correspond to the complex behavior of the macro level. The complexity of the macro level is characterized by social structure (the ‘how’ of every phenomenon in the study), like how does a vote occur in 2009 election, and social order, like how come GOLKAR may have higher vote in 2009 election influenced by the risk averse voters.

I believed that computational sociology will open a new path to applicable theory for the society; hence, giving more value to human interactions. Keynes theory of invincible hand and Marx theory of economic class absence have inspired several ideologies (though of its speculation thinking), yet its strength to create better society is still questionable. In a broader view, hopefully ideology like capitalism and communism that are developing in the society nowadays can be justified empirically (thus, truthfully) whether it’s good for the nation or those ideologies are implemented in certain boundaries.

Closing remarks..
I translated this section without major modifications (I like it very much)
Only a simple enclosing, the above picture can be a RABBIT or a DUCK depending from your point of view. We can construct social theory from any side of our main interest, yet it doesn’t mean that social theory is ANYTHING CAN BE TRUE because the picture is IMPOSSIBLE to be an object besides a RABBIT or a DUCK. By strict methodology and comprehensive definition, we can set whether it is a DUCK or a RABBIT, and which social theory is accepted or rejected….

PS. The tutorials are attractive, easy to read, and resourceful..highly recommended to read