Social Physics

Social Physics: The New Science of "How Good Ideas Spread
- Alex Pentland
- Alex Pentland
Amazon
- social physics
- The most important concepts "Idea flow" and "social learning"
- quest
- Definition: the use of social networks to gather ideas and information
- Part of the flow of ideas
- Found a good idea
- Link to good decision making
- What is a social network?
- Twitter can be seen as a person writing a small blog post.
- Verbal conversation included
- Information exchange through people
- Idea flow
- Foundation of [wisdom of crowds
- engagement
- What is Engagement?
- Occurs primarily within groups of peers social learning.
- Formation of coercive [social pressure
- For example, Cybozu has a code of conduct that considers information sharing to be a good thing, and social learning is actually taking place by watching other people share more and more information.
Is information sharing a good thing?

p.47
It has been observed that when the information distribution rate is high, echo chambers occur and performance drops.
An online financial trading service where you publish your trades and get paid when they are imitated.
Horizontal axis "speed of flow of ideas" is the amount of imitation of transactions

Interventions to ensure an appropriate level of speed at which ideas flow
The quest for good results
- Social learning is extremely important
- Combining successful imitation of others with personal learning is superior to personal learning alone
- Diversity is important
- Avoid [echo chamber
- People who behave irrelevantly to others are important.
- May have information that counteracts the effects of social impacts
- I can't tell if you're a wise man or a freak.
- In the case of Eatlo, we could determine this by looking at the performance
- See if there is a common opinion
I don't think that would filter out the common trait of "going against the grain of common sense" when there is simply an innocent who goes against the grain...
collective intelligence
Groups perform better than isolated individuals.
Patterns of interaction that contributed to the emergence of collective intelligence
Most Contribution
- Participants in the conversation are speaking equally.
next in line
- Social intelligence of members
- Ability to read the social signals of others
- Tends to be higher for women.
- Groups that included women fared better.
relevance
Meeting mediator

- p113
- If you talk only to one person, the circle gets closer to that person.
Flow of Good Ideas p111
Number of ideas
Density of exchange
- Like" for a statement What?" and other reactions
Diversity of ideas
How do we distinguish between many and diverse?
- Methods for Evaluating Diversity of Ideas p139
- Distinctive Idea Methods
- bronze-vessel and bell inscriptions found at the imperial palace, etc.
- Predicting what others will say
- If the prediction is correct, we ignore that information because it's already common knowledge.
- the wise
- Find people who can predict other people's behavior and yet act differently
- Being predictable means you have a good understanding of common social perceptions.
- If you act differently on it, there's some reason for it.
- You have information that others don't have, etc.
Maybe it's just a blessing in disguise?
- Third way
- People who often hold similar opinions are not considered independent
Social Network Incentives

Cybozu's work bar is a system that rewards "support for activity expenses" for actions that "involve people from other departments in a joint event.
mathematic model

From the Table of Contents
social physics
- Practical Social Sciences
- Social science based on rich data
- data-driven society
- Promethean fire
Found a good idea
Leading to better decision making
Social Learning Networks
The rapidity of the flow of ideas and the wisdom of the crowd
How to improve the flow of ideas around you
Network tuning improves results
quest
Idea flow
- Foundation of Collective Knowledge
custom
Priority Criteria for Selection
curiosity
What it takes for habits to take root
Collective rationality, but not individual rationality.
The Meaning of Common Sense
engagement
- Why collaborate?
- Why act as part of a group?
- social pressure
- incentive
- exchange (of letters)
- Domination and Conflict
idea machine
- collective intelligence
- Patterns of Exchange
- Make the group smarter.
- Engagement and Productivity
- Iteration and creativity in exploration and engagement
- Improve the flow of ideas
Improve the organization
- Visualization of exchange patterns
- Formation of collective intelligence
- Visualization of who is talking to whom
- Regulate engagement with visualization
- Improved exploration
- Evaluate diversity of ideas
- social intelligence
- charismatic leader
Adapting the organization to change
- social network
- incentive
- Rapid organization
- Responding to disruptive change
- Red Balloon Challenge
- Organizations under stress increase engagement.
- trust
- social signal
Data-driven cities
data-driven society
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