1. Is our freedom threatened when our choices can be forecasted?
2. Can we reclaim unpredictability in a data-driven age?
3. What ethical guardrails should we demand around social physics — Alonsoaceves

Statistical models require a prior abstractive flattening and regularizing of the domains that they presume to describe. Before those models can ‘discover’ predictable patterns in social behavior, choices must be made concerning what is to be included and what is to be left out of the map. The territory is the quirky and diverse variety of human ways of beings. I think the OP’ s concern about freedom being compromised by data technologies results from confusing the map with the territory. That confusion is the real threat, not the supposed predictability of human behavior.

That confusion is the real threat, not the supposed predictability of human behavior. — Joshs

Thanks Joshs, I agree in that aspect with you. On the matter of freedom and forecasts, I see it this way: a prediction only limits you if you let it become a rule. Sure, an algorithm might tell marketers you’ll click on ads for certain product, but you can still surprise them (and yourself) by buying another one instead. Our freedom lives in the gap between the forecast and what we actually choose.

It is not clear to me what your worry is: is it simply the fact that our choices can be predictable, or is it that this predictability can be exploited? The former is an old worry about the supposed conflict between freedom and determinism/determination. The latter is also as old as human society (or any society).

Both are valid concerns, but I'm more inclined to focus on how our predictability is being exploited. I'm not saying social physics isn't useful, but I'd prefer to see applications that go beyond profiting from our behavior.

Both are valid concerns, but I'm more inclined to focus on how our predictability is being exploited. I'm not saying social physics isn't useful, but I'd prefer to see applications that go beyond profiting from our behavior. — Alonsoaceves

Is state activity itself a form of profit? Is creating harmony in society a privilege reserved for the elites? However, it is through technology that today's state management takes place. There are remarkable works such as Le Bon's "The Psychology of the Crowd" and Lippmann's "Public Opinion." These two books have played a significant role in shaping our understanding of public opinion management.

"Oh, gentlemen, what kind of free will is there in arithmetic, when only twice two makes four? Twice two will make four without my will. That's what free will is." (Dostoevsky)

Both are valid concerns, but I'm more inclined to focus on how our predictability is being exploited. I'm not saying social physics isn't useful, but I'd prefer to see applications that go beyond profiting from our behavior. — Alonsoaceves

Well, as I said, "social physics" may be a new discipline, but the phenomena that it studies and the uses to which it is put are as old as society itself. We, social animals, are attuned to patterns of behavior exhibited by other members and groups, and we use this knowledge to cooperate, compete and exploit. We have done this since well before computers, before mathematics, before language itself.

1. Is our freedom threatened when our choices can be forecasted? — Alonsoaceves

If it walks like a duck, it's probably a duck. If you're never allowed to change, that is not to say broadcasted constantly "there's something wrong with you" or "you suck, get better" or perhaps the more charitable "you could be so much better than you are right now" over and over (original sin, as an example), you have the freedom to become something other than what you are now. Or at least, to adopt different behaviors that counteract whatever compels you to be as you are.

Actually, you can see the stark differences between the first callous sentiment and the last encouraging suggestion, which I believe is the essence of telling people, even from the earliest age they can understand, the idea of Original Sin. Psychologically, and effectively, it performs similar if not identical function.

2. Can we reclaim unpredictability in a data-driven age? — Alonsoaceves

I'm not really sure what this asks or even what it would hope to solve, assuming it proclaims to restore some "rightful" nature of humanity now lost or hindered by the modern age. I mean, you can go outside right now with a skirt, paint your face three colors, don a pot and pan and bang them across the street to your heart's content, if you'd like unpredictability for unpredictability's sake. No one's stopping you. Presuming you're single. But for what? Unpredictability is no virtue. In fact, it's what mankind has fought against since the beginning of time. We like predictable seasons, predictable food sources, predictable levels of danger and social safety, and so much more.

3. What ethical guardrails should we demand around social physics? — Alonsoaceves

You mean, this invented concept you seemed to have pulled out of nowhere (nowhere pleasant, shall I self-censor)?

It's still non-defined. Certainly from your OP.

The law does well enough. If you kill someone, you go to jail. If you steal from someone, you go to jail. And so on and so forth. You can't police thought itself. At least, it never ends well.

Some time ago I read an essay on Le Bon’s work. He argued that, in a crowd, the individual loses his personal identity and becomes a single collective psyche. We later see these ideas developed by Freud and Jung.

As you rightly point out, these ideas form the basis of today’s social physics. Thank you for reminding me of this work; I will read it.

You mean, this invented concept you seemed to have pulled out of nowhere (nowhere pleasant, shall I self-censor)? — Outlander

Hahaha. It seems like it, right? When I came up with the term “ethical guardrails” (a somewhat awkward translation from Spanish), I was referring to the principles, policies, and practices we need to put in place to ensure that research in social physics promotes fairness and avoids harm.

He argued that, in a crowd, the individual loses his personal identity and becomes a single collective psyche. We later see these ideas developed by Freud and Jung. — Alonsoaceves

Not only that. This judgment is more like the later work "The Psychology of the Masses." I even recommend reading the first work, "The Psychology of the People."

It's an interesting question. The idea of "nudges and incentives" still dominates the public policy space. If you look back, you can see that people were long aware of the ways in which the social and economic environment shapes preferences and actions. Herodotus makes an argument for a pretty expansive cultural relativism for example, and Plato's ideal communities in the Republic and Laws presuppose a great deal of malleability.

A basic idea that emerges is that laws and customs should ideally shape people towards virtue and a sort of internal balance, with virtue being a state in which "people desire to do what is best," rather than simply being able to force themselves to comply with norms or ideas about what is best. This is explicit in Aquinas for instance, who sees human laws as having a positive educative function.

But, the idea here is actually that this nudging and education, a sort of self-cultivation, is actually a prerequisite for liberty, the idea being that self-governance is not easy to attain. On this view, people don't become self-determining and self-governing by default when they become adults. To become relatively more self-determining is rather an arduous process. Someone ruled over by untamed passions or ignorance is, in an important sense, unfree. They are simply following desires they have not chosen. In Harry Frankfurt's terms, second order volition are key, the effective desire to have or not have certain desires (presumably because one knows such desires as truly worthy or not, a function of the intellectual appetites).

That's sort of the original idea of the "liberal arts." They are liberal because they help man to become more free. Patrick Deneen is a good modern commentator on this tradition.

Obviously, unvirtuous states can also create laws and norms that lead to unvirtuous citizens. That's one problem here. Homer is a fine example. The Iliad is an example of an obsession with thymos and purely martial virtue that leads towards a sort of self-destructive and pointless drive to conflict, one which Homer recognizes even if his heros don't.

But, the ideal, at least in its broad outlines, makes a certain sort of sense. Self-governance at the individual and collective level requires cultivation. As Saint Augustine says in The City of God, "the wicked man, though a king, is still a slave, and what is worse, he is ruled over by as many masters as he has vices."

Modern political economy tends to loose sight of this vision. In part, this is because the normative is divorced from the positive, and yet the positive still gets used to make normative claims (e.g. efficiency as a proxy for choice-worthy).

Yet I think the problem tends to lie more in the anthropology of political-economy/liberalism, which tends to be quite flat, reducing man to homo oecononimicus, the atomized utility maximizing (or satisfying) agent, whose actions are guided by the "black box" of utility, which flattens all the appetites into a single univocal measure. Francis Fukuyama represents an improvement here, in that he recognizes the particularity of thymos (the appetites for honor, respect, recognition, etc.), but he still largely ignores the possibility of any sort of "intellectual appetite" for truth and goodness as such. Yet I'd maintain that it precisely these appetites that are strongest when properly roused. They are what have gotten generations of men and women to abandon all wealth and status and adopt celibacy to become monastics or ascetics, as well as generations of revolutionaries, abolitionists, etc., who have been willing to suffer brutal, anonymous deaths for causes they see as "truly best."

The flatness, and general skepticism about the human good and any human telos, makes defining virtue and proper ordering impossible. Defaulting on any claim the the human good, "freedom" becomes the ideal. But this is generally a sort of spare, procedural/legal freedom in conservative liberalism, with an added economic aspect in progressive liberalism. It just assumes that people become free upon reaching adulthood, provided they have enough material resources to meet basic needs.

Promoting, education, nudging, and law can all play a role in enhancing self-determination, and they can also frustrate it. Modern efforts tend to frustrate it because they simply assume that man is free so long as he can choose just whatever it is he currently desires (regardless of if he has chosen and affirmed those desires).

if our collective patterns are so predictable, do we really have freedom? — Alonsoaceves

Great post. I think the necessary implication of this observation is that we DON'T have free will. The particular definition fo free will is a big topic which I won't get into here, but our decisions are influenced by the society we live in. If you live in a society that celebrates individual success and consumerism, you will likely share those values. If you live in a society that celebrates wisdom and community, you will have different values. There is no platonic, perfectly ratoinal, self-interested individual that is free to decide merely according to his/her own will.

Right, if you offer 10,000 people either a rotting, stinking fish to eat, or a choice of appetizing meals, and no one chooses the rotting fish, this does not demonstrate a lack of freedom. That no one wakes up one day and decides to slap their hand on a hot stove doesn't show a sort of tyranny of our appetites over free action.

This is why I like the classical definition of freedom as: "the self-determining capacity to actualize and communicate goodness." A benefit here is that this definition works with libertarianism, compatible, and fatalism.

It's our ability to do what is best that determines freedom. Whenever someone chooses the worse over the better, it is presumably because of ignorance about what is truly best, weakness of will, or external constraint or coercion. But all of these represent a limit on freedom. To use an example I like, even Milton's Satan must say "evil be thou my good." To say "evil be thou evil for me" and then to choose evil is insanity. This goes along with Saint Augustine's point that the soul being unable to turn away from the beatific vision in Heaven is not a limit on freedom for the same reason that an inability to trip and fall is not a limit on our freedom to walk, or an inability to crash one's ship is not a limit on our ability to pilot.

So to me, the question is not whether a well-ordered society having good incentive structures robs us of freedom, it is rather the degree to which our having poorly structured incentives does so. That is, knowledge of economics and psychology can be used wisely or poorly, to promote virtue or vice, to help man become free or to frustrate his freedom.

There is no platonic, perfectly ratoinal, self-interested individual that is free to decide merely according to his/her own will.

Right, and in the Platonic tradition the Good is determinate of wise, free action, not a sort of sheer volanturist will. Man's end, his happiness, is related to what man is, his telos. Nonetheless, the tradition normally maintains that all rational beings have their end in freedom and knowledge of/union with the Good.

If you live in a society that celebrates wisdom and community, you will have different values. — IntrospectionImplosion

What a great society that would be!

This goes along with Saint Augustine's point that the soul being unable to turn away from the beatific vision in Heaven is not a limit on freedom for the same reason that an inability to trip and fall is not a limit on our freedom to walk, or an inability to crash one's ship is not a limit on our ability to pilot. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and Aquinas in Summa Theologica:

The will is not free to will the opposite of happiness, just as it is not free to will the opposite of beautitude; but is free to will this or that particular good, or to will or not will some particular thing.