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, belief, and motivation as quantifiable variables may look rigorous, but it strips away meaning, choice, and context and the very essence of human decision. What results isn’t insight, but an illusion of control dressed up as science.
Physics operates on mechanical causality while human behavior does not.
noxs•1h ago
are you claiming that human action is not measurable physical phenomena?
bofadeez•1h ago
Human action isn’t just another physical process because it’s driven by intention, not mechanical causation. A rock falls because gravity compels it; a person acts because they want something to happen. That difference makes human behavior fundamentally qualitative. It’s rooted in meaning, interpretation, and choice. You can measure motion, but you can’t measure purpose. Once you strip away intention to fit behavior into a mathematical model, you’re no longer describing human action. You’re describing an abstraction that behaves like a machine. The numbers might be tidy, but they stop representing what people actually do.
hrimfaxi•32m ago
Do you not believe that a person's wants can be shaped by the media they are exposed to?
bofadeez•24m ago
Do you not believe that people sometimes seek out media that confirms their existing biases?
Long Term Capital Management went bankrupt because they believed they could model human behavior with their team of Nobel Prize winning economists and Fields Medal mathematicians. Most machine learning quant funds fail for a reason [1]. Behavior is highly unpredictable by modeling.
Human action is entirely causally dependent on human psychology vis a vis biology, of which we have now only a rudimentary formal understanding and certainly not a sufficient model of its structure, let alone the relation between its aspects and the resulting actions.
At the same time, statistical methods are interesting and suggestive but should be understood at the relatively coarse level they inhabit.
Both approaches have their uses and it is worth delineating the boundary between their respective appropriate contexts.
anigbrowl•35m ago
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 energy and the like. Same reason many human and animal activities tend toward power-law distributions.
bofadeez•20m ago
You should deploy a quant trading model based on your behavior theory and compound your way to be the richest person on earth. It's not that complicated apparently!
AnimalMuppet•18m ago
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.
vannevar•16m ago
"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."
bofadeez•1h ago
Physics operates on mechanical causality while human behavior does not.
noxs•1h ago
bofadeez•1h ago
hrimfaxi•32m ago
bofadeez•24m ago
Long Term Capital Management went bankrupt because they believed they could model human behavior with their team of Nobel Prize winning economists and Fields Medal mathematicians. Most machine learning quant funds fail for a reason [1]. Behavior is highly unpredictable by modeling.
[1] https://www.garp.org/hubfs/Whitepapers/a1Z1W0000054x6lUAA.pd... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRUlSm4gdQ4
uoaei•1h ago
At the same time, statistical methods are interesting and suggestive but should be understood at the relatively coarse level they inhabit.
Both approaches have their uses and it is worth delineating the boundary between their respective appropriate contexts.
anigbrowl•35m ago
bofadeez•20m ago
AnimalMuppet•18m ago
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.
vannevar•16m ago
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."