Quantifying Belief System Dynamics, Let's Have Some of That

Maths to give predictive ability to the understanding of belief systems and interaction with social changes.  (Science Daily: Breakthrough in quantifying belief system dynamics)

Right away, you know this is only starting to get strange because our first question is why are you doing this.

According to the paper's lead author, Noah E. Friedkin, a professor of sociology at UCSB, a belief system in a group -- religious or political, for example -- depends on a set of interlocking beliefs.  Known as an opinion dynamics model, it's a collection of attitudes, opinions, certainties or "cognitive orientation" towards a person or statement. "A person's belief on one subject may be dependent on their beliefs in other issues," he explained.  "There's an underlying cognitive consistency that links multiple beliefs."

- Science Daily

We are definitely fishing for something, aren't we.  I haven't yet seen what we will do with it so, prithee, tell me what could that be.

Looking ahead, Friedkin said this new mathematical model of opinion dynamics could give sociologists the tools to study overlooked complex issues.  "My hope, and the hopes of my collaborators," he said, "is that this will trigger more work on this, because the literature and the opinion dynamics have been focused on single-issue dynamics.  We hope this article will trigger research on a more complex form of dynamics in which positions on multiple interdependent issues are being modified by influence network processes, and apply it to a variety of different observable cases."

- Science Daily

Nope, you're not going to tell me what you're going to do with the knowledge beyond getting better at obtaining it but the reason, here at the Rockhouse, looks like the study of herd mechanics and the only reason for doing that is to try to change it, spindle it, mutilate it, right?

For this we need to rely on the King of Sci Fi Herd Dynamics, Isaac Asimov, and the Foundation Trilogy with the study of psychohistory by Hari Seldon.  That study was specifically toward its predictive ability regarding large-scale human behavior.  (WIKI:  Foundation series)

Asimov's work may have been a mild satire regarding the over-emphasis on individualism in America relative to the absence of it in psychohistory.  This sort of thing necessarily gets philosophical because it always comes back to just what the fuck problem are you trying to solve.  When human behavior is so predictable it can be studied as with lab rats then what possible good thing have we achieved out of that.

(Ed:  Sociology is specifically the study of the behavior of societies!)

Yes but is the study for the purpose of helping something or for steering something.  We have seen ample evidence of steering in this election campaign.

Moreover, there is room for study of the slow turnover of the Democratic Party into the Republican Party and the interrelationship with belief systems in that.  Have a ball ... but where will you bounce it.