Talks at Google
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2015–2022
54:47 · 53K views · Mar 7, 2014
Sandy Pentland of MIT presents his book on social physics, which uses big-data studies of how people interact to explain how ideas spread. He describes findings on collective intelligence and social influence.
HN commenters recommend it for the finding that idea exchange and connectivity drive productivity and wealth, which they apply to cities, offices and online communities.
6 comments from Hacker News
The most profound thing I know about cities + public policy: Google hosted a talk in 2014 by MIT Professor Sandy Pentland called "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread". His research concludes that our connectivity - free and fast flow of data on networks, people on roads, goods and services, etc. - is our greatest economic and social virtue. His models show - "like a law" - that the more connected we are, the wealthier we are as a society. Check it out: this video And good luck to everyone behind this.
Yay! Social physics :) There's a great Authors at Google talk by Sandy Pentland, about his book of the same name. Gives a good overview of the book, but 100% still worth a read after watching, esp if you are someone who works with (or would like to work with) large groups of people -- event organizing, companies, community, group facilitation, etc. this video
You bring up two very interesting and powerful phenomena: "siren servers" and "social physics". The first term is used by Jaron Lanier to describe computer systems that, like "sirens" of the sea, lure everyone into their beautiful environs, collect all of the data on them, and statistically model all of this data in ways that effectively master the nature of this individual - her beliefs, her abilities, her emotions - until ultimately that individual is made both completely vulnerable and completely powerless. Lanier's book is intentionally provocative and controversial, while rather intelligent and compassionate in its spirit, and I recommend checking it out: [LINK] . The second term comes from a talk at Google in 2014 called "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread" ( this video ) by MIT Professor Sandy Pentland. He describes research supporting the recent Nature publication you link to on social and cultural progress, which concludes that our connectivity - free and fast flow of data on networks, people on roads, goods and services across nations, etc. - is our greatest economic and social virtue. His statistical modeling results really strongly show - "like a law" - that the more connected we are, the wealthier we are as a society. It's really interesting to consider how we could concentrate on using all of the data and models to make deep positive impacts on our society, while respecting our human dignity. To quote Pope Francis's address to the U.N. today: "Integral human dev
Sandy Pentland: "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread" | Talks at Google similar theme. this video I think its in this video that he talks about the productivity gains of the seemingly random exchanges of ideas, and the possibility to increase them by scheduling and thoughtfully designed common areas.
Nice! In case anyone is interested in the science of this effect and it's surprising power, this is an almost exact reproduction of an experiment, in the field of "connection science" or "social physics". (NOTE: The true value here is in the CROSS-INCENTIVIZATION with an existing social relationship, not just the money) The general truism that falls out of it is: When possible, always apply incentives to the social fabric, not individuals. i.e. incentivize the edges of the graph (the relationships), rather than the nodes (the people) in isolation. Seek results by always opting to strengthen social bonds, instead of trying to bend people (who are social creatures) into actions while neglecting their social context, which often pull them back into prior habits or prevent the new ones from sticking strongly. Under some experimental conditions, incentives are 30x more effective when you use the money to strengthen a social relationship around an activity, rather than incentivizing the activity itself. (Further, unlike a direct monetary incentive where removing the incentive strongly attenuates the effect, you could now remove the money incentive between you and your brother, and you're much more likely to keep performing the activity even without monetary incentive, because the persistent social incentive is bootstrapped.) This and other really interesting related research was pioneered by MIT's Sandy Pentland. It's very solid and applies in practice: His lab won the DARPA networ