Dan Silver

For example, what would it look like to transform chains of thought into “social chains of thought,” to build not only cognitive benchmarks but social benchmarks?

(as well as returning to and drawing from very intriguing ideas by sociologists in the last wave of AI enthusiasm, such as Randall Collins’ proposal for how to build a sociological AI from out of Meadian-Goffmanian insights).

The seminar will pair close reading of social theory and recent technical work on social AI with hands-on experiments on multi-agent LLM systems

We will treat that dimension not only as an intellectual matter but as a design problem: If social intelligence arises in and is stabilized through social interaction and order, then artificial agents must be equipped with those interactional and organizational capacities.

My syllabus on Artificial Social Intelligence (draft) Sociology meets AI

Here is a draft of my syllabus for a seminar on Artificial Social Intelligence. The goal is to return to and build upon some ideas from classical sociology in which mind, intelligence, and knowledge have a constitutively social dimension.

thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/my-syllabu...

On the way, I suggest that Bourdeusian sociology is an outgrowth of empty formalistic thinking invading the substance of social life, and that the genre form of the contemporary sociological theory article also displays that same formalism creeping into the sociological representation of social life

As an alternative, I explore the Hegelian idea of "tarrying with the negative,” using Talcott Parsons as a guide.

Dan Silver (@thesilverlining3) Why has so much contemporary social theory come to feel so empty? This essay argues that part of the answer lies in sociology’s implicit embrace of aspects of Kantian formalism. As an alternative, I e...

Why has so much contemporary social theory come to feel so empty? This essay argues that part of the answer lies in sociology’s implicit embrace of aspects of Kantian formalism.
thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/tarrying-w...

I don't expect to convince Seth to spend the next few years reading Hegel. But still, authors like Kant and Hegel cast long shadows, seeing them has value, especially because they appear in forms you might not expect, such as in Bourdeusian soc of culture or the genre form of the theory article.

@sethabrutyn.bsky.social wrote this thread about 6 months ago, about a post contrasting classics vs model based fields. Down-thread, Seth notes that he doesn't care about Hegel or Kant. I promised a post articulating why I think he should. Here it is!
thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/tarrying-w...

LLMs as tools for experiments in Classical Sociological Theory III Follow me into the hidden abode of production

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LLMs as tools for experiments in Classical Sociological Theory III Follow me into the hidden abode of production

Designing experiments in classical social theory III. Welcome to the hidden abode of production.

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How neighbors become enemies and every fight becomes about everything The creativity of conflict, from PTA meetings to online pile-ons

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How neighbors become enemies and every fight becomes about everything The creativity of conflict, from PTA meetings to online pile-ons

An essay on the creativity of social conflict, from 1950s PTA meetings to 21st century social media flame wars.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Rob Ford’s mayoralty in Toronto is a telling case, in that it occurred outside of national politics and hot-button issues, and within a multi-cultural metropolis (often represented as more or less inherently on one side of the populist divide).
This type of case helps build more general theory.

The case study method helps to give some empirical flesh to a conversation that threatens to become highly abstract.

The populist cocktail becomes politically potent with horizontal and vertical are conjoined.
To the extent that populism represents a revolt against rationalism, rationalized forms of mediating social organization are a key target. Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy is a good place to start.

The script includes two dimensions: the more familiar vertical one between elites and the people, and a horizontal one between insider and outsider. The vertical often includes a third term, a “sub-popular” element beneath the people (often represented as parasites, sponges, deviants, disorderly).

key points:
Building on Brubaker, Populism is a social script, which leaves room for improvisation to specific contexts, topics, and ideologies as it is reproduced locally

Populism in the city: the case of Ford Nation The populist script joins vertical and horizontal dimensions; the revolt against rationalism is against a form of social organization as much as of cognition. The case of Rob Ford illustrates.

Populism: a sociological perspective
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This piece tries to bring a sociological perspective to the discussion of populism, building on Heath’s provocative essay and Dan Williams’ critical notes on grounding a theory of populism in dual process psychology.

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.

What would Plato do? Plato met writing with invention, not despair or anger. We may need to do the same for the essay.

What would Plato Do? On LLMs, writing, and thinking.
#Sociology #AI

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Kicking away the ladder of reference From cultural structure to social judgment. On Leif Weatherby's Language Machines.

Towards a sociological theory of the LLM

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Kicking away the ladder of reference From cultural structure to social judgment. On Leif Weatherby's Language Machines.

What does it mean to kick away the ladder of reference?

On cultural vs social theories of LLMs. Saussure vs Peirce and Wittgenstein.

Social Theory ftw!

A critical response to Weatherby’s Language Machines.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

#Sociology #AI #LLM

LLMs as tools for experiments in classical sociological theory II The introduction of class

Teaching classical sociological theory at the twilight of the Age of the Essay and the dawn of the Age of AI

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

LLMs as tools for experiments in classical sociological theory II The introduction of class

Update on a continuing series about using a multi agent LLM platform to teach classical sociological theory in a new way. #sociology #AI #LLMs

In this episode, we introduce class into a market order and observe the results.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

I don't know what to make of that, but worth thinking about more!

But a diagram resembles its object without looking like it, in terms of a shared relational structure. If I understand Weatherby right, his claim is that embeddings are diagrammatic, but LLMs move into the poetic, i.e. metaphor, since they are generative.

good points! Though the notion of iconic, at least in a Peirician sense, is a bit wider than "look like," no? Peirce had three types of icons: image, diagram, metaphor. The image is based on "looking like."

Between Interpretation and the Machines Cultural cartography across literary studies, sociology, and LLMs

Cultural cartography in sociology, literary studies, and LLMs. Plus a bit of sociology of the sociology of culture. On coding , counting, and reading, and the possibility of something else.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...