James Evans Profile
James Evans

@profjamesevans

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Max Palevsky Professor of Sociology, Computational & Data Science @UChicago tweeting about science, technology and augmented imagination.

Chicago, IL
Joined February 2019
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Loved working with my amazing flat team of Fengli Xu and Lingfei Wu on our new PNAS paper "Flat Teams Drive Scientific Innovation" to show that relative to tall, hierarchical teams, flat, egalitarian ones produce more novelty and new directions for science
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
The amazing Johan Chu and I published a piece out this week at PNAS () showing how the growing size and success of sci/tech fields ironically impedes the rise of new ideas within them. A growing deluge of papers leads to a crystallization of the canon.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
Thrilled to be hosting the International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2) July 19-22, 2022 at UChicago with Sendhil Mullainathan, Rochelle Terman, Luis Bettencourt and a mind-blowing line-up of speakers: Details @ ; spread the word!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
4 months
I'm hiring (several) postdocs @KnowLab this year and over the next 5 years at the University of Chicago in AI, Data and Computer Science, Computational Social Science, Tech Policy, Science of Science and Innovation, and more! Check out ads (and please forward to your favorite
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
I'm hiring a Senior Research Associate (PI eligible) at UChicago's Knowledge Lab to build community, programs, and catalyzing research at the intersection of knowledge (e.g., STS, innovation, [mis]information), AI, and society. Please apply and forward!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
New piece out online today with Austin Kozlowski and Matt Taddy on the "Geometry of Culture" about how machine learning models built from historical text can identify cultural dimensions, trace cultural evolution, and enable cultural discovery: (1/2)
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James Evans
11 months
Finally, our book about 'Algorithmic Cultures' came out on the varied logics underlying AI in society and why need to understand, conserve, and cultivate algorithmic diversity. With Adrian Johns and many other rockstar historian and science studies friends...
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
New paper with @arzhetsky @valdanchev demonstrates that centralized, networked scientific communities inadvertently produce much less replicable knowledge.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
New paper in Nature Human Behaviour with the inimitable @JamshidSourati on how to build human-aware Artificial Intelligence (AI) that complements rather than substitutes for human capacity in creative, competitive domains like science and technology (S&T).
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
At Knowledge Lab I'm looking for a postdoc or predoc to start now & develop/apply computational methods to data on science and tech innovation for the broad challenge of tracking the direction of global advance and what governments should fund! Pls share!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
8 months
Come join us for an amazing line-up at the International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation (ICSSI) at the National Academies in Washington D.C. July 1-3, 2024! Submissions by March 24!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Here is our take what is computational sociology...and computational social science). Our answer suggests that computation should not only shape how we answer social questions, but how expand our imagination to ask them (w UCLA's Jacob Foster):
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Excited about my recent paper led by the amazing Feng (Bill) Shi in Nature Communications on How Science and Technology are Driven by Surprise, as driven by Expeditions from Intellectual & Technical Outsiders:
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James Evans
9 months
With the amazing Khwan Kim and Noah Askin, we just published a paper in PNAS on how tastes for culture and music evolve worldwide, suggesting that we (all) construct the playlists of our lives.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
Let's be friends ;-). I'm hiring an Instructional Professor in Computational Social Science in the Master of Arts Program in Computational Social Science (MACSS) at the University of Chicago!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
June 7-9, 2022 I'm thrilled to be co-organizing the International Conference on the Science of Science (ICSSI) with the AMAZING Heidi Williams & @dashunwang at the National Academies in DC. Come present your most awesome work; submit through 3/22! (@ )
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
8 months
How does language shape our ideas, conversations, and collaborations? New work with the amazing Pedro ('Pete') Aceves @JHUCarey discovers how human languages vary widely in how densely they encode meaning and its striking consequences for communication and collaboration!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
Roots! I "entered" social science as an anthropology major 35 years ago with an interest in how meanings were organized across cultures, and finally published a paper that provides new insight led by the amazing @mollyllewis in PNAS. Preprint:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
In a world of intense competition, failure is a prerequisite for success. Our latest paper in Nature out today reveals that across science, start-ups and security domains, accelerating failures strongly foreshadow upcoming success: (1/6) #innovation
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
8 months
What kind of AI do we deserve? My TEDx talk () builds an argument for expanding human capacity and imagination not by building the most, but the LEAST human AIs -- beneficial Alien Intelligences designed to complement our individual and collective
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Flat teams increase productivity for those on bottom and increase long-term impact, suggesting the critical importance of inviting and involving more "brains" to the table for generating sustainable advance:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Cover art for my new book, Craft & Code, with Adrian Johns and a crew of awesome historian friends...drawn by Christian Clarke & Dalle-2 "prompted" by me and the text itself.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
4 months
Awesome dinner talk @ ICSSI in Washington D.C. by ⁦ @UzziLeadership ⁩!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
The most influential things scientists and humanists read, cite, and discover occur by (structured) accident at their home institution!
@MishaTeplitskiy
Science of Science
11 months
🤔What's the role of co-location in scientific discovery? The usual measures underestimate it! 🚨New paper by Eamon Duede @phil_of_ai (with @profjamesevans @klakhani and me) Open access: (1/3)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
Delighted to share amazing work #FAccT2023 led by the amazing @NandanaSengupta on how biased data has real consequences: In AI models of urban safety, more data from male evaluators DECREASE the accuracy of AI predictions for women's experience of safety!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 months
Featured article out today in the New Yorker about a class on existential risks taught at UChicago by the inimitable Daniel Holz ( @decohere ) and myself this spring:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Come be my friend! Check out a new opportunity teaching computational social science to amazing students in a vibrant intellectual community at the University of Chicago!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Review just out with the amazing @LikunCao and @ZiwnChen on the paradox of "innovation science"--when a pattern becomes predictable, it ceases to be innovation. The concept of 'creative destruction' has focused on how what emerges wipes out what came before; but...
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
Mindblowing first day at the International Conference on Science of Science and Innovation #ICSSI2023 @NorthwesternU !with panels on AI and science ; gender and science, and a host of amazing presentations on the mechanics and impact of science in society!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
As part of a project I run focused on improving the explanatory and prescriptive power of social science models (see ), I have engaged a crowd-sourcing firm, , to launch a series of analysis challenges over the coming months (1/6)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
4 years
Had a mind-bending blast doing the Complexity podcast with Santa Fe Institute’s Michael Garfield this week on Social Computing and Designing Diversity with AI:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
I disagree…I think we need to become more comfortable with and honest about failures; not ensure there are no failures…
@DzGuilbeault
Douglas Guilbeault
1 year
Strong agree
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Social relationships have been hard hit the last few weeks--they facilitate infection and spread disease. In a recent paper with amazing colleagues Linzhuo Li and @LingfeiWu , we kick them while they're down (sorry fellow sociologists)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
7 months
New work out with the inimitable Jacob Foster (IU) in Critical Inquiry about how to build "bad robots"--creative artificial intelligence designed to provoke and augment humanistic creativity rather than mimic it. ("Algorithmic Abduction: Robots for Alien Reading":
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
New work out with the inimitable @ishanu_ch and colleagues that uses big urban crime data and novel models to surveil the surveillers--uncovering biased enforcement that draws policing resources to privileged neighborhoods when crime spikes in U.S. cities:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
Amazing speakers @ include Audrey Tang, Rediet Abibe, Chris Bail, Tom Griffiths, Alex Chouldechova, Iyad Rahwan, Lillian Lee, Christian Danescu Niculescu Mizil, Molly Roberts, Ted Underwood & more.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Love this paper!
@amirgoldb
Amir Goldberg
2 years
Glad to share a new paper @PNASNexus where we use BERT on millions of docs to show that prescient ideas come from the periphery in business, law and politics. Here is how we do it and what we find >> Co-authored w/ Paul Vicinanza & Sameer Srivastava, Computational Culture Lab
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
The problem? Modern science is increasingly networked into dense, overlapping consortia and hierarchically organised around star scientists.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
Join us online for this if available!
@DesciFoundation
DeSci Foundation
10 months
We're in a battle between traditionalism and novelty. @profjamesevans ' from @UChicago approaches how we might stimulate more valid and surprising outcomes through diversity and AI. Hear more at his seminar next Monday 5 pm CEST!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
We highlight data-driven and computation opportunities to understand innovation in ways suggested by complexity, science studies, and science fiction, and to manage it. Here is the paper (); and for free ()
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Why? Because they tend to use the same methods, draw on the same prior knowledge, and communicate to produce the same, self-confirming results.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
It’s a true academic!
@yian_yin
Yian Yin
2 years
#ChatGPT has learned the ultimate human skill: taking more credit than earned
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
We show that increased social connection and centralization can also be associated with decreased diversity. Because diversity drives innovation, this creates an essential tension between the demand for and supply of difference.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
New piece with @dashunwang in Fast Company about how to mine failures in business, science, and security for signals of imminent success:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
9 months
I enjoyed a delightfully deep and far-ranging podcast discussion with Ryan; thanks for having me on Origins! Check out the chat and/or my accompanying (mostly musical) playlist ;-)!
@AeroSciengineer
Ryan McGranaghan
9 months
(1/3) James Evans' ( @profjamesevans ) life and learning are beacons of insight in a world desperate for them #networks #collectiveintelligence #Sociology "James Evans - Cultural observatories, knowledge communities, and a life resplendent with ideas"
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James Evans
5 years
Bravo! Let’s do this.
@dashunwang
Dashun Wang
5 years
Humbled to be featured on the front page of Thank you all for taking this journey with me together. #ScienceOfScience
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Awesome new work in by the SEES lab constructing a Bayesian machine scientist in physics.
@sees_lab
SEES Lab
5 years
New paper in @PhysRevLett ! We use our Bayesian machine scientist to compare data collapses rigorously, and shed light upon a 80+ year old problem in turbulence. Great work by @turboignasi
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Finally, we evaluated the likelihood that each claim will replicate by matching them to the results of a massively replicated high-throughput experiment.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
The opportunity? Science policies that embrace failure and facilitate independent replication through greater competition and diversity will generate more robust knowledge that can make a difference for human health and prosperity.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
We examine this in the most obvious way...mapping social networks and cultural combinations to comparable hyperbolic manifolds (?#$@!).
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
The risk is that this sets up its own bias: Any out-of-the-box idea that’s wrong is going to be uninteresting to most of the world. The ideas where any outcome is “interesting” are promotions or negations of phenomena everyone already knows and cares about.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
@NAChristakis As someone in said society…this just makes me sad. Qualitative sociology could/should also be reproducible…or it becomes fine art, an irreducible convolution of subject and object.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Markov chains & processes were invented to show that dependencies between outcomes could still obey the central limit theorem, countering Nekrasov’s argument that because Russian crime reports obeyed the law of large numbers, crime reflected acts of free will.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
We illustrate this with the meanings of class over the 20th Century, but with implications ranging from high dimensional theorizing to applications in search engine optimization and recommender systems where context sensitivity matters. (2/2)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
New article out today with @NandanaSengupta and Nati Srebro validating "Simple Surveys"--incomplete, computationally customized questionnaires--currently used to drive recommendations on social and digital media platforms, for better social science:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
We also discover that (2) concrete meanings are less variable across languages than abstract ones, but all vary with geographical and cultural (e.g., kinship, law) distance.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
The alignment of these meaning spaces predictively reveals which metaphors, analogies, and associations within any one language translate or confuse in every other language. Summary: Paywall:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Almost every research project I’ve engaged...
@OdedRechavi
Oded Rechavi
5 years
Every PhD project
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
A mind-blowing collection of science and innovation scholars and leaders will speak @iccsi .org, including the inimitable @pierre_azoulay , Rebecca Eisenberg, @DaniSBassett , @klakhani , @BrianNosek , @UzziLeadership , @RushHolt , Benjamin Jones, @Marcia4Science , Bhaven Sampat, @albrgr
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Pass along to your friends (on any platform!)
@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Come be my friend! Check out a new opportunity teaching computational social science to amazing students in a vibrant intellectual community at the University of Chicago!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
For math & stats nerds, amazing how many innovations have emerged from critical studies of criminal justice--Poisson's distribution was discovered analyzing the number of wrongful convictions in a country;
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
Send your great papers and tutorials (extended deadline THIS FRIDAY, 3/11) for the International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2) July 19-22, 2022 at UChicago () New grad student lodging and scholarship options available!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
The details? We analyzed tens of thousands of published biomedical claims about drug-gene interactions, identifying the networks of scientists, methods and knowledge that produced them.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Critical issue for the application, understanding and taming of AI:
@mrfrank5790
Morgan Frank
5 years
AI and the Social Sciences Used to Talk More. Now They’ve Drifted Apart. Great coverage of our recent research!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
4 years
Really excited to see this come out!
@dashunwang
Dashun Wang
4 years
💥 💥 💥
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
We coin 'destructive creation' to focus the vast, fragmented research on how innovation emerges from discord and disorder, at large scales and small. We highlight new data-driven opportunities to understand and surf this critical boundary between order and chaos...
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Our precise predictions (90% accuracy for property and violent crimes predicted 7 days in advance within ~1,000 ft) are based on a novel machine learning model inspired by the depth of neural networks but with a very different underlying architecture tuned to events in time.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
A recipe for research with no risk of incentive to hide the truth may also, unintentionally, be a recipe for riskless (boring) research. [Which, to be clear, is the opposite of my impression of YOUR research! I’m a huge fan.]
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Whether you want to foment success or thwart it, our findings unveil strong early signals that identify whether failure dynamics will lead to ultimate success or failure. (6/6) Detailed summary @ #Innovation #ScienceOfScience
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Exciting new work on the growing role of federally funded research in patenting (which is partly a story of the eclipse of small inventors by big science/tech).
@marxmatt
Matt Marx
5 years
Should governments invest in basic research? Out today in @sciencemagazine : we report that nearly one-third of patented U.S. inventions rely on federally-funded science, a rate which has grown substantially over the past 90 years:
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James Evans
10 months
With these, we discover that (1) meanings across languages are similar within semantic domains but highly variable across them.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
@DzGuilbeault @IC2S2 Awesome talk and amazing project. Bravo!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
11 months
(with Tyler Reigeluth, Stephanie Dick, Clare Kim, Alex Csiszar, Honghong Tinn, Salem Elzway, Matthew Jones, Alma Steingart, Mike Annany, Hallam Stevens, Theodora Dryer, Ksenia Tatarchenko, John Tresch)!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Our project aims to use social science insights, statistical analysis, and reoriented computational models to emphasize explanation, counterfactual prediction and intervention. (6/6)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
@MishaTeplitskiy That’s hilarious!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
Very exciting new work on explanations and why they appeal!
@glupyan
Gary Lupyan
3 years
Thrilled to share this work! Great job @justinsulik and @JvParidon ! And thanks to @profjamesevans and Jacob Foster for getting us into the @templeton_fdn Metaknowledge network that helped fund this)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 months
Awesome!
@DG_Rand
David G. Rand
5 months
🔥Try this Chrome plugin!🔥 It lets you use Twitter to learn about new science/papers etc - while avoiding most of the toxic, unpleasant content that can make this place a hellscape. This has saved Twitter for me! Hats off to @hauselin
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
Send us your best social insights using (or reimagined by) computation & come to Chicago this summer! ()
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
The mind-bending list of science and innovation leaders @iccsi continues, with Rikke Christensen, Ted Hodapp, Danny Goroff, Euan Adie, Julia Lane, @jasonpriem , @ReaderMeter , Erica Fuchs, Skip Lupia, @CorreaDan , @riqparra , @MarcellaAlsan , Donna Ginther, Rem Koning, @PatentScholar
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Bravo for building such a robust CSS community!
@chris_bail
Chris Bail (chris_bail_duke 🧵)
5 years
292 people from 11 locations around the world participated in the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year, creating countless new research teams, 4,210 Github Commits, and one very lonely word cloud. Your 2019 slideshow, #SICSS2019 :
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
3 years
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
6 months
@duncanjwatts Warmest congratulations! We’ll done!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
New chapter of ours out that shows how ideas and inventions—like Zaphod from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or bacteria with horizontal gene transfer—typically have many mothers, and how to overhaul the modeling to better understand and predict them!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
@dansalright Bravo Dan! Finally some good news!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
9 months
With more than one hundred million musical streams by tens of thousands of international listeners, we show that despite speculation about how musical nostalgia compensates for life’s disruptions, musical exploration systematically reflects breaches in personal routine.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
Those who eventually succeed and those who do not initially appear similar, but are characterized by fundamentally distinct failure dynamics in the efficiency and quality of each attempt. (3/6) #Innovation #KnowledgeSquared #ScienceOfScience
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
2 years
Our analysis is based on the very precise prediction of recorded crime events, recognizing that such events represent an interaction between reported (mis)behavior, surveillance, and trust in policing, summarized here:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
8 months
Our results reveal a hidden source of variation across languages and reveal how it shapes the nature and texture of human engagement, with consequences for human collaboration and conflict across society. ; free:
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
8 months
BUT the same semantically dense languages produce conceptually narrower conversations and expositions, where topics are recycled and ultimately discussed in substantially greater depth?!
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
We evaluate our model among entrepreneurs exiting their startups, scientists seeking to fund their research, and terrorist groups trying to post casualties, finding broadly consistent patterns. (5/6) #Innovation #KnowledgeSquared #ScienceOfScience
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 months
@MishaTeplitskiy Wow! This is the communication theory co-author with Shannon. Brutal.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
6 years
@joshua_a_becker @EthanVPorter @PNASNews @msalganik @chris_bail Can't wait to see this! (curious its relationship to our "Wisdom of Polarized Crowds" in Nature Human Behaviour published earlier this Spring)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
1 year
"...and catalyze resesarch at the intersction..." ;-)
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
10 months
@SarahSbratt Starting the band...now! I'm on trombone (always an accident). Yes, moving to new institutions does moderate the influence, but it takes time for these within institution / not in department connections to yield.
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@profjamesevans
James Evans
5 years
In a great (open source!) book Beyond the Meme that accounts for development and structure in the evolution of culture:
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