Duncan Watts: In Predicting the Future, Leave Room for Chance
According to Yahoo! research scientist and sociologist Duncan Watts, social science may in fact be as complicated as "rocket science". Recognizing the power of stories, Watts warns us we can't generalize them into predictions about the future.
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BIF-7 Summit
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17:39
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Duncan Watts
Duncan is a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research. As director of the Human Social Dynamics group, Duncan explores the interplay between individual-level behavior (e.g. how people make decisions about what music they like, which dates to go on, or which groups to join) and the social environment in which individual behavior necessarily plays itself out.






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