Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Socionomics (2nd nomination)

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From Behavioral Trading, p. 26:

Chaos Whups the Walk Chaos theory actually provided a basis for directly refuting the random walk. Robert Prechter, in his book, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics, referring to Cunningham's 1993 paper, "Unit Root Testing: A Critique from Chaos Theory" came to the following conclusion: "Neither the Samuelson-Fama tests for efficient markets nor the popularly used Dickey-Fuller (1979) test for unit roots can successfully discriminate between a fully deterministic time series, generated from a nonlinear (chaotic) process, and a random walk. A researcher applying these methods to a simple nonlinear price process would be misled into believing that such a series is a random walk." What appears to be random may never in fact be random.

From Technical Analysis Plain and Simple, pp. 127-128:

Another new social science, called socionomics, has gotten a following as an extension of one method of technical analysis called Elliott Wave analysis. Robert Prechter, CMT, is credited with the unique view that social mood causes events in the world, and not the other way around. For example, stock market crashes do not make people gloomy, but gloomy people act in such a way that sets up stock market crashes. Wars, government intervention in business, corporate scandals, fashion, movies, sports, and many other non-market related trends all have their place in the ebb and flow of social mood. Prechter says that the stock market is the single best indicator of this mood in that it is immediate and has analyzable history going back for centuries. No other data stream can match that. With that in mind, he found that wars break out when bear markets are at their worst, and bubble gum music and pop culture is at its peak as bull markets approach their climaxes. Bull market sports do well when stocks do well, but the more violent major sports do better in bear markets. It is not the waxing and waning of different parts of culture and society that affect the stock market and social mood, but social mood, as evidenced in the stock market, which creates changes in culture and society. Again, this is beyond the scope of this book, but even novice technical analysts can use many of its observations as subjective sentiment indicators with regard to how they invest. Did the last boy band music CD do well or was the latest number-one hit darker industrial fare? Was the last blockbuster movie a Disney cartoon or a Friday the 13th gore fest? The answers help determine if the social mood is positive or negative, and may help investors determine how aggressive to be no matter if they are bull or bear.

From The Irwin Guide to Using the Wall Street Journal, p. 354:

Newsletters and books on the Elliott Wave Theory and cycles in general. For cycle basics, start with The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics by Robert Prechter.

From New Laws of the Stock Market Jungle, p. 269:

“Herding Psychology and Financial Markets,” The Socionomics Institute, http://www.socionomics.org/what_is/what_is_herding_psychology.aspx.

From Secrets of the Underground trader, p. 273:

A major contributor to this area of study [identifying market extremes] is Robert Prechter, Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction… this work is highly recommended to all traders and investors.

From Hot Trading Secrets: How to Get In and Out of the Market, pages 1, 7, 35 and 53, quoting The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics:

Social mood trends represent changes in human attitudes. Changes in social mood trends precede compatible changes in history and culture, indicating that the former causes the latter. Thus, there is powerful evidence that the pattern of mood change produced by social interaction of is the underlying engine of trends of social progress and regress.

A ruler placed on the globe will give one answer; the same ruler applied to every indentation as traverses the coast will give a vastly different one.

The market’s precise position in the wave structure is always in question, and… one’s interpretation is only a probability until it is certifiably complete.

The stock market will probably remain the single best indicator of social mood and change.

From Applying Elliott Wave Theory Profitably, p. 179

Robert Prechter Jr. has taken this to a higher level, coining the term socioconomics [socionomics], which applies Elliott Wave Theory to the application of forecasting society itself. Prechter believes that human thought and society act and interact collectively in somewhat predictable patterns.

From How Do We Create a Philosophical Cosmos for Acting Socially and Being Happy?, introduction (by John Casti).

“Socionomics is about the direction of causality in collective human social events, such as popular fashions and trends, the results of elections, or the outbreak of war. The Central Hypothesis of Socionomics argues that the flow of causation is: Collective social mood --> Collective social beliefs --> Social events and actions. Thus the underlying “engine” driving historical processes is the subcognitive “feeling” or “mood” of a population, which is then translated into a cognitive “belief,” which in turn serves as the proximate cause for the events and actions we actually observe. Moreover, socionomists will argue that there is no feedback in this diagram; collective social events do not feed back to affect either beliefs or the underlying social mood. The causation is a one-way street.

“Among the many consequences of this Hypothesis is that the events and actions we observe wax and wane in a statistically predictable fashion—on all time scales. In short, there are patterns to the flow of history, and that they are the same patterns whether you look at events unfolding in minutes, months, or millennia. Of course, different types of social events have different characteristic time scales on which they manifest themselves. Thus, a change in what is fashionable in popular music or film develops much faster than a change in a political regime. Further, political change is vastly quicker than the rise or fall of a civilization.

"[Author Michael] Green has taken great pains to present here a theory of agency and sociality that serves as a basis for the wave-like character of social change and the individuality of the component waves of the pattern."

Further comment on book references and knowing what is “trivial”: The two books below show up in the Amazon or Google book searches. I had seen that “socionomics” appears in the text, but I deliberately didn’t include them in the list as “non-trivial.” (Although upon a second look, one could argue that the mention in the fiction work actually is non-trivial.)

• The Colours of Infinity: The Beauty, The Power and the Sense of Fractals[1]
• The Turning[2]

--Rgfolsom 18:42, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

--Rgfolsom 01:18, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

--Rgfolsom 04:38, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

--Rgfolsom 14:53, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

So, to recap Rgfolsom's claims of "non-trivial references" "non-trivial mentions":

• 5 do not refer to socionomics at all (with 3 mentioning Prechter's book title without discussing socionomics, 1 mentioning Prechter's "Socionomics Institute" in a footnote, and the other referring to "social mood")
• 1 has a single paragraph discussing socionomics, but gives no indication that it is anything other than Prechter's pet theory.
• 1 has a single sentence discussing socionomics, but gives no indication that it is anything other than Prechter's pet theory.

That's a total of zero non-trivial references, and these are presumably Rgfolsom's best set of evidence. THF 01:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The phrase was "non-trivial mentions." If you hadn't made such a mistaken claim about the books, you could already have moved on to deprecating the rest of my reliable sources.--Rgfolsom 04:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I only respond to seven false cries of wolf, at which point any intelligent Bayesian would disregard the eighth. THF 19:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Can you identify those quotes above that post-date the last deletion debate? (It would also be helpful if you identified those that were not included in the last deletion debate, even if they existed at the time.) As you know, the citations were heavily debated the last time - I don't think we need to re-hash them. But if there's anything new, please point it out and people can discuss. --TheOtherBob 03:08, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bob, I remember you from the last go-around. I think the only two books I didn't mention before are Hot Trading Secrets and Applying Elliott Wave Profitably. But all the books did exist at the time.

As for what's new, I've included a lot of references this time that weren't in the first AfD, but I'm sure that most of those also existed then. The citations of Prechter & Casti may be new but I'm not certain. The "Socionomics in Practice" references perhaps, and there's lots of recent activity in the blogosphere, but I didn't mention that because my hands are full enough defending sources the meet the "reliable" standard.

The one importantly new source is Prechter & Parker's paper published in June, in the Journal of Behavioral Finance. It's a respected academic journal that has published people like Robert Shiller -- Andrew Lo is on the list of blue-chip editors who do the peer review. The paper's title mentions socionomics, and a full-blown explanation of the theory. This weighed in my decision to rewrite the article for Wikipedia, as did the fact that I could include all the sources (etc.) that should have been in the article to start with. Thanks for asking, hope this helps.--Rgfolsom 04:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

That's helpful, thanks. --TheOtherBob 04:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

• Merge into Prechter article - Socionomics seems to be pretty much a one-man band. All these cites seem to identify it as Prechter's name for his theory of financial market behavior. A pretty good case seems to be made here for simply merging Socionomics into the Prechter article. This has nothing to do with the validity (or lack thereof) of his ideas. --Orange Mike 23:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:SYN discussion

If I understand the real concern behind the SYN objection, it is that the socionomics article tries to borrow the credibility of notable people and ideas, to make the theory seem more credible than it really is. That is not the idea at all. Instead, the point is to give credit where it's due, because there are obvious similarities in the work of others regarding mood, to the premises of socionomics.

In a discussion as harsh as this one has been, I can easily imagine a flip side to SYN. Suppose the article mentioned none of the people and ideas -- in which case an editor could easily find those quotes (or others like them), post the quotes in the AfD and say: "Look at the similarities in these quotes -- the article gives no credit to the important history of thought regarding mood and herd behavior!!" Then I'd be answering accusations of "idea theft" or "plagiarizing history" or some such.

I hope TheOtherBob and other concerned editors will read the relevant quotes again with the above in mind. The "synthesis" tags are sprinkled so indiscriminately that even a quote from Prechter/Parker which properly sources a synthesis with Pareto gets tagged.

I can change the section heading to something like "History of thought on mood and herding," and source the quotes to Prechter/Parker's books and papers. They mention those works and authors in the notes and sources, exactly as good research should.--Rgfolsom 17:44, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly what WP:OR warns us not to do. If there are sources that discussed these similarities, by all mean add them. But we, as editors in WP, cannot connect these dots ourselves. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brief review of discussion quality and civility

Mr. Folsom, I in no way wish to be identified in your list as thoughtful or civil, particularly as a counterpoint to other editors such as Calton, THF, etc. -- who were also thoughtful and civil, these accusations notwithstanding. Suffice it to say that I think this sort of list is uncivil and in bad faith -- so go ahead and move me into the part of the list where you name all the people who "accused" you of bad faith or a conflict of interest. The better approach, of course, would be to take down this list, which in my mind violates several wikipedia guidelines. --TheOtherBob 04:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi again Bob -- Out of respect for you, I will take it down for a decent interval. During which time, I respectfully ask that you please identify the thoughtfulness and civility that I have missed in the accusation that I "faked evidence," and in the comment that the article I posted should "be blown up completely." Thanks.--Rgfolsom 05:53, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but my patience for this has really expired - I don't really have enough left to try to sort out whether each comment for deletion constituted some sort of personal attack or not. I will say that no one is under an obligation to be silent regarding apparently misleading evidence for fear of offending the evidence's author, nor should they be subjected to being on some sort of "list" for suggesting that someone's article be deleted (even in brusque terms). It is (or should be) the article, not you or any other editor, that is under discussion here. If you comment on that, rather than the people involved, I think the discussion will be far more successful. --TheOtherBob 06:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

COI rules are best applied in a flexible manner. One way that an editor who has a conflict, such as Rgfolsom, can stay out of trouble is to act like a reasonable person whose mind could be changed by the arguments presented. The conflict of interest noticeboard contains many reports of single-issue enthusiasts who won't cooperate with other editors in a discussion of the project that they have chosen to submit to Wikipedia. It is the *lack of cooperation* that usually leads to the posting, not merely that they submitted their own work. I was thinking of sorting out Rgfolsom's references to focus on the ones that I thought were respectable, to get an actual discussion going. But it did not seem that he was a person with whom one could have a conversation. He would constantly rebut everything anyone else said, as though we could not draw any conclusions on our own, and he would have to make the deduction for us. (He made 45 comments in all, one of which ran to 1800 words). Believe it or not there are sometimes useful AfD debates in which discoveries occur, and minds are changed, but I guess this wasn't destined to be one of them. EdJohnston 15:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)