How humanists are using computers to understand text | Hacker News Reader

How humanists are using computers to understand text

tedunderwood.com

48 pointsbenbreen18 comments

Is the word 'humanist' used for people who study the humanities? I've only ever heard it in the context of humanism. Not saying it's wrong, I'm genuinely wondering

It's a relatively uncommon usage but yes, it can just mean people who work in humanities fields. After all, the modern fields of history, literature, etc. trace their genealogies directly back to Renaissance humanism so it makes sense. Sometimes it's used in a self-aware way to refer to both at the same time, as in this profile of Anthony Grafton of Princeton, so far as I know the sole contemporary owner of a Renaissance book wheel:

http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW06-07/11-0404/fe...

Here in Europe we call "Humanities" what you may address as "Liberal Arts". Therefore yes, "humanist" is fine, but uncommon, especially in the US. I'd say it's the kind of word a... Humanist would use, since it's the more philologically correct. Interesting to note that here in Italy the thing is reversed. While "umanismo" and "umanista" are broadly used, "arti liberali" is less common, while still correct.

Is it just me or does this writing style, common to academics in social sciences, make things almost impossibly hard to read?

I get about halfway through the paragraph before losing the will to read any more. I understand all the words but they don't seem to fit into patterns that make sense.

This is just a wild shot in the dark, but maybe those in the humanities are abnormally good at reading?

Like, if a lit major said the math in a CS paper was hard to follow nobody would bat an eye.

True story.

I had a humanities student read my thesis (CS) and she told me I couldn't submit it that way. I fixed a bit in the time I had left, but she still thought I would fail with this paper. In the end I god a B and the prof said it was nicely written, better than most of the papers he gets.

> One of the main ways computers are changing the textual humanities is by mediating new connections to social science

How good do you need to be at reading to make sense of sentences like this?

Exactly! I know what every single one of those words mean, but have no idea what the sentence means.

Data/text mining is being used to draw connections in social science.

Example: Perform sentiment analysis on a twitter feed after presidential debates to try and infer who 'won' among the public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_analysis

Actually this document is very easy to translate. For example, the sentence you've mentioned here means "Our funding agencies are easily bamboozled by computers and programming because technology is associated with fields that have right and wrong answers. We intend to leverage this fact in order to get more grant money."

It's a bit purple, but not unintelligible.

It also seems pretty easy to read to me (I'm a CS researcher). The only oddity I can find in the sentence is that "mediating" in this usage, meaning "serving as an intermediary", is a little jargonish. It's one of the standard dictionary definitions of the word, but using it in this way is more common in certain areas of academic writing, and it develops a bit different shade of meaning as a result. You could compare how the startup world uses "disrupt" in a more frequent and slightly jargonish manner compared to standard English.

One of the main ways [something happens] is by [mechanism].

[something happens] = computers are changing the textual humanities

[mechanism] = mediating new connections to social science. I.e. computers help connect s.s. and th.

I don't know, but I have an MA in linguistics and I actually thought you were using that as an example of a sentence that was easy to read, as it's completely clear to me... I think I might actually talk like that sometimes.

I should really do some text analysis and generate an understandability score 😉

But more seriously, isn't that just the fact they are using a different vocabulary?

Edit: Oh dear. I didn't realise Emoji really works on HN

You should get a computer to read it for you. /ducks

Seriously, the writer is addressing his peers, and as such is well justified in assuming a high degree of prior knowledge and a willingness to look up additional references as necessary. It doesn't seem particularly complex or challenging to me.

It's just jargon. Sometimes in CS/IT discussions I will switch off the part of my brain that parses IT jargon and acronyms. It becomes utter gibberish.

There are real ideas there. I'm not totally convinced they're all good ideas, but they're real ones with substance.

Part of their training is to write statements that can be interpreted multiple ways. This allows them to distance themselves from problematic interpretations (crucial for career survival) while claiming credit for popular interpretations, as well as raising the chance that their writing will be cited by others in the field (crucial for career progression). It also signals professionalism in their field - who would want to rely on someone so incautious as to write plainly?

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