[stewbrew]

The "social sciences" include a lot. Wrt Sociology, I'd say one problem is the overemphasis on quantitative methods - they try to be as serious as the big boys.

The best sociological research I've read was qualitative though. Questionable replicability is of course built-in in this type of research but the research dealt with relevant questions. Most quantitative sociology seems rather irrelevant to me.

Another problem is of course that most quantitative sociologists don't have a clue what they are doing. They don't even know the basics of statistics and then use some statistical methods they don't understand. It's some kind of overcompensation, I think. Although, psychologists are even worse in this respect. It's really fun to watch an psychologists torturing SAS.

I write this as someone who was originally trained as sociologist and over the years turned into a data scientist.

[xrisk]

I’m really interested in what you feel about the potential applications of CS/ML to sociology. Or if you might have any resources that talk about that.

I ask because I’m enrolled in a research program in “computational humanities”. My initial feeling towards the program is that it’s kind of a sham.

Computational Humanities seems to be as computational as an accountant using Excel for their work. Not that I particularly mind, I’m not very interested in the computational aspect at all.

[stewbrew]

There is a Springer "Journal of Computational Social Science". That could be a source of inspiration. CS/ML in Social Sciences gets interesting where a great amount of routine data is generated -- i.e. areas close to public administration.

Why did you subscribe in the program when you're not interested in the computational aspect? Or are you more interested in some kind of grand social theory/philosophy of computation? If you read German, Armin Nassehi "recently" published "Muster. Theorie der digitalen Gesellschaft" (Pattern. Therory of a digital society). He is not the first but I find his stance interesting - based on several interviews, I haven't read the book though. Many sociologists deal with the Internet & AI but I find those works less inspiring because they usually lack an adequate technical understanding. To me it often feels like bushmen theorizing about empty coca cola bottles (you probably don't know the movie?).