science

Social procedure

Social procedure is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Social procedure rather than just read about it. In short: The term social procedure is sometimes applied to any of the procedures carried out by people in various areas of society, such as legislative assemblies, judicial systems, and resource arbiters, like banks or other lending organizations. It has been described as social software and indeed does resemble software.

Key takeaways

Social procedure belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Social procedure to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Social procedure from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The term social procedure is sometimes applied to any of the procedures carried out by people in various areas of society, such as legislative assemblies, judicial systems, and resource arbiters, like banks or other lending organizations. It has been described as social software and indeed does resemble software. Social procedures include as a subset procedures which are at the foundation of our society, such as procedural law. Similarly many social procedures are explicitly designed to ensure fair treatment to individuals or corporations, as official records of parliamentary debates show. Multiple social procedures can serve to achieve the same end. Justice, as an example, in the U.S. achieved through the use of 2 adversarial lawyers, a neutral judge, and a jury of peers. In Canada, the judge is less neutral. This subtle difference in programming has an effect on the justice outcome. Though game theory is a highly technical subject with no special attention to sports, an example of a social procedure designed to help make a sporting system more fair is the Major League Baseball draft whereby the teams which performed the worst in the last season get the first choice of players for the new season. There is a project called A Formal Analysis of Social Procedures underway at the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS) under the direction of E. Pacuit. This interdisciplinary project looks at social procedures undertaken by rational and not-so-rational people, and the complex phenomena arising when the people involved in such procedures interact.

See also Social software (social procedure) Social technology

Notes

External links Knowledge, Games and Beliefs Group (City University of New York, Graduate Center)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Social procedure

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Social procedure claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Social procedure before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Social procedure ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Social procedure

In research: Social procedure appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Social procedure in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Social procedure is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Social systems, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Social procedure outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Social procedure in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Social procedure means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Social procedure out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Social procedure in simple terms?

Why does Social procedure matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Social procedure?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Social procedure.