The type of social science that STEM majors like

I have many friends who are STEM majors, and many of them care about social issues and sometimes like to develop their own social theories or share social theoretical ideas. I've noticed that there's a general thought style that these theories tend to lean, and dissecting them tells us a lot about how different disciplines think in different paradigms.

First and unsurprisingly, stem people like to use natural science metaphors. A clear example of this is the idea of "meme" which tries to translate genes into social science. Another one is "complex systems", which is quite popular in computational social science as well. An older example of this is social Darwinism, where the survival paradigm is used to explain (or in most cases, justify) why some social groups prevail over others.

Second, there's a tendency to want to create essentialist assumptions of human nature. Obvious examples include rationalism, survival, and gamification, all of which depends on a way of perceiving human behavior that is fundamental and fixed. The essentialist assumptions are often asserted as the "tough" laws of nature innate to human kind, instead of being shaped by one's sociocultural environment.

Third, in theories that concern the role of science and technology there's a tendency towards regarding science and technology as a god-like, all-powerful entity that human can do nothing about. This techno-determinism can either side optimistic or pessimistic. Some may find technology to be the destruction of humanity, while others may find technology to be the ultimate solution to all social problems. Either way, rarely do they take into account the fact that it is people who decide the direction of scientific and technological developments.

Finally, and perhaps more obviously, stem people like to think of models society as well as the solution to social problems in astructural ways. A good example of this is what some internet studies scholar like to call "solutionism", where technological products are designed to solve a small and superficial problem, such as designing a trash can indicator that people can download on their phones to see whether their trash can is full.

To be fair, every approach in social science has their strengths and weaknesses, and stem people can and do bring something great to the table. The overall problem with stem-style social theories is the bias towards universalism. Social theories are what many social scientists use to explain behavior, and theories are, by definition, meant to explain a wide range of behavior. However, unlike natural science, the usefulness of social science theories comes largely from how much theorists can adjust to particular historical contingencies.

Sure, people like to play games and people use online platforms to make their lives better, but how useful is a general theory of gamification or platforms without knowing how different cultures play games and use platforms differently? Similarly, technology can be both good and bad, but how is this relevant to us without knowing in which context is technology good or bad?