2,909 research outputs found
Fashion, Cooperation, and Social Interactions
Fashion plays such a crucial rule in the evolution of culture and society
that it is regarded as a second nature to the human being. Also, its impact on
economy is quite nontrivial. On what is fashionable, interestingly, there are
two viewpoints that are both extremely widespread but almost opposite:
conformists think that what is popular is fashionable, while rebels believe
that being different is the essence. Fashion color is fashionable in the first
sense, and Lady Gaga in the second. We investigate a model where the population
consists of the afore-mentioned two groups of people that are located on social
networks (a spatial cellular automata network and small-world networks). This
model captures two fundamental kinds of social interactions (coordination and
anti-coordination) simultaneously, and also has its own interest to game
theory: it is a hybrid model of pure competition and pure cooperation. This is
true because when a conformist meets a rebel, they play the zero sum matching
pennies game, which is pure competition. When two conformists (rebels) meet,
they play the (anti-) coordination game, which is pure cooperation. Simulation
shows that simple social interactions greatly promote cooperation: in most
cases people can reach an extraordinarily high level of cooperation, through a
selfish, myopic, naive, and local interacting dynamic (the best response
dynamic). We find that degree of synchronization also plays a critical role,
but mostly on the negative side. Four indices, namely cooperation degree,
average satisfaction degree, equilibrium ratio and complete ratio, are defined
and applied to measure people's cooperation levels from various angles. Phase
transition, as well as emergence of many interesting geographic patterns in the
cellular automata network, is also observed.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figure
Revisiting the Edge of Chaos: Evolving Cellular Automata to Perform Computations
We present results from an experiment similar to one performed by Packard
(1988), in which a genetic algorithm is used to evolve cellular automata (CA)
to perform a particular computational task. Packard examined the frequency of
evolved CA rules as a function of Langton's lambda parameter (Langton, 1990),
and interpreted the results of his experiment as giving evidence for the
following two hypotheses: (1) CA rules able to perform complex computations are
most likely to be found near ``critical'' lambda values, which have been
claimed to correlate with a phase transition between ordered and chaotic
behavioral regimes for CA; (2) When CA rules are evolved to perform a complex
computation, evolution will tend to select rules with lambda values close to
the critical values. Our experiment produced very different results, and we
suggest that the interpretation of the original results is not correct. We also
review and discuss issues related to lambda, dynamical-behavior classes, and
computation in CA. The main constructive results of our study are identifying
the emergence and competition of computational strategies and analyzing the
central role of symmetries in an evolutionary system. In particular, we
demonstrate how symmetry breaking can impede the evolution toward higher
computational capability.Comment: 38 pages, compressed .ps files (780Kb) available ONLY thru anonymous
ftp. (Instructions available via `get 9303003' .
Resource Sharing and Coevolution in Evolving Cellular Automata
Evolving one-dimensional cellular automata (CAs) with genetic algorithms has
provided insight into how improved performance on a task requiring global
coordination emerges when only local interactions are possible. Two approaches
that can affect the search efficiency of the genetic algorithm are coevolution,
in which a population of problems---in our case, initial configurations of the
CA lattice---evolves along with the population of CAs; and resource sharing, in
which a greater proportion of a limited fitness resource is assigned to those
CAs which correctly solve problems that fewer other CAs in the population can
solve. Here we present evidence that, in contrast to what has been suggested
elsewhere, the improvements observed when both techniques are used together
depend largely on resource sharing alone.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure; http://www.santafe.edu/~evca/rsc.ps.g
Dynamics of Oscillators Coupled by a Medium with Adaptive Impact
In this article we study the dynamics of coupled oscillators. We use
mechanical metronomes that are placed over a rigid base. The base moves by a
motor in a one-dimensional direction and the movements of the base follow some
functions of the phases of the metronomes (in other words, it is controlled to
move according to a provided function). Because of the motor and the feedback,
the phases of the metronomes affect the movements of the base while on the
other hand, when the base moves, it affects the phases of the metronomes in
return.
For a simple function for the base movement (such as in which is the velocity of the base,
is a multiplier, is a proportion and and
are phases of the metronomes), we show the effects on the dynamics of the
oscillators. Then we study how this function changes in time when its
parameters adapt by a feedback. By numerical simulations and experimental
tests, we show that the dynamic of the set of oscillators and the base tends to
evolve towards a certain region. This region is close to a transition in
dynamics of the oscillators; where more frequencies start to appear in the
frequency spectra of the phases of the metronomes
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