155,691 research outputs found
Adaptation to criticality through organizational invariance in embodied agents
Many biological and cognitive systems do not operate deep within one or other
regime of activity. Instead, they are poised at critical points located at
phase transitions in their parameter space. The pervasiveness of criticality
suggests that there may be general principles inducing this behaviour, yet
there is no well-founded theory for understanding how criticality is generated
at a wide span of levels and contexts. In order to explore how criticality
might emerge from general adaptive mechanisms, we propose a simple learning
rule that maintains an internal organizational structure from a specific family
of systems at criticality. We implement the mechanism in artificial embodied
agents controlled by a neural network maintaining a correlation structure
randomly sampled from an Ising model at critical temperature. Agents are
evaluated in two classical reinforcement learning scenarios: the Mountain Car
and the Acrobot double pendulum. In both cases the neural controller appears to
reach a point of criticality, which coincides with a transition point between
two regimes of the agent's behaviour. These results suggest that adaptation to
criticality could be used as a general adaptive mechanism in some
circumstances, providing an alternative explanation for the pervasive presence
of criticality in biological and cognitive systems.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1704.0525
The roundtable: an abstract model of conversation dynamics
Is it possible to abstract a formal mechanism originating schisms and
governing the size evolution of social conversations? In this work a
constructive solution to such problem is proposed: an abstract model of a
generic N-party turn-taking conversation. The model develops from simple yet
realistic assumptions derived from experimental evidence, abstracts from
conversation content and semantics while including topological information, and
is driven by stochastic dynamics. We find that a single mechanism - namely the
dynamics of conversational party's individual fitness, as related to
conversation size - controls the development of the self-organized schisming
phenomenon. Potential generalizations of the model - including individual
traits and preferences, memory effects and more elaborated conversational
topologies - may find important applications also in other fields of research,
where dynamically-interacting and networked agents play a fundamental role.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Journal of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulatio
Nonequilibrium phase transition in a model for the propagation of innovations among economic agents
We characterize the different morphological phases that occur in a simple
one-dimensional model of propagation of innovations among economic agents [X.\
Guardiola, {\it et. al.}, Phys. Rev E {\bf 66}, 026121 (2002)]. We show that
the model can be regarded as a nonequilibrium surface growth model. This allows
us to demonstrate the presence of a continuous roughening transition between a
flat (system size independent fluctuations) and a rough phase (system size
dependent fluctuations). Finite-size scaling studies at the transition strongly
suggest that the dynamic critical transition does not belong to directed
percolation and, in fact, critical exponents do not seem to fit in any of the
known universality classes of nonequilibrium phase transitions. Finally, we
present an explanation for the occurrence of the roughening transition and
argue that avalanche driven dynamics is responsible for the novel critical
behavior
Constructing a General Theory of Life: The Dynamics of Human and Non-human Systems
The ultimate objective of theorists studying living systems is to construct a general theory of life that can explain and predict the dynamics of both human and nonhuman systems. Yet little progress has been made in this endeavour. Why? Because of the inappropriate methods adopted by complexity theorists. By assuming that the supply-side physics model – in which local interactions are said to give rise to the emergence of order and complexity – could be transferred either entirely (social physics) or partially (agent-based models, or ABMs) from the physical to the life sciences, we have distorted reality and, thereby, delayed the construction of a general dynamic theory of living systems. Is there a solution? Yes, but only if we abandon the deductive and analogical methods of complexity theorists and adopt the inductive method. With this approach it is possible to construct a realist and demand-side general dynamic theory, as in the case of the dynamic-strategy theory presented in this paper.complex living systems, unified theory, general theory of life, dynamics. Demand-side, methodology
Congestion phenomena caused by matching pennies in evolutionary games
Evolutionary social dilemma games are extended by an additional
matching-pennies game that modifies the collected payoffs. In a spatial version
players are distributed on a square lattice and interact with their neighbors.
Firstly, we show that the matching-pennies game can be considered as the
microscopic force of the Red Queen effect that breaks the detailed balance and
induces eddies in the microscopic probability currents if the strategy update
is analogous to the Glauber dynamics for the kinetic Ising models. The
resulting loops in probability current breaks symmetry between the
chessboard-like arrangements of strategies via a bottleneck effect occurring
along the four-edge loops in the microscopic states. The impact of this
congestion is analogous to the application of a staggered magnetic field in the
Ising model, that is, the order-disorder critical transition is wiped out by
noise. It is illustrated that the congestion induced symmetry breaking can be
beneficial for the whole community within a certain region of parameters.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
A General Theory of Complex Living Systems: Exploring the Demand Side of Dynamics
complex living systems, unified theory, dynamics, general theory, demand-side, methodology
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