Related papers: Science and the Future: Introduction
Understanding the evolutionary stability of cooperation is a central problem in biology, sociology, and economics. There exist only a few known mechanisms that guarantee the existence of cooperation and its robustness to cheating. Here, we…
In a prior study, I introduced a simple economic growth model designed to be consistent with general thermodynamic laws. Unlike traditional economic models, civilization is viewed only as a well-mixed global whole with no distinction made…
Recent developments in cosmology suggest that much of the universe is in a state of explosive, accelerated expansion, called inflation. We live in a "bubble" where inflation has ended, and other bubbles with diverse properties are…
We develop a theory of demand economics for an era of material abundance. The binding constraint on growth has shifted from insufficient aggregate demand to inadequate demand-tier upgrading. Our result is that, the new engine of growth lies…
This paper casts within a unified economic framework some key challenges for the global economic order: de-globalization; the rising impracticability of global cooperation; and the increasingly confrontational nature of Great Power…
Eternal inflation is a seemingly generic consequence of theories that give rise to accelerated expansion of the universe and possess multiple vacuum states. Making predictions in an eternally inflating universe is notoriously difficult…
National science systems have become embedded in global science and countries do everything they can to harness global knowledge to national economic needs. However, accessing and using the riches of global knowledge can occur only through…
We pursue research leading towards the nature of causality in the universe. We establish the equation of the universe's evolution from the universe-state function and its series expansion, in which causes and effects connect together to…
With negative growth in real production in many countries and debt levels which become an increasing burden on developed societies, the calls for a change in economic policy and even the monetary system become louder and increasingly…
Contradiction is often seen as a defect of intelligent systems and a dangerous limitation on efficiency. In this paper we raise the question of whether, on the contrary, it could be considered a key tool in increasing intelligence in…
Why are human societies unstable? Theories based on the observation of recurring patterns in historical data indicate that economic inequality, as well as social factors are key drivers. So far, models of this phenomenon are more…
We develop a cosmological theory in which the evolution of the universe is controlled by the cosmological constant and dominated by the associated vacuum energy. The universe starts as a classical de Sitter space with an infinite effective…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
We show that a simple model of a spatially resolved evolving economic system, which has a steady state under simultaneous updating, shows stable oscillations in price when updated asynchronously. The oscillations arise from a gradual…
The evolution of economic and innovation systems at the national scale is shaped by a complex dynamics, the footprint of which is the nested structure of the activities in which different countries are competitive. Nestedness is a…
A simple generative model of a foraging society generates significant wealth inequalities from identical agents on an equal opportunity landscape. These inequalities arise in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium regimes with some societies…
Although classical economic theory is based on the concept of stable equilibrium, real economic systems appear to be always out of equilibrium. Indeed, they share many of the dynamical features of other complex systems, e.g., ecological…
Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor…
We review an emerging body of work by physicists addressing questions of economic organization and function. We suggest that, beyond simply employing models familiar from physics to economic observables, remarkable regularities in economic…
Will a large economy be stable? Building on Robert May's original argument for large ecosystems, we conjecture that evolutionary and behavioural forces conspire to drive the economy towards marginal stability. We study networks of firms in…