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A representative researcher has repeated opportunities for empirical research. To process findings, she must impose an "identifying assumption." She conducts research when the assumption is sufficiently plausible (taking into account both…
The existence of the {\em typical set} is key for data compression strategies and for the emergence of robust statistical observables in macroscopic physical systems. Standard approaches derive its existence from a restricted set of…
Individuals use models to guide decisions, but many models are wrong. This paper studies which misspecified models are likely to persist when individuals also entertain alternative models. Consider an agent who uses her model to learn the…
To analyze the evolutionary emergence of structural complexity in physical processes we introduce a general, but tractable, model of objects that interact to produce new objects. Since the objects--\emph{$epsilon$-machines}--have well…
Stoichiometric constraints play a role in the dynamics of natural populations, but are not explicitly considered in most mathematical models. Recent theoretical works suggest that these constraints can have a significant impact and should…
One of the basic frameworks in science views behavioral products as a process within a dynamic system. The mechanism might be seen as a representation of many instances of centralized control in real time. Many real systems, however,…
Are there hidden dynamical common patterns in the evolution of social and cultural history? While the growing availability of digitized social data invites us to answer this question, prevailing quantitative methods often rely on…
Low-level "adaptive" and higher-level "sophisticated" human reasoning processes have been proposed to play opposing roles in the emergence of unpredictable collective behaviors like crowd panics, traffic jams, and market bubbles. While…
A general model of opinion dynamics is introduced in which each individual's opinion is measured on a bounded continuous spectrum. Each opinion is influenced heterogeneously by every other opinion in the population. It is demonstrated that…
Agent-based models are versatile tools for studying how societal opinion change, including political polarization and cultural diffusion, emerges from individual behavior. This study expands agents' psychological realism using…
Language is not only used to transmit neutral information; we often seek to persuade by arguing in favor of a particular view. Persuasion raises a number of challenges for classical accounts of belief updating, as information cannot be…
How do networks of relationships evolve over time? We analyse a dataset tracking the social interactions of 900 individuals over four years. Despite continuous shifts in individual relationships, the macroscopic structural properties of the…
We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…
A current paradigm in computer simulation studies of social sciences problems by physicists is the emergence of consensus. The question is to establish when the dynamics of a set of interacting agents that can choose among several options…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
In the principles-and-parameters framework, the structural features of languages depend on parameters that may be toggled on or off, with a single parameter often dictating the status of multiple features. The implied covariance between…
The past analyses of datasets of social networks have enabled us to make empirical findings of a number of aspects of human society, which are commonly featured as stylized facts of social networks, such as broad distributions of network…
In many work environments, serendipitous interactions between members of different groups may lead to enhanced productivity, collaboration and knowledge dissemination. Two factors that may have an influence on such interactions are cultural…
Microbial communities routinely have several possible species compositions or community states observed for the same environmental parameters. Changes in these parameters can trigger abrupt and persistent transitions (regime shifts) between…
Population protocols are a model of distributed computation intended for the study of networks of independent computing agents with dynamic communication structure. Each agent has a finite number of states, and communication opportunities…