Related papers: Curiosity as filling, compressing, and reconfiguri…
We propose an explanatory and computational theory of transformative discoveries in science. The theory is derived from a recurring theme found in a diverse range of scientific change, scientific discovery, and knowledge diffusion theories…
We present a rational analysis of curiosity, proposing that people's curiosity is driven by seeking stimuli that maximize their ability to make appropriate responses in the future. This perspective offers a way to unify previous theories of…
Cognition is the process of knowing. As carried out by a dynamical system, it is the process by which the system absorbs information into its state. A complex network of agents cognizes knowledge about its environment, internal dynamics and…
To understand the structure of a large-scale biological, social, or technological network, it can be helpful to decompose the network into smaller subunits or modules. In this article, we develop an information-theoretic foundation for the…
Despite extensive research on scientific disruption, two questions remain: why disruption has declined amid growing knowledge, and why disruptive work receives fewer and delayed citations. One way to address these questions is to identify…
Understanding the origins of complexity is a fundamental challenge with implications for biological and technological systems. Network theory emerges as a powerful tool to model complex systems. Networks are an intuitive framework to…
We propose a novel text generation task, namely Curiosity-driven Question Generation. We start from the observation that the Question Generation task has traditionally been considered as the dual problem of Question Answering, hence…
We hypothesize that curiosity is a mechanism found by evolution that encourages meaningful exploration early in an agent's life in order to expose it to experiences that enable it to obtain high rewards over the course of its lifetime. We…
To uncover the mechanisms underlying the collaborative production of knowledge, we investigate a very large online Question and Answer system that includes the question asking and answering activities of millions of users over five years.…
The past few centuries have witnessed a dramatic growth in scientific and technological knowledge. However, the nature of that growth - whether exponential or otherwise - remains controversial, perhaps partly due to the lack of quantitative…
Creativity, defined as the tendency to generate or recognize new ideas or alternatives and to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, is too vast a horizon to be summed up in such a simple sentence. The extreme abstractness…
Philosophers of science have long postulated how collective scientific knowledge grows. Empirical validation has been challenging due to limitations in collecting and systematizing large historical records. Here, we capitalize on the…
This chapter synthesizes evidence from cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychological studies, and computational models for a complex systems inspired theory of creativity, and its role in cultural evolution. Creativity…
Knowledge discovery is defined as non-trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful information from given data. Knowledge extraction from web documents deals with unstructured, free-format documents whose number…
Knowledge amount is an integral indicator of the development of society. Humanity produces knowledge in response to challenges from nature and society. Knowledge production depends on population size and human productivity. Productivity is…
Studies regarding knowledge organization and acquisition are of great importance to understand areas related to science and technology. A common way to model the relationship between different concepts is through complex networks. In such…
Social networks continuously change as new ties are created and existing ones fade. It is widely noted that our social embedding exerts a strong influence on what information we receive and how we form beliefs and make decisions. However,…
Natural selection and random drift are competing phenomena for explaining the evolution of populations. Combining a highly fit mutant with a population structure that improves the odds that the mutant spreads through the whole population…
Complex systems show the capacity to aggregate information and to display coordinated activity. In the case of social systems the interaction of different individuals leads to the emergence of norms, trends in political positions, opinions,…
Online traces of human activity offer novel opportunities to study the dynamics of complex knowledge exchange networks, and in particular how the relationship between demand and supply of information is mediated by competition for our…