Related papers: The Mosquito incident and the need-(not-)to-know
In a previous study, we considered an information-theoretic model of code evolution. In it, agents obtain information about their (common) environment by the perception of messages of other agents, which is determined by an interaction…
Quantum Darwinism recognizes that decoherence imprints redundant records of preferred quasi-classical pointer states on the environment. These redundant records are then accessed by observers. We show how redundancy enables and even implies…
In the fight against tax evaders and other cheats, governments seek to gather more information about their citizens. In this paper we claim that this increased transparency, combined with ineptitude, or corruption, can lead to widespread…
While convergence behaviour archetypes can explain behaviour of individuals who actively converge on and participate in crises, less is known about individuals who converge on an event and choose to remain passive i.e. "bystanders".…
We revisit a recent puzzle about common knowledge, the ``sailboat" case (Lederman, 2018), and argue that Lewisian common knowledge allows us to reconcile the pre-theoretical intuition that certain facts are ``public" in such situations,…
We study the mutual percolation of a system composed of two interdependent random regular networks. We introduce a notion of distance to explore the effects of the proximity of interdependent nodes on the cascade of failures after an…
Collective behaviors exhibited by animal groups, such as fish schools, bird flocks, or insect swarms are fascinating examples of self-organization in biology. Concepts and methods from statistical physics have been used to argue…
How do movements and coalitions which engage with multiple social issues succeed in cross-issue solidarity, and when do they instead become fragmented? To address this, the mechanisms of cross-issue interaction have to be understood. Prior…
The term complexity derives etymologically from the Latin plexus, which means interwoven. Intuitively, this implies that something complex is composed by elements that are difficult to separate. This difficulty arises from the relevant…
It is estimated that around 80\% of the world's population live in areas susceptible to at-least one major vector borne disease, and approximately 20% of global communicable diseases are spread by mosquitoes. Furthermore, the outbreaks of…
This is the English version of my inaugural lecture at Coll\`ege de France in 2021, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxktplKMhKU. I reflect on the difficulty of multi-disciplinary research, which often hinges of unexpected…
With our knowledge of the universe, we have sent men to the moon. We know microscopic details of objects around us and within us. And yet we know relatively little about how our society works and how it reacts to changes brought upon it.…
Situations in which no scientific consensus has been reached due to either insufficient, inconclusive or contradicting findings place strain on governments and public organizations which are forced to take action under circumstances of…
Trait variation and similarity among coexisting species can provide a window into the mechanisms that maintain their coexistence. Recent theoretical explorations suggest that competitive interactions will lead to groups, or clusters, of…
Today, tracking and controlling the spread of a virus is a crucial need for almost all countries. Doing this early would save millions of lives and help countries keep a stable economy. The easiest way to control the spread of a virus is to…
Misinformation is an ever increasing problem that is difficult to solve for the research community and has a negative impact on the society at large. Very recently, the problem has been addressed with a crowdsourcing-based approach to scale…
The puzzle associated with the cost of sex, an old problem of evolutionary biology, is discussed here from the point of view of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The results suggest, in a simplified model, that the prevalence of sexual…
Consider a sub-population of rebels that wish to initiate a revolution. In order to avoid initializing a failed revolution, rebels would first strive to estimate their relative "power", which is often correlated with their fraction in the…
A researcher observes a finite sequence of choices made by multiple agents in a binary-state environment. Agents maximize expected utilities that depend on their chosen alternative and the unknown underlying state. Agents learn about the…
The Cambridge Analytica scandal triggered a conversation on Twitter about data practices and their implications. Our research proposes to leverage this conversation to extend the understanding of how information privacy is framed by users…