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Sustainability: We need to focus on overall system outcomes rather than simplistic targets

Complexity Digest - Sat, 02/03/2024 - 13:32

Len Fisher, Thilo Gross, Helmut Hillebrand, Anders Sandberg, Hiroki Sayama

People and NatureMany of the global challenges that confront humanity are interlinked in a dynamic complex network, with multiple feedback loops, nonlinear interactions and interdependencies that make it difficult, if not impossible, to consider individual threats in isolation.
These challenges are mainly dealt with, however, by considering individual threats in isolation (at least in political terms). The mitigation of dual climate and biodiversity threats, for example, is linked to a univariate 1.5°C global warming boundary and a global area conservation target of 30% by 2030.
The situation has been somewhat improved by efforts to account for interactions through multidimensional target setting, adaptive and open management and market-based decision pathways.
But the fundamental problem still remains—that complex systems such as those formed by the network of global threats have emergent properties that are more than the sum of their parts. We must learn how to deal with or live with these properties if we are to find effective ways to cope with the threats, individually and collectively.
Here, we argue that recent progresses in complex systems research and related fields have enhanced our ability to analyse and model such entwined systems to the extent that it offers the promise of a new approach to sustainability. We discuss how this may be achieved, both in theory and in practice, and how human cultural factors play an important but neglected role that could prove vital to achieving success.

Read the full article at: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Using sequences of life-events to predict human lives

Complexity Digest - Sat, 02/03/2024 - 09:29

Germans Savcisens, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Lars Kai Hansen, Laust Hvas Mortensen, Lau Lilleholt, Anna Rogers, Ingo Zettler & Sune Lehmann 
Nature Computational Science volume 4, pages 43–56 (2024

Here we represent human lives in a way that shares structural similarity to language, and we exploit this similarity to adapt natural language processing techniques to examine the evolution and predictability of human lives based on detailed event sequences. We do this by drawing on a comprehensive registry dataset, which is available for Denmark across several years, and that includes information about life-events related to health, education, occupation, income, address and working hours, recorded with day-to-day resolution. We create embeddings of life-events in a single vector space, showing that this embedding space is robust and highly structured. Our models allow us to predict diverse outcomes ranging from early mortality to personality nuances, outperforming state-of-the-art models by a wide margin. Using methods for interpreting deep learning models, we probe the algorithm to understand the factors that enable our predictions. Our framework allows researchers to discover potential mechanisms that impact life outcomes as well as the associated possibilities for personalized interventions.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF CORE–PERIPHERY COMMUNITIES

Complexity Digest - Fri, 02/02/2024 - 15:22

JUNWEI SU and PETER MARBACH

Advances in Complex Systems Vol. 26, No. 06, 2340004 (2023)

Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated the presence of a core–periphery structure within social network communities. Nevertheless, a formal model and comprehensive analysis to fully understand the structural characteristics of these communities are still lacking. This paper seeks to characterize these properties, focusing on agents’ interconnections and their allocation of rates. Employing a game-theoretic approach, our analysis unveils several novel insights. First, we show that periphery agents not only follow core agents but also other periphery agents who share similar primary interests. Second, our results illuminate the emergence of core–periphery communities, revealing the conditions under which they form, and how they form.

Read the full article at: www.worldscientific.com

Complexity72h

Complexity Digest - Fri, 02/02/2024 - 14:49
Complexity72h is an interdisciplinary workshop designed for young researchers in complex systems, where participants collaborate in a project for 72 hours. Next edition will be held in Madrid from June 24th to 28th. These projects are led by experienced researchers who propose and guide them throughout the week. *The Call for Participants is currently open until February 29th*. To apply, you will need to provide some information about yourself, including your CV and a motivation letter. You will also need to read all the projects offered and rate each project, and to select a double (€320 fee) or single (€500 fee) room. The earlier you register, the higher the chance you will get the room you want. But do not worry: everybody will get accommodation!  Don’t worry if your CV is not fat. Complexity72h is looking for committed, hardworking and curious people! We aim at having participants coming from different stages of their careers: Master’s students, PhD students, and postdocs. We thus encourage Master and young PhD students to apply! We will award scholarships to motivated young students and researchers who may lack funding to attend Complexity72h. The number of scholarships and what they cover will depend on the funding we can secure. If you are interested in applying, you can do so in the application form. The fee includes: 
  • The type of room selected
  • Accommodation for 5 nights (check-in on Sunday, check-out on Friday)
  • All meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) starting on Monday at breakfast
  • Nine coffee breaks
  • The Madrid city tour on Sunday
  • The social event/dinner on Monday evening
  • Welcoming kit
  • Several facilities for work, sport and leisure activities
 All relevant information can be found at https://complexity72h.com . If you are interested in participating, please don’t hesitate to apply, and spread the word among your fellow researchers!

ROUTING STRATEGIES FOR SUPPRESSING TRAFFIC-DRIVEN EPIDEMIC SPREADING IN MULTIPLEX NETWORKS

Complexity Digest - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 17:23

JINLONG MA, TINGTING XIANG, and MINGWEI CAI

Advances in Complex Systems Vol. 26, No. 06, 2340005 (2023)

Multiplex networks have proven to be valuable tools for modeling and analyzing real complex system. Extensive work has been done on the traffic dynamics on multiplex networks, but there remains a lack of sufficient attention towards studying routing strategies for the purpose of suppressing epidemic spreading. In this paper, the impact of global awareness routing (GAR), improved global awareness routing (IGAR), and improved active routing (IAR) strategies on traffic-driven epidemic spreading are investigated. Our findings indicate that in the case of infinite node-delivery capacity and no traffic congestion in the network, adjusting routing parameters can effectively suppress epidemic spreading. In this context, these three strategies show better abilities on the multiplex network built by WS or ER model to minimize the density of infected nodes, thus contributing to the overall inhibition of the epidemic spread. However, in the multiplex network constructed by BA model, GAR strategy has a promoting effect on epidemic spreading compared with the shortest routing strategy. In addition, by controlling traffic flow, limiting node delivery capabilities can contain outbreaks. Our results suggest that adopting appropriate routing strategies in multiplex networks can play a proactive role in controlling epidemic spreading. This is crucial for formulating effective prevention and control measures and improving public health security.

Read the full article at: www.worldscientific.com

Drift Diffusion Model to understand (mis)information sharing dynamic in complex networks

Complexity Digest - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 11:46

Lucila G. Alvarez-Zuzek, Jelena Grujic, Riccardo Gallotti

Sharing misinformation threatens societies as misleading news shapes the risk perception of individuals. We witnessed this during the COVID-19 pandemic, where misinformation undermined the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders, posing an additional obstacle in the fight against the virus. In this research, we study misinformation spreading, reanalyzing behavioral data on online sharing, and analyzing decision-making mechanisms using the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM). We find that subjects display an increased instinctive inclination towards sharing misleading news, but rational thinking significantly curbs this reaction, especially for more cautious and older individuals. Using an agent-based model, we expand this individual knowledge to a social network where individuals are exposed to misinformation through friends and share (or not) content with probabilities driven by DDM. The natural shape of the Twitter network provides a fertile ground for any news to rapidly become viral, yet we found that limiting users’ followers proves to be an appropriate and feasible containment strategy.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

Imitation vs serendipity in ranking dynamics

Complexity Digest - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 10:05

Federica De Domenico, Fabio Caccioli, Giacomo Livan, Guido Montagna, Oreste Nicrosini

Participants in socio-economic systems are often ranked based on their performance. Rankings conveniently reduce the complexity of such systems to ordered lists. Yet, it has been shown in many contexts that those who reach the top are not necessarily the most talented, as chance plays a role in shaping rankings. Nevertheless, the role played by chance in determining success, i.e., serendipity, is underestimated, and top performers are often imitated by others under the assumption that adopting their strategies will lead to equivalent results. We investigate the tradeoff between imitation and serendipity in an agent-based model. Agents in the model receive payoffs based on their actions and may switch to different actions by either imitating others or through random selection. When imitation prevails, most agents coordinate on a single action, leading to non-meritocratic outcomes, as a minority of them accumulates the majority of payoffs. Yet, such agents are not necessarily the most skilled ones. When serendipity dominates, instead, we observe more egalitarian outcomes. The two regimes are separated by a sharp transition, which we characterise analytically in a simplified setting. We discuss the implications of our findings in a variety of contexts, ranging from academic research to business.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EMBODIED INTELLIGENCE

Complexity Digest - Wed, 01/31/2024 - 16:37

TO BE HELD ONLINE ON MARCH 20-22, 2024

This FREE event brings together a wide range of speakers to discuss the many challenges and opportunities in Embodied Intelligence research! The workshop is structured with a morning session and afternoon session each day to accommodate different time zones. Each session includes plenary talks, panel discussions (including flash talks by leading researchers), and breakout sessions as shown in the tentative programme here. While plenary and panel speakers are invitation-only, we solicit wider contributions in breakout sessions to facilitate more focused and technical discussions.

Register at: embodied-intelligence.org

Account credibility inference based on news-sharing networks

Complexity Digest - Wed, 01/31/2024 - 14:38

Bao Tran Truong, Oliver Melbourne Allen & Filippo Menczer
EPJ Data Science volume 13, Article number: 10 (2024)

The spread of misinformation poses a threat to the social media ecosystem. Effective countermeasures to mitigate this threat require that social media platforms be able to accurately detect low-credibility accounts even before the content they share can be classified as misinformation. Here we present methods to infer account credibility from information diffusion patterns, in particular leveraging two networks: the reshare network, capturing an account’s trust in other accounts, and the bipartite account-source network, capturing an account’s trust in media sources. We extend network centrality measures and graph embedding techniques, systematically comparing these algorithms on data from diverse contexts and social media platforms. We demonstrate that both kinds of trust networks provide useful signals for estimating account credibility. Some of the proposed methods yield high accuracy, providing promising solutions to promote the dissemination of reliable information in online communities. Two kinds of homophily emerge from our results: accounts tend to have similar credibility if they reshare each other’s content or share content from similar sources. Our methodology invites further investigation into the relationship between accounts and news sources to better characterize misinformation spreaders.

Read the full article at: epjdatascience.springeropen.com

Soft Skills Centrality in Graduate Studies Offerings

Complexity Digest - Wed, 01/31/2024 - 10:51

María del Pilar García-Chitiva, Juan C. Correa

Is it possible to measure how critical soft skills like leadership or teamwork are from the viewpoint of graduate studies offerings? This paper provides a conceptual and methodological framework that introduces the concept of a bipartite network as a practical way to estimate the importance of soft skills as socio-emotional abilities trained in graduate studies. We examined 230 graduate programs offered by 49 higher education institutions in Colombia to estimate the empirical importance of soft skills from the viewpoint of graduate studies offerings. The results show that: a) graduate programs in Colombia share 31 soft skills in their intended learning outcomes; b) the centrality of these skills varies as a function of the graduate program, although this variation was not statistically significant; and c) while most central soft skills tend to be those related to creativity (i.e., creation or generation of ideas or projects), leadership (to lead or teamwork), and analytical orientation (e.g., evaluating situations and solving problems), less central were those related to empathy (i.e., understanding others and acknowledgment of others), ethical thinking, and critical thinking, posing the question if too much emphasis on most visible skills might imply an unbalance in the opportunities to enhancing other soft skills such as ethical thinking.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

Evolving higher-order synergies reveals a trade-off between stability and information integration capacity in complex systems

Complexity Digest - Tue, 01/30/2024 - 14:22

Thomas F. Varley, Joshua Bongard

There has recently been an explosion of interest in how “higher-order” structures emerge in complex systems. This “emergent” organization has been found in a variety of natural and artificial systems, although at present the field lacks a unified understanding of what the consequences of higher-order synergies and redundancies are for systems. Typical research treat the presence (or absence) of synergistic information as a dependent variable and report changes in the level of synergy in response to some change in the system. Here, we attempt to flip the script: rather than treating higher-order information as a dependent variable, we use evolutionary optimization to evolve boolean networks with significant higher-order redundancies, synergies, or statistical complexity. We then analyse these evolved populations of networks using established tools for characterizing discrete dynamics: the number of attractors, average transient length, and Derrida coefficient. We also assess the capacity of the systems to integrate information. We find that high-synergy systems are unstable and chaotic, but with a high capacity to integrate information. In contrast, evolved redundant systems are extremely stable, but have negligible capacity to integrate information. Finally, the complex systems that balance integration and segregation (known as Tononi-Sporns-Edelman complexity) show features of both chaosticity and stability, with a greater capacity to integrate information than the redundant systems while being more stable than the random and synergistic systems. We conclude that there may be a fundamental trade-off between the robustness of a systems dynamics and its capacity to integrate information (which inherently requires flexibility and sensitivity), and that certain kinds of complexity naturally balance this trade-off.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

WOSC 19th Congress 2024

Complexity Digest - Tue, 01/30/2024 - 11:23

September 11-13, 2024 in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, UK

Shaping collaborative ecosystems for tomorrow

The complexity of interactions and relationships in our world have consistently surpassed our ability to fully comprehend and govern. The presence of intelligent tools, both in the digital and physical realms, is progressively enhancing our capacities to act on personal, organizational, national, and international levels, leading to both intended and unintended consequences. Collectively, these changes are reshaping our primary habitat—the planet Earth—at a speed and scale that necessitate earnest consideration. In the midst of uncertainty, the development and utilization of these new capabilities would greatly benefit from CyberSystemic approaches and methods of learning. This advancement is crucial for fostering a sustainable understanding and taking actions to avert major threats to our civilization.

More at: wosc.world

Defining Complex Adaptive Systems: An Algorithmic Approach

Complexity Digest - Tue, 01/30/2024 - 09:18

Ahmad, M.A.; Baryannis, G.; Hill, R

Systems 2024, 12(2), 45

Despite a profusion of literature on complex adaptive system (CAS) definitions, it is still challenging to definitely answer whether a given system is or is not a CAS. The challenge generally lies in deciding where the boundaries lie between a complex system (CS) and a CAS. In this work, we propose a novel definition for CASs in the form of a concise, robust, and scientific algorithmic framework. The definition allows a two-stage evaluation of a system to first determine whether it meets complexity-related attributes before exploring a series of attributes related to adaptivity, including autonomy, memory, self-organisation, and emergence. We demonstrate the appropriateness of the definition by applying it to two case studies in the medical and supply chain domains. We envision that the proposed algorithmic approach can provide an efficient auditing tool to determine whether a system is a CAS, also providing insights for the relevant communities to optimise their processes and organisational structures.

Read the full article at: www.mdpi.com

How Much of the World Is It Possible to Model?

Complexity Digest - Sat, 01/20/2024 - 10:36

Dan Rockmore

Mathematical models power our civilization—but they have limits.

Read the full article at: www.newyorker.com

Is the Emergence of Life an Expected Phase Transition in the Evolving Universe?

Complexity Digest - Sat, 01/20/2024 - 04:41

Stuart Kauffman, Andrea Roli

We propose a novel definition of life in terms of which its emergence in the universe is expected, and its ever-creative open-ended evolution is entailed by no law. Living organisms are Kantian Wholes that achieve Catalytic Closure, Constraint Closure, and Spatial Closure. We here unite for the first time two established mathematical theories, namely Collectively Autocatalytic Sets and the Theory of the Adjacent Possible. The former establishes that a first-order phase transition to molecular reproduction is expected in the chemical evolution of the universe where the diversity and complexity of molecules increases; the latter posits that, under loose hypotheses, if the system starts with a small number of beginning molecules, each of which can combine with copies of itself or other molecules to make new molecules, over time the number of kinds of molecules increases slowly but then explodes upward hyperbolically. Together these theories imply that life is expected as a phase transition in the evolving universe. The familiar distinction between software and hardware loses its meaning in living cells. We propose new ways to study the phylogeny of metabolisms, new astronomical ways to search for life on exoplanets, new experiments to seek the emergence of the most rudimentary life, and the hint of a coherent testable pathway to prokaryotes with template replication and coding.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns

Complexity Digest - Fri, 01/19/2024 - 12:38

John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length.

Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.org

Evolution of a Theory of Mind

Complexity Digest - Wed, 01/17/2024 - 11:35

Tom Lenaerts, Marco Saponara, Jorge M. Pacheco, Francisco C. Santos

iScience

Even though Theory of Mind in upper primates has been under investigation for decades, how it may evolve remains an open problem. We propose here an evolutionary game theoretical model where a finite population of individuals may use reasoning strategies to infer a response to the anticipated behaviour of others within the context of a sequential dilemma, i.e., the centipede game. We show that strategies with bounded reasoning evolve and flourish under natural selection, provided they are allowed to make reasoning mistakes and a temptation for higher future gains is in place. We further show that non-deterministic reasoning co-evolves with an optimism bias that may lead to the selection of new equilibria, closely associated with average behaviour observed in experimental data. This work reveals both a novel perspective on the evolution of bounded rationality and a co-evolutionary link between the evolution of ToM and the emergence of misbeliefs.

Read the full article at: www.sciencedirect.com

Universal Complexity Science and Theory of Everything: Challenges and Prospects

Complexity Digest - Tue, 01/16/2024 - 13:58

Srdjan Kesić

Systems 2024, 12(1), 29

This article argues that complexity scientists have been searching for a universal complexity in the form of a “theory of everything” since some important theoretical breakthroughs such as Bertalanffy’s general systems theory, Wiener’s cybernetics, chaos theory, synergetics, self-organization, self-organized criticality and complex adaptive systems, which brought the study of complex systems into mainstream science. In this respect, much attention has been paid to the importance of a “reductionist complexity science” or a “reductionist theory of everything”. Alternatively, many scholars strongly argue for a holistic or emergentist “theory of everything”. The unifying characteristic of both attempts to account for complexity is an insistence on one robust explanatory framework to describe almost all natural and socio-technical phenomena. Nevertheless, researchers need to understand the conceptual historical background of “complexity science” in order to understand these longstanding efforts to develop a single all-inclusive theory. In this theoretical overview, I address this underappreciated problem and argue that both accounts of the “theory of everything” seem problematic, as they do not seem to be able to capture the whole of reality. This realization could mean that the idea of a single omnipotent theory falls flat. However, the prospects for a “holistic theory of everything” are much better than a “reductionist theory of everything”. Nonetheless, various forms of contemporary systems thinking and conceptual tools could make the path to the “theory of everything” much more accessible. These new advances in thinking about complexity, such as “Bohr’s complementarity”, Morin’s Complex thinking, and Cabrera’s DSRP theory, might allow the theorists to abandon the EITHER/OR logical operators and start thinking about BOTH/AND operators to seek reconciliation between reductionism and holism, which might lead them to a new “theory of everything”.

Read the full article at: www.mdpi.com

Defining a city — delineating urban areas using cell-phone data

Complexity Digest - Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:32

Lei Dong, Fabio Duarte, Gilles Duranton, Paolo Santi, Marc Barthelemy, Michael Batty, Luís Bettencourt, Michael Goodchild, Gary Hack, Yu Liu, Denise Pumain, Wenzhong Shi, Vincent Verbavatz, Geoffrey B. West, Anthony G. O. Yeh & Carlo Ratti 
Nature Cities (2024)

What is a city? Researchers use different criteria and datasets to define it—from population density to traffic flows. We argue there is one dataset that could serve as a proxy of the temporal and spatial connections that make cities what they are: geolocated data from the world’s more than 7 billion cell-phone users. Cell-phone data are a proxy of people’s presence in a given area and of their movement between areas. Combined with computational methods, these data can support city delineations that are dynamic, responding to multiple statistical and administrative requirements, and tailored to different research needs, thus accelerating ongoing work in urban science.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

Information decomposition and the informational architecture of the brain

Complexity Digest - Sun, 01/14/2024 - 11:40

Andrea I. Luppi, Fernando E. Rosas, Pedro A.M. Mediano, David K. Menon, Emmanuel A. Stamatakis

Trends in Cognitive Science

To explain how the brain orchestrates information-processing for cognition, we must understand information itself. Importantly, information is not a monolithic entity. Information decomposition techniques provide a way to split information into its constituent elements: unique, redundant, and synergistic information. We review how disentangling synergistic and redundant interactions is redefining our understanding of integrative brain function and its neural organisation. To explain how the brain navigates the trade-offs between redundancy and synergy, we review converging evidence integrating the structural, molecular, and functional underpinnings of synergy and redundancy; their roles in cognition and computation; and how they might arise over evolution and development. Overall, disentangling synergistic and redundant information provides a guiding principle for understanding the informational architecture of the brain and cognition.

Read the full article at: www.cell.com

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