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Rational Factionalization for Agents with Probabilistically Related Beliefs
Get PDFGeneral epistemic polarization arises when the beliefs of a population grow further apart, in particular when all agents update on the same evidence. Epistemic factionalization arises when the beliefs grow further apart, but different beliefs also become correlated across the population. I present a model of how factionalization can emerge in a population of ideally rational agents. This kind of factionalization is driven by probabilistic relations between beliefs, with background beliefs shaping how the agents' beliefs evolve in the light of new evidence. Moreover, I show that in such a model, the only possible outcomes from updating on identical evidence are general convergence or factionalization. Beliefs cannot spread out in all directions: if the beliefs overall polarize, then it must result in factionalization
Introduction to Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration
No full textFrom its origin as the Roman city of Londinium through to its latest incarnation as a super-diverse World City in the twenty-first century, London's history and culture has been shaped by migration. This book expresses and celebrates the plurality of the capital's cultures and affirms the importance of migration in the making of the modern city through thirty-three short essays written by academics, artists, broadcasters and curators. Subjects range from the mediaeval to the contemporary: buildings and institutions, individuals and communities, objects, visual art, street performances and literary texts. Some contributors focus on famous people and places, like Shakespeare and St Paul's, while others explore less well-known subjects, like the Free German League of Culture (1939-46) or Ignatius Sancho, the eighteenth-century musician, grocer and man-of-letters.
It is not only London's cultures which are diverse, migration is also plural. This book engages with the very many human migrations from across the globe and within the British Isles that have taken place over the last two-thousand years, as well as with the movements of plants, animals, and ideologies from other countries and continents, and the movement of natural resources and manmade toxins into and through the city.
Composed of a vivid collection of snapshots, the volume offers a kaleidoscopic vision of the city and provides new insights into the successive migrant communities that have come to London and made it their own
Are our law students ‘robot proof’? AI chatbots and the future of working with computer generated copyrighted works.
Get PDFArtificial Intelligence (AI) and ChatGPT are now being used by university law students to write their coursework essays and cheat in examinations. Whilst there is tremendous scope of large language models to revolutionise the legal workspace and reduce tedious fact-checking by law trainees and paralegals, we need to teach our future lawyers to fact-check their AI-generated work for garbage, including sources which simply do not exist, such as President Biden’s counter terrorism strategy when writing about Lord Hoffmann’s dissenting judgment in the ‘Belmarsh’ case (2004). This paper advances that students need to learn how to use such large AI language model chatbots properly, how they will need to understand them in their future legal workplace and equally how they may well breach copyright which can amount to a criminal offence in the UK and the wider world. The opinion expressed in this paper includes examples from the author’s own law teaching practices and assessments. Given the acceptance and acknowledgement that our law students will use AI to ‘deceive’ their tutors and examiners, HE policy needs to address both, how to disrupt this practice by addressing academic misconduct as well as engender a way how we can educate our future lawyers to become robot-proof, where human potential includes reflection of reality and fact, whilst at the same time preparing legal trainees for the future legal workspace without cheating via AI
Episode 5 – Post-Apocalyptic Walking: Russell Hoban’s Ridley Walker
No full textJoin me, Canterbury Tales expert Dr Rebecca Newby, and recent creative writing graduate Jessica Periera as we decipher this classic text and what it can teach us about the tech-focused world of the 2020s. Ridley Walker is a novel set in a post-apocalyptic South East England. It’s written in a dystopian dialect, and explores the customs, rituals and beliefs that have developed since a nuclear war, many of which are based on the interpretations and misinterpretations of the ruins and rumours of our own advanced civilization, in particular, a description of the fifteenth century wall painting The Legend of St Eustace, in Canterbury Cathedral. The story follows a twelve year old Ridley Walker as he inadvertently interferes with the politics and prophecies of the iron-age government and religion. In this world, knowledge is spread in song, parable, and semi-supernatural performances, most notably in the traveling Eusa show, a puppet show performed by the Pry Mincer and Shadow Mincer, Goodparley and Orfing. The show disseminates the story of the time back way back, when civilisation had calculated how to harness the power of nature for good and evil, culminating in the dropping of ‘the 1 big 1’, a nuclear bomb over Canterbury. After Ridley Walker finds a millennia-old figure of Punch buried in the mud, he embarks on a journey which leads him to the ruins of Cambry (Canterbury) and Fork Stoan (Folkestone), and Goodparley’s ill-fated efforts to re-start the quest for the Master Chaynjis; advanced technology, science and explosives. More than anything, it’s a novel about defamiliarisation, scripture, and puppets. It was first published in 1980 and was reprinted as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2021, including some brief notes, an afterword and glossary of ‘RidleySpeak’
Ignatius Sancho and Visual Culture
No full textThis chapter looks at the representation of Ignatius Sancho in relation to the visual culture. It examines Sancho's use of visual language and the language of conoisseurship in his letters, placing that alongside an analysis of the Gainsborough painting of 1768 to argue that Sancho emerges as an agent as well as a subject in London's visual culture
Reconstructing higher-order interactions in coupled dynamical systems
Get PDFHigher-order interactions play a key role for the operation and function of a complex system. However, how to identify them is still an open problem. Here, we propose a method to fully reconstruct the structural connectivity of a system of coupled dynamical units, identifying both pairwise and higher-order interactions from the system time evolution. Our method works for any dynamics, and allows the reconstruction of both hypergraphs and simplicial complexes, either undirected or directed, unweighted or weighted. With two concrete applications, we show how the method can help understanding the complexity of bacterial systems, or the microscopic mechanisms of interaction underlying coupled chaotic oscillators
Recommendations for sharing network data and materials
Get PDFOne of the goals of open science is to promote the transparency and accessibility of research. Sharing data and materials used in network research is critical to these goals. In this paper, we present recommendations for whether, what, when, and where network data and materials should be shared. We recommend that network data and materials should be shared, but access to or use of shared data and materials may be restricted if necessary to avoid harm or comply with regulations. Researchers should share the network data and materials necessary to reproduce reported results via a publicly accessible repository when an associated manuscript is published. To ensure the adoption of these recommendations, network journals should require sharing, and network associations and academic institutions should reward sharing
Curating activist journalism to defy China’s “mainstream” narrative on X (Twitter)
Get PDFThis article foregrounds the great translation movement (GTM), initially mobilised on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as an example of activist journalism countering China's 'mainstream' narrative of the war and its broader implications. Using Fairclough’s dialectical-relational approach, adapted to the specifics of social media communication, we examine GTM postings throughout the first calendar year of the war, highlighting how the GTM evolves into a broader activist-journalistic initiative that challenges the party-state beyond its involvement in the war. This paradigm of intervention unfolds as GTM activists report on evidential events within China that bear the potential to spark public contention outside of the party-state’s censorship reach. By examining the dialectical relations between reportage and advocacy, this analysis demonstrates how activist journalism constitutes an emerging cross-border civic engagement, challenging a Southern authoritarian regime from the outside. A critical evaluation of activist journalism and its broader societal impacts is also provided, highlighting its progressive potential and future development in the Chinese context and beyond