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Spontaneous opinion swings in the voter model with latency
Get PDFThe cognitive process of opinion formation is often characterized by stubbornness or resistance of agents to changes of opinion. To capture this feature we introduce a constant latency time in the standard voter model of opinion dynamics: after switching opinion, an agent must keep it for a while. This seemingly simple modification drastically changes the stochastic diffusive behavior of the original model, leading to deterministic dynamical oscillations in the average opinion of the agents. We explain the origin of the oscillations and develop a mathematical formulation of the dynamics that is confirmed by extensive numerical simulations. We further characterize the rich phase space of the model and its asymptotic behavior. Our work offers insights into understanding and modeling the phenomenon of opinion swings, often observed in diverse social contexts
Are we heading towards an age of emergency? Questions and answers[Sind wir auf dem Weg in ein Zeitalter der Ausnahmezustände? Fragen und Antworten]
Get PDFComputational Philosophy: Reflections on the PolyGraphs Project
Get PDFIn this paper, we situate our computational approach to philosophy relative to other digital
humanities and computational social science practices, based on reflections stemming from
our research on the PolyGraphs project in social epistemology. We begin by describing
PolyGraphs. An interdisciplinary project funded by the Academies (BA, RS, and RAEng) and
the Leverhulme Trust, it uses philosophical simulations (Mayo-Wilson and Zollman, 2021) to
study how ignorance prevails in networks of inquiring rational agents. We deploy models
developed in economics (Bala and Goyal, 1998), and refined in philosophy (O’Connor and
Weatherall, 2018; Zollman, 2007), to simulate communities of agents engaged in inquiry,
who generate evidence relevant to the topic of their investigation and share it with their
neighbors, updating their beliefs on the evidence available to them. We report some novel
results surrounding the prevalence of ignorance in such networks. In the second part of the
paper, we compare our own to other related academic practices. We begin by noting that, in
digital humanities projects of certain types, the computational component does not appear to
directly support the humanities research itself; rather, the digital and the humanities are
simply grafted together, not fully intertwined and integrated. PolyGraphs is notably different:
the computational work directly supports the investigation of the primary research questions,
which themselves belong decidedly within the humanities in general, and philosophy in
particular. This suggests an affinity with certain projects in the computational social sciences.
But despite these real similarities, there are differences once again: the computational philosophy
we practice aims not so much at description and prediction as at answering the
normative and interpretive questions that are distinctive of humanities research
Savarkar's Miscegenous Hindu Race
Get PDFThis article establishes racial thinking as central to V. D. Savarkar’s (1883-1966) founding theory of Hindutva. Savarkar’s issue with the Muslims was not that they were irreducibly “other,” a foreign race polluting Hindu “blood.” Jettisoning racial and caste purity, Savarkar instead grounded Hindutva’s myth of a single Hindu race in all-round biological admixture. “Miscegenation,” as it was considered by Nazis and White supremacists at the time, buttressed Hindutva’s tremendous violence against Muslims, whose annihilation would come through gendered incorporation. Savarkar redefined the caste system as the crucible of the Hindu race, its endless proliferation testimony to a history of intermarriage expired in the present age. To re-establish the broken bonds of the Hindu race, Savarkar championed inter-caste marriage. He offered the same solution to the “Muslim problem.” Muslims, who had carved themselves out of the Hindu race, needed to be reclaimed through conversion coupled with (forced) marriage, sex, and reproduction with a Hindu. Yet only Muslim women could be appropriated in this way, as paternity imparted race; Muslim men would be crushed in their potentiality for sovereignty and decimated in war with the Hindus. Savarkar based the Hindu body politic on kinship and a vision of gendered incorporation modelled on war
Physics-Informed Bayesian Optimization of Variational Quantum Circuits
Get PDFIn this paper, we propose a novel and powerful method to harness Bayesian optimization for Variational Quantum Eigensolvers (VQEs) - a hybrid quantumclassical protocol used to approximate the ground state of a quantum Hamiltonian. Specifically, we derive a VQE-kernel which incorporates important prior information about quantum circuits: the kernel feature map of the VQE-kernel exactly matches the known functional form of the VQE’s objective function and thereby significantly reduces the posterior uncertainty. Moreover, we propose a novel acquisition function for Bayesian optimization called Expected Maximum Improvement over Confident Regions (EMICoRe) which can actively exploit the inductive bias of the VQE-kernel by treating regions with low predictive uncertainty as indirectly “observed”. As a result, observations at as few as three points in the search domain are sufficient to determine the complete objective function along an entire onedimensional subspace of the optimization landscape. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that our approach improves over state-of-the-art baselines
Modelling Analogical Reasoning: One-Size-Fits-All?
Get PDFA key type of reasoning in everyday life and science is reasoning by analogy. Roughly speaking, such reasoning involves the transposition of solutions that work well in one domain to another, on the basis of pre-existing shared properties between the two domains. If we are to automate scientific reasoning with artificial intelligence (AI), then we need adequate models of analogical reasoning that clearly specify the conditions under which good analogical inferences can be made and bad ones avoided. Two general approaches to such modelling exist: universal and local. In this chapter, we assess the merits and demerits of both approaches. We concede that there are substantial obstacles standing in the way of the universal model view, but that these may be mitigated to some extent by supplementing existing models with additional criteria. One such criterion is defended, particularly against a challenge due to Wittgenstein. We argue that this challenge can be met and thus that there is hope for a one-size-fits-all model in the study of analogical reasoning
‘A Movie about Flowers’? Notes on the Ecological Turn in Adaptation Studies
No full textThis article takes up and responds to the recent ecological turn in adaptation studies, exploring the discipline’s widespread interest in the overlap between the notion of adaptation in evolutionary biology and the notion of adaptation in literature, film, and media studies. It argues that in order to develop a historically and ecocritically alert approach to adaptation studies, it is necessary to unpack what is at stake in using biological terms and paradigms to study adaptation in art. Firstly, it offers a survey of several studies that have explored the overlap between adaptation in nature and adaptation in culture, arguing that these have been overly influenced by the notions of neo-Darwinism that were popularized by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976). Secondly, it offers a rereading of the film that has become a primary case study among theorists who have reached for biological metaphors to explain cultural change: Adaptation (2002). It argues that whereas scholars have often tended to use Adaptation as a springboard from which to launch an exploration of the purported homology between adaptation in nature and adaptation in art, in fact the film’s evolutionary themes are clearly historicizable, tied to a set of values coordinated around ideas of heteronormative reproductivity, dissemination, and growth. Examining those values helps to demonstrate how the film’s evolutionary themes are deployed as part of its representational strategies, thereby challenging the idea that they might be unproblematically used to describe the overlap between adaptation in biology and adaptation in art
Understanding the evolution of China’s approach to digital trade: interests, ideas, and institutions
Get PDFAmid economic globalisation and the rapid development of advanced technologies in recent years, the world economy has shown an increasing trend of digitalisation, whilst digital trade has become the primary pattern of international trade. Based on differences rooted in socio-political systems, as well as the current precarious geopolitical realities, governments adopt different ideas in accordance with their respective interests in the institutionalisation of digital trade. As the world’s secondlargest economy and a major digital power, China’s behaviours and ideological stances
attract scholarly attention and states’ concern. Whilst Western countries and scholars have criticised China’s ideas of “government intervention in data regulation” and “cyber
sovereignty” applied in its existing approach to digital trade, warning that China’s approach poses a threat to Western powers’ adherence to liberalism in the international digital trade system and the idea of “free data flow” in their approaches to digital trade, there has been insufficient research into how China’s approach to digital trade has evolved over time and which ideas and interests have influenced it. To bridge this gap in the literature, this paper divides the evolution of China’s approach to digital trade over the past three decades (1993–2023) into three phases using a longitudinal approach. This research conducts qualitative content analysis using official documents, white papers, and declarations from official Chinese websites, then adopts the 3I analytical framework to analyse which ideas and interests have influenced China’s approach in each phase and how its approach to digital trade has evolved over time
Synthesis and Characterization of Catalytically Active Ni(II) Complexes with Bis(phenol)diamine Ligands
Get PDFA novel N,N’-dimethylethylenediamine derivative of substituted bis(phenol)diamine ligands, namely 2-(tert-butyl)-4-methylphenol in H2L1, was synthesized by a convenient green procedure. Nickel)II) complex [NiL1] 1 has been synthesized and characterized by various methods along with crystal structure determined. Ni(II) coordination center in a mononuclear complex is surrounded by two phenolate oxygen atoms and two amine nitrogen atoms of the ligand in a square planar arrangement. The magnetic susceptibility of the title complex indicates a paramagnetic behavior above 150 K, while strong ferromagnetism below 100 K. Furthermore, the cyclic voltammetry studies show two ligand-centered oxidation of the phenolate groups to phenoxyl radical and the metal-centered reduction of Ni(II) to Ni(0). The Glaser coupling reaction of phenylacetylene was also studied. A strong catalytic activity at room T in THF solvent is observed for 1 in the presence of zinc powder as a reducing agent. A full conversion rate was achieved after 7 h at 25 °C. The DFT analysis corroborates with the square-planar NiO2N2 chromophore of 1 being reduced in catalytically active Ni(0) by applied Zn. The calculated Gibbs free energy of the reaction leading to the formation of the substrate Ni-complex is favorable endothermic. Most of the data for 1 were obtained also for the very similar previously reported [NiL2] 2, with 2,4- di tert-butylphenol in H2L2, which were than compared