Mind computer societies

Mind, computers and communitiesHow psychology may help computer science,

and permit global simulations of societies

Franco Bagnoli

Laboratorio Fisica dei Sistemi Complessi - Dip. Energeticae CSDC, Universita di Firenze

www.complexworld.net

Franco Bagnoli

Mind, computers and communities

Psychohistory

I In the year 1951 Asimov published the first volume of theFoundation cycle.

I The protagonist of the whole opera (7 volumes, 500 years) is HariSeldon, the inventor of the psychohistory.

I It is a “science” that permits to combine history, sociology, andstatistics to make mathematical predictions about the futurebehavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire.

I This forecasting possibility allows Seldon and his later followers tochange the “future”, and avoid/mitigate crisis.

Franco Bagnoli


Is psychohistory possible?

I Although Asimov’s novels deals with telepathy and othernon-scientific issues, the idea of global simulations and predictions istaken seriously.

I The European flagship project FuturICT, that might be funded witha billion euros in 10 years, states:

FuturICT will build a sophisticated simulation, visualizationand participation platform, called the living earth platform(planetary-scale data collection and simulations). Thisplatform will power crisis observatories, to detect andmitigate crises, and participatory platforms, to support thedecision-making of policy-makers, business people andcitizens, and to facilitate a better social, economic andpolitical participation.

I Essentially, a global social empowerment program.

Franco Bagnoli


Psychohistory again

It is interesting to consider the premises of psychohistory (mathematicalsociology).

I Psycho-history was the quintessence of sociology, it was the scienceof human behavior reduced to mathematical equations...

I The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if theprobabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does notdeal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individualvariations count for more.

Franco Bagnoli


Physics of history

Psychohistory is similar to gas theory:

I The population whose behavior was modeled should be sufficientlylarge (at least 1010 individuals).

I The population should remain in ignorance of the results of theapplication of psychohistorical analyses.

I It assumes that Human Beings are the only sentient intelligences inthe Galaxy (no mutants, robots, etc.).

Franco Bagnoli


Is it only imagination?

In the ’50, Asimov considered only “equations”, with an “electronic”device (the Prime Radiant) that helped in visualization and annotation(say, a computer screen..). Asimov probably considered differentialequations, say, epidemic modeling. However, after the use of computers,researchers discovered some drawbacks:

I Differential equations represent a sort of “mean field”, or momentexpansions. They are not very appropriate for small numbers (asstated also by Asimov), or very non-linear dynamics. Spatial effectsare even more difficult to be captured by partial differentialequations.

I One could resort to agent-based simulations (the current trend): oneagent for each person (an “avatar”). Kind of Matrix.

I But even in this case there are conceptual and practical difficulties.

Franco Bagnoli


Difficulties

I Noise and chaos: we are not able to simulate an individual withsufficient detail to make the model deterministic, so we have toinsert stochastic components. In any case, the resulting dynamicswould probably be chaotic.

I Detailed individual models require a lot of parameters, and thereforea lot of measurements (some of which are quite hard to beperformed).

I Auto-organization: people behavior is extremely sensitive tocollective effects. Let think to markets: the price of an item is notdue to its value, but to the value attributed by other participants.Such effects are hard to include, ans in any case, if the simulationscan affect the behavior of the system, it should be included in aself-consistent way (this the the reason for which Asimov supposedthat the foundation had to remain secret).

I Little knowledge of the individual behavior (to be investigated in thefollowing).

Franco Bagnoli


Good news

There are also some arguments in favor of a success

I Universality: many of the particular details of the individual shouldnot affect the dynamics of a large population. However, microscopic“constraints” may well reflect in the large population dynamics (forinstance fermionic Pauli exclusion principle determines the smallelectron contribution to the specific heat of metals).

I Global measurement: electronic sensors and devices, electronictransactions, internet, etc. allow to perform detailed measurementson individual behavior, an essential element to validate any model.

I Delegation to software. Many of our acts are actually delegated tosoftware, often embedded in cars, browsers, phones, etc. This isanother point of integration between psychology and computerscience (to be explored below), but makes predictions easier.

Franco Bagnoli


Individual behavior

The starting point of any analysis should be the individual (i.e.,psychology).

I Evolutionary constraints give the main framework, through genetics,womb gestation and education. The knowledge of these factors isstill limited.

I The brain is a complex multi-level object, not easy to be modeled ata global level. Most of modeling is done statistically using linearmodels (for instance, factorial analysis).

I Learning makes individual “state machines”, so that repeatingmeasurements is almost impossible. Learning is generally absent instatistical modeling.

Franco Bagnoli


Evolutionary constraints

Our brain was not selected to cope with algebra, path integrals or TVrecording programs. Some recent investigation suggests:

I Probability reasoning, in terms of natural frequencies (one case overten, not 0.1).

I Social tasks (see Wason selection task), not abstract reasoning.

I Speech-oriented interactions (mainly recreational).

I Mating behavior (indeed the strongest selection factor).

I Social conformism (fashion, religion, politics) vs individualism, awith a “bonus” for small innovations (fashion innovation).

I Kin, mutual and reputation cooperation, leading to group selection(strong cooperation inside a group, racism against other groups.

I Cross-over (synesthesia) among tasks. This could be the origin ofinnovation.

Franco Bagnoli


Mechanisms

I Human mind is not rational (unless forced).

I As revealed by response times, we can classify the level of mentalinvolvement as reflexes, mental scheme, heuristics, meta-heuristics...

I Heuristics (say: fast and frugal, anchoring, etc.) allows quickresponses with bounded resources in uncertain contexts. We canlearn a lot from them, and apply the outcome to ICT. Clearly, theysometimes fail spectacularly... That’s so human...

I The implementation of human heuristic is particularly appreciated indevices that has to interact with humans (or be delegated..)

Franco Bagnoli


Failures

Epidemic spreading is one of the biggest failures of psychohistory..

I In classical epidemic modeling, there is a threshold related to theinfectivity of the disease and the average number of contacts.

I Most of human social networks are scale-free, with a divergingconnectivity.

I So, for any infectivity rate, a disease should become a pandemy (likebubonic pest in medieval times).

I But actually (modern) people react to epidemics by changing thesocial network so to prevent pandemies. Risk perception acts as amain factor..

Franco Bagnoli


Delegation

I People like to delegate boring tasks to machines (computers,devices).

I So we can expect more and more delegation to cars, domotic,, websearches and mainly to portable devices (e.g. smarthphones, audiodevices). Let’s think to music for instance: people like to have aportable radio station that select the “right” music.

I “Right” of course depends on the individual, past and recentexperiences, mood, status, available clips (copyright), etc.

I This is prototypic of future home use of ICT. Trading is anothercrucial playground for human heuristics (it depends on other humanreactions, even if economic schools try to make it inhuman..)

Franco Bagnoli


Human social scales

I As said, most of human-generated networks exhibit a certain degreeof scale independence, with long tails.

I However, there are a certain number of “magical” numbers inhuman activities: the size of a chatting group (around four, as mostof card games), the size of a small group (from a chatting group toaround twelve, as apostols – thirteen is already too many), the sizeof a community (about 150, Dunbar’s number, the presumable sizeof a good-knowledge memory).

I To my knowledge, little is known about the actual dynamics of suchgroups (and how they could be modeled starting from cognitiveassumptions).

Franco Bagnoli


Small group dynamics

In particular, small group dynamics is interesting:

I Temporally quite complex, while community-size dynamics isstatistically much better determined.

I A small group has only a short time horizon.

I It is however the “drive” of a community, together with chattinggroups and couple communication.

I Interactions are mainly non-informative and somewhat ritual.

Franco Bagnoli


The RECOGNITION project

It is part of the AWARENESS Fet proactive initiative. It aims at portingthe knowledge about humans (psychology) to the ICT domain andimplementing awareness at the device.

I Implementation of human heuristics in ICT world, in particular the“fast and frugal” protocol with bounded rationality.

I Developing and implementing the concept of data centric approach(data should not be separated by their elaboration structures).

I Implementation of elaboration “at the device” (saY: cars,smartphones), not relying on central servers.

Franco Bagnoli


Web measurement

In order to quantitative study human dynamics we need a lot of data.One of the sources is the web sphere

I People reveal a lot of personal data to Internet (say, facebook).

I we can have quite a good timing measurements (mental activation).

I Moreover, data are already in digital form.

I However, a compromize is needed between non-verbal content andenvironental control (think to second life vs. textual chat).

I A good semantic analyzer would be useful (but quite hard to bedeveloped): most of effective data analysis is done by humans (seeGoogle page rank mechanism).

Franco Bagnoli


Implementation

It is not easy to implement such a approach. We are working on thefollowing topics:

I Role of risk perception in epidemics.

I Opinion dynamics, role of affinity, peace makers and anticonformism.

I Opinion anticipation, origin of personality factors, extension tononlinear predictors [De Gustibus]

I From attractor dynamcs to feed forward networks and the origin ofsynsthesia.

I Heuristics for community detection [RECOGNITION].

I Personalized audio suggestions - wikiradio [RECOGNITION].

Franco Bagnoli


Conclusions

I Psychology (from cognitive science to sociology) could become acentral (quantitative) discipline for ICT.

I The field of human-inspired computing includes also physics ofcomplex systems, biology, evolutionary theory, computer science,linguistics and is related to all humanities (they are product of thehuman mind..)

I Unfortunately, no school offers such a study program...

Franco Bagnoli


Education

Mind computer societies