Emergence in Social Behaviour: Blessing or Curse?
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1 Emergence in Social Behaviour: Blessing or Curse? Edmund Chattoe Department of Sociology University of Oxford 3, George Street Mews, OX1 2AA [email protected] http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/ chattoe.html
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Transcript of Emergence in Social Behaviour: Blessing or Curse?
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Emergence in Social Behaviour:
Blessing or Curse?
Edmund ChattoeDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Oxford
3, George Street Mews, OX1 [email protected]://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/
chattoe.html
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Defining Emergence
• “Refers to a property of a collection of simple sub units that comes about through the interactions of the sub units and is not a property of any single sub unit. For example, the organisation of an ant colony is said to “emerge” from the interactions of the lower-level behaviours of the ants, and not from any single ant. Usually, the emergent behaviour is unanticipated and cannot be directly deduced from the lower-level behaviours. Complex systems are usually emergent.” (Flake 1998)
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Emergence: Physics Example
• Emergent property: Pressure.
• Interaction: Collision.• Sub units: Gas molecules.
• Unanticipated: No.• Not directly deducible: No.
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Emergence: Sociology Example
• Emergent property: Riot.• Interaction: Shouting, watching, throwing things, colliding.
• Sub units: Demonstrators.
• Unanticipated: Yes.• Not directly deducible: Yes.
• Additional problem with macroscopic measurement.
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Differences Between Examples
• Small set of responses.• Fixed set of responses.• Local interaction only.• Deterministic interaction.
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Tasks of Natural Computing Applications
Physical System
SocialSystem
RegularityDetection
Prediction
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What Makes a System Social?
• It doesn’t take much.• Stock market behaviour.• Patient monitoring behaviour.
• Where data comes from determines what it means.
• Failure to find stable regularities may not be a technical problem.
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Emergent Simulation
• If you can’t jump the gap between levels, fill it in.
• Budgeting behaviour example.
• Start with interview data.
• Capture key features of interaction.
• Result is emergent lifestyle clustering.
• Emergence for falsification.
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Conclusions
• “Sociality” is a neglected dimension of NCA success independent of “technical” issues.
• Explicit simulation can act as a complementary technique.
• In social systems, emergence is a curse for simple data mining but may be a blessing for testing theories of social action.
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Adaptation of Budgetary Plans
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