The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures
Agents interacting with their environments, machine or otherwise, arrive at decisions based on their incomplete access to data and their particular cognitive architecture, including data sampling frequency and memory storage limitations. In particular, the same data streams, sampled and stored diffe...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2022-09-01
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| Series: | Entropy |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/10/1378 |
| _version_ | 1797473432881856512 |
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| author | Damian Radosław Sowinski Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback Jeremy DeSilva Adam Frank Gourab Ghoshal Marcelo Gleiser |
| author_facet | Damian Radosław Sowinski Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback Jeremy DeSilva Adam Frank Gourab Ghoshal Marcelo Gleiser |
| author_sort | Damian Radosław Sowinski |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Agents interacting with their environments, machine or otherwise, arrive at decisions based on their incomplete access to data and their particular cognitive architecture, including data sampling frequency and memory storage limitations. In particular, the same data streams, sampled and stored differently, may cause agents to arrive at different conclusions and to take different actions. This phenomenon has a drastic impact on polities—populations of agents predicated on the sharing of information. We show that, even under ideal conditions, polities consisting of epistemic agents with heterogeneous cognitive architectures might not achieve consensus concerning what conclusions to draw from datastreams. Transfer entropy applied to a toy model of a polity is analyzed to showcase this effect when the dynamics of the environment is known. As an illustration where the dynamics is not known, we examine empirical data streams relevant to climate and show the <i>consensus problem</i> manifest. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T20:14:27Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-51c2b0d53e264c03b4e9f87e3fb38067 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1099-4300 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T20:14:27Z |
| publishDate | 2022-09-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Entropy |
| spelling | doaj.art-51c2b0d53e264c03b4e9f87e3fb380672023-11-24T00:02:39ZengMDPI AGEntropy1099-43002022-09-012410137810.3390/e24101378The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive ArchitecturesDamian Radosław Sowinski0Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback1Jeremy DeSilva2Adam Frank3Gourab Ghoshal4Marcelo Gleiser5Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USADepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USADepartment of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USADepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USADepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USADepartment of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USAAgents interacting with their environments, machine or otherwise, arrive at decisions based on their incomplete access to data and their particular cognitive architecture, including data sampling frequency and memory storage limitations. In particular, the same data streams, sampled and stored differently, may cause agents to arrive at different conclusions and to take different actions. This phenomenon has a drastic impact on polities—populations of agents predicated on the sharing of information. We show that, even under ideal conditions, polities consisting of epistemic agents with heterogeneous cognitive architectures might not achieve consensus concerning what conclusions to draw from datastreams. Transfer entropy applied to a toy model of a polity is analyzed to showcase this effect when the dynamics of the environment is known. As an illustration where the dynamics is not known, we examine empirical data streams relevant to climate and show the <i>consensus problem</i> manifest.https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/10/1378agentpolitytransfer entropyinformation theoryconsensussociophysics |
| spellingShingle | Damian Radosław Sowinski Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback Jeremy DeSilva Adam Frank Gourab Ghoshal Marcelo Gleiser The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures Entropy agent polity transfer entropy information theory consensus sociophysics |
| title | The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures |
| title_full | The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures |
| title_fullStr | The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures |
| title_short | The Consensus Problem in Polities of Agents with Dissimilar Cognitive Architectures |
| title_sort | consensus problem in polities of agents with dissimilar cognitive architectures |
| topic | agent polity transfer entropy information theory consensus sociophysics |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/10/1378 |
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