Research:Non-finite Processes in Human Social Phenomena
Key Personnel[edit]
- Simon DeDeo / simon[at]santafe.edu
- (postgraduate research students, as recruited)
Project Summary[edit]
Two papers have been published in the peer-reviewed literature: Group Minds and the Case of Wikipedia; Human Computation (2014) 1:1:5-29. Collective Phenomena and Non-Finite State Computation in a Human Social System; PLoS ONE 8(10): e75818 (2013).
An open-access pre-print on this work is now available at the arXiv.
Below is the abstract of a recent talk delivered at UCDavis to the Complexity Sciences Center.
Non-finite Processes in Human Social Phenomena
Simon DeDeo, Santa Fe Institute
10:30 AM, Wednesday, October 17th
Physics 195
Computational models of social and biological phenomena have often focused on the finite-state case. In this work, I present a mathematical result, the Probabilistic Pumping Lemma, that constrains the behavior of all finite state processes. I then present evidence for violation of this Lemma, and thus statistical evidence for the emergence of non-finite computation, in cooperative phenomena associated with the collectively-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia. I distinguish between psychological, or individual-level, and collective aspects of this violation, and present evidence for the existence of separate Universality Classes for the two cases.
Methods[edit]
Statistical analysis of public data (revisions, revision timing, revert behavior, linguistic structure of comment fields). We do not do subject recruitment.
Dissemination[edit]
Public lectures; technical talks; publication in Open Access journals including archiving of versions at [1].
Wikimedia Policies, Ethics, and Human Subjects Protection[edit]
Per discussions with our local IRB contact, IRB approval is not required for this work.
Benefits for the Wikimedia community[edit]
Why does Wikipedia work so well? What are the signatures of a "healthy" community? How does the nature of the editing process change as one goes from single-user to collaborative endeavours?
Timeline[edit]
October 2012 -- October 2013: talks delivered; recruitment of research student; publication of first results. October 2013 -- October 2014: follow-up research; additional release of results as found.
Funding[edit]
- Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellowship (supporting PI). Funded by the Pierre and Pam Omidyar Foundation.
- Research also relevant to National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers Grant EF-1137929 (Information Theory in Biological Processes); not directly funded on this grant.
References[edit]
- Early results and discussion presented at SFI Complex Systems Summer School 2012. See Emergence Lectures.
- Early results presented at University of California, Davis, Department of Physics (October, 2012).
External links[edit]
Contacts[edit]
simon[at]santafe.edu