I am fascinated with the relationship between our individual behaviors and the social structures and institutions in which we live—and how these influence each over time. I think this sort of understanding is important if we want to consider the kind of world we want to live in, and how we might get there from where we are. I take insights from many disciplines, from physics and biology to the cognitive and social sciences, from philosophy and art to mathematics and engineering. I am currently a professor of cognitive and information sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
I wrote
Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution
I had the good fortune to go to graduate school at UC Davis, where I got to know Peter Richerson, who co-led a group of people working on cultural evolution.
Pete, along with his long-time collaborator Rob Boyd, pioneered the theoretical framework of dual inheritance theory, or how genes and culture act as twin transmission channels for human evolution. In this book, they use mathematical models to explore the various ways in which humans might learn from one another, and how natural selection can shape the evolution of a psychology that facilitates various forms of social learning.
This book, more than any other, launched contemporary research on cultural evolution.
How do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.
Peter Turchin has gotten famous recently for predicting the US political upheaval of 2020 way back in 2012.
This book represents the first landmark of Turchin’s attempt to understand the ebbs and flows of history using dynamical models. The book’s centerpiece is a formalization of a theory about how empires rise and fall, first conceived by the 14th century (!) Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun.
The book inspired me to replicate the computational model it presents, and it was remarkably illuminating to watch empires grow, fight, and collapse on my computer screen.
Many historical processes are dynamic. Populations grow and decline. Empires expand and collapse. Religions spread and wither. Natural scientists have made great strides in understanding dynamical processes in the physical and biological worlds using a synthetic approach that combines mathematical modeling with statistical analyses. Taking up the problem of territorial dynamics--why some polities at certain times expand and at other times contract--this book shows that a similar research program can advance our understanding of dynamical processes in history. Peter Turchin develops hypotheses from a wide range of social, political, economic, and demographic factors: geopolitics, factors affecting collective solidarity, dynamics of…
In 2016 I went to a conference in Leuven, Belgium, on computational approaches to understanding science. There I presented a model showing how selection for productivity (good old “publish or perish”) could, over time, degrade the quality of methods used by scientists.
I also met Cailin O’Connor, a philosopher and game theorist who was also studying science with formal models, with a focus on equity, or lack thereof. In this terrific book, Cailin uses game theory and evolutionary dynamics to consider how some social institutions lead to entrenched inequality among people or social classes, as well as how one might combat the forces of unfairness.
In almost every human society some people get more and others get less. Why is inequity the rule in these societies? In The Origins of Unfairness, philosopher Cailin O'Connor firstly considers how groups are divided into social categories, like gender, race, and religion, to address this question. She uses the formal frameworks of game theory and evolutionary game theory to explore the cultural evolution of the conventions which piggyback on these seemingly irrelevant social categories. These frameworks elucidate a variety of topics from the innateness of gender differences, to collaboration in academia, to household bargaining, to minority disadvantage, to homophily.…
I have always been fascinated by how people join and leave groups.
What are the benefits of joining a particular group? Which group should I join? What happens if someone wants to join a group, but its current members don’t want them to? I once thought such questions were merely qualitative, and when I was a graduate student I thought I’d be the first to tackle them quantitatively.
I was humbled when I stumbled upon this book, written years earlier, in which two behavioral ecologists review game theoretic models that address questions of just this sort, starting simple, and building up models of increasing nuance and complexity. I think anyone interested in the dynamics of group formation in humans or other animals should read this book.
Although there is extensive literature in the field of behavioral ecology that attempts to explain foraging of individuals, social foraging--the ways in which animals search and compete for food in groups--has been relatively neglected. This book redresses that situation by providing both a synthesis of the existing literature and a new theory of social foraging. Giraldeau and Caraco develop models informed by game theory that offer a new framework for analysis. Social Foraging Theory contains the most comprehensive theoretical approach to its subject, coupled with quantitative methods that will underpin future work in the field. The new models and approaches…
Strictly speaking, there is very little math in this short book, but it nevertheless details precise models that yield loads of insight.
Using simple machines with sensors and motors, Braitenberg shows us how easy it is to generate behaviors that look purposeful and even emotional, and how hard it would be to guess how those behaviors were generated if we didn’t already know. This is a book I come back to again and again, not only for its valuable lessons, but also for its beautiful prose.
The models in this may be fictions, but, as Braitenberg advises, fiction is a necessary part of science “as long as our brains are only minuscule fragments of the universe, much too small to hold all the facts of the world but not too idle to speculate about them.”
These imaginative thought experiments are the inventions of one of the world's eminent brain researchers.
These imaginative thought experiments are the inventions of one of the world's eminent brain researchers. They are "vehicles," a series of hypothetical, self-operating machines that exhibit increasingly intricate if not always successful or civilized "behavior." Each of the vehicles in the series incorporates the essential features of all the earlier models and along the way they come to embody aggression, love, logic, manifestations of foresight, concept formation, creative thinking, personality, and free will. In a section of extensive biological notes, Braitenberg locates many elements of…
Understanding the social world is hard. Models can help. Modeling Social Behavior provides a theory-driven introduction to key mathematical and computational models of social dynamics and cultural evolution, teaching readers how to build their own models, analyze them, and integrate them with empirical research programs. The book covers a variety of modeling topics, including the philosophy of modeling, collective movement, segregation, contagion, polarization, the evolution of cooperation, the emergence of norms, networks, and the scientific process. Each of these is exemplified by one or more archetypal models, helping readers to develop strong theoretical foundations for understanding social behavior. It equips readers with an essential tool kit for thinking about and studying complex social systems using mathematical and computational models.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
