Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Oct 12, 2009; 6:50pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/A-question-for-the-emergentists-among-you-tp3799888p3809891.html
Thanks, Eric.
I will be interested to see if this higher order patterning exists for
monkeys as well as apes.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Smith <
[hidden email]>
> To: <
[hidden email]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 10/12/2009 8:58:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
>
> Nick, hi,
>
> I can't really summon the energy to be part of the emergence thread,
> but for this particular post, you may wish to keep an eye on
> publications coming out from Flack, deWaal, Krakauer, and
> collaborators including Ay and deDeo, on primate interactions. They
> have some very strong analysis showing that a very large component of
> group power structure and the functions associated with it, such as
> policing, is mediated by the response of individuals to dyadic
> interactions between others, and very explicitly _not_ to merely the
> members who participate in the dyads. They have tested a variety of
> p-to-q responses, and find a very strongly significant signal in the
> 1-to-2 response (i.e. individual responds to dyad), with higher-order
> interactions apparently well explained by the composition of 1-to-2,
> and an equally strong absence of signal for any of the other
> elementary levels, or for any single strong explanatory excess of any
> higher-order p-to-q above its dependence on the 1-to-2.
>
> What I have said here is an oversimplification of a longer and more
> complicated story involving several forms of interactions (fights,
> subordination signals, etc.) with inter-related but distinct dynamics
> and timescales, so I haven't done most of it justice. I don't know
> how much of the new 1-to-2 work is currently published or on the SFI
> working paper list. Some of the earlier papers explaining what
> quantitative definitions they attach to the notion of power, and its
> relation to policing and other group-coherence attributes, is out in
> Nature and several behavior journals, and probably mostly available
> from the authors' webpages. All of this work is in various stages of
> development, write-up, or submission, and some of it may be presented
> in talks as the year wears out. So one way or another it should be
> available either now or soon.
>
> Just a topic of interest as a bit of science.
>
> All best, and I do find much of the larger argument interesting and
> thoughtful,
>
> Eric
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org