Monday, December 23, 2013

simple mathematical law describes human struggles...,


eurekalert | Would you believe that a broad range of human struggles can be understood by using a mathematical formula? From child-parent struggles to cyber-attacks and civil unrest, they can all be explained with a simple mathematical expression called a "power-law."

In a sort of unified theory of human conflict, scientists have found a way to mathematically describe the severity and timing of human confrontations that affect us personally and as a society.
For example, the manner in which a baby's cries escalate against its parent is comparable to the way riots in Poland escalated in the lead-up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It comes down to the fact that the perpetrator in both cases (e.g. baby, rioters) adapts quickly enough to escalate its attacks against the larger, but more sluggish entity (e.g. parent, government), who is unable, or unwilling, to respond quickly enough to satisfy the perpetrator, according to a new study published in Nature's Scientific Reports.

"By picking out a specific baby (and parent), and studying what actions of the parent make the child escalate or de-escalate its cries, we can understand better how to counteract cyber-attacks against a particular sector of U.S. cyber infrastructure, or how an outbreak of civil unrest in a given location (e.g. Syria) will play out, following particular government interventions," says Neil Johnson, professor of physics and the head of the interdisciplinary research group in Complexity, at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami (UM) and corresponding author of the study.
Respectively, the study finds some remarkable similarities between seemingly disconnected confrontations. For instance:
  • The escalation of violent attacks in Magdalena, Colombia -- though completely cut off from the rest of the world -- is actually representative of all modern wars. Meanwhile, the conflict in Sierra Leone, Africa, has exactly the same dynamics as the narco-guerilla war in Antioquia, Colombia.
  • The pattern of attacks by predatory traders against General Electric (GE) stock is equivalent to the pattern of cyber-attacks against the U.S. hi-tech electronics sector by foreign groups, which in turn mimics specific infants and parents.
  • New insight into the controversial 'Bloody Sunday' attack by the British security forces, against civilians, on January 30,1972, reveals that Bloody Sunday appears to be the culmination of escalating Provisional Irish Republican Army attacks, not their trigger, hence raising new questions about its strategic importance.
The findings show that this mathematical formula of the form AB-C is a valuable tool that can be applied to make quantitative predictions concerning future attacks in a given confrontation. It can also be used to create an intervention strategy against the perpetrators and, more broadly, as a quantitative starting point for cross-disciplinary theorizing about human aggression, at the individual and group level, in both real and online worlds.

11 comments:

woodensplinter said...

Have your elite media courtesans begun sharpening their claws for one another? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/business/media/when-60-minutes-checks-its-journalistic-skepticism-at-the-door.html

BigDonOne said...

BD is pleased that Subrealism has raised the issue of describing human conflict by mathematics.
A fundamental axiom in the mathematics of inequalities states, "If equals are added to unequals, the results obtained are unequal in the same order. " Expressed in equation form: if A > B, then (A+C) > ( B+C).

We submit BD's Unified Theory of Human Inequality:
If G2 > G1 where G represents the Genetics for Higher IQ and Responsible Non-violent, Non-criminal Behavior,
and E represents the Best Applied Nurture and Environment Resources, then the resulting Human Outcomes can be
expressed as: (G2 + E) > (G1 + E). In other words, you can apply the best environments/nurture to two genetically unequal human groups, and you will NEVER get equal human group outcomes. The American education system has trying unsuccessfully to violate this Fundamental Law for 50 years with predictable miserable results. Even greater resources have been devoted to the inferior group without appreciable benefit. It's why prisons and welfare rolls are
top-heavy with IQ-75z. You can't beat the mathematics: As Subrealism puts it, a simple mathematical law describes human struggles... *Indeed*.

CNu said...

lol, as always BD - your pleasure tickles us pink. It is when you're comfortably stimulated, confident in your wheelhouse, that you tend to do your very best work as our indispensable poster-child for simple.

Subrealism is school...accept no substitutes!

BigDonOne said...

BD knew you would be simply thrilled with the Indispensable Simplicity of it....

Vic78 said...

E will never be a constant. What are the best applied nurture and environmental resources? Is the way this country is structured the best of possible structures? If lower classes are going to stay on the bottom why are the ones that try to help stymied? It's much easier to watch them fail since people on the bottom are just going to be what they are.

Vic78 said...

We have someone missing the good old days. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579268301043949952

CNu said...

Perfect timing on this one Vic, thanks. It goes to the top in the morning.

CNu said...

lol, you'll get a more cogent answer if you ask him whether he's more frustrated by not having made it into Mensa, or, by having been cursed with a two-inch punisher between his legs. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201210/the-pseudoscience-race-differences-in-penis-size

BigDonOne said...

Glad you brought that up, Vic. For each person the E required to maximize the outcome is, of course,
not known. It is different for each person depending on their G. But in the mathematical sense, E can be viewed analogous to the Constant of Integration in Calculus - for each application of the solution, the Constant is evaluated to satisfy the Boundary Conditions. If you did somehow know the E for each person to maximize their G potential, then the basic inequality equation would absolutely hold. Just consider that E is established to maximize the outcome for each particular G.

When considering the validity of an equation, it is instructive to examine extreme cases to see if the equation makes logical sense. For example, suppose the human group in question is the set of all Down Syndrome subjects - IQ averages ~60. (really poor G). No conceivable set of E wiil ever produce an outcome group that can live independently, non-parasitic, and productive. With few exceptions, most Down subjects will require cradle-to-grave monitoring and support - the least desirable group outcome
possible.....

Vic78 said...

Have you heard of Paulo Freire? http://www.users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/edreformFriere_pedagogy.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

Vic78 said...

Lol, that's pretty cold.

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