Simple Math Formula Describes Human Conflict

(Credit: © erllre / Fotolia) 


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.

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.

by James Wood

Powells.com


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.
*  *  *  *  *

Story Source:  Neil F. Johnson, Pablo Medina, Guannan Zhao, Daniel S. Messinger, John Horgan, Paul Gill, Juan Camilo Bohorquez, Whitney Mattson, Devon Gangi, Hong Qi, Pedro Manrique, Nicolas Velasquez, Ana Morgenstern, Elvira Restrepo, Nicholas Johnson, Michael Spagat, Roberto Zarama. Simple mathematical law benchmarks human confrontations. Scientific Reports, 2013

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Workout supplements: An emerging eating disorder in men?

Image
therewontbeanydoves.wordpress.com When developing a fictional character, you may not think about the character using large amounts of over-the-counter dietary supplements.  Especially a man who uses large amounts of workout supplements. While there has been widespread publicity on the dangers of the non-prescribed use of anabolic steroids, not much is said about legal, over-the-counter supplements.  Are there risks?  And if so, what are they?  There are several things the writer should consider. Supplement use is becoming an eating disorder with many men who use them to prepare for and recover from a workout. There is growing evidence of a link between muscle-building supplements and testicular cancer. There is evidence that over-the counter medications and supplements are the most common causes of drug-induced liver failure (a rare event, but still a risk.)  There is even evidence that, “certain popular herbal and dietary supplements can also ...
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f...
Read more

Children's drawings during abuse investigations

Image
Source:  rutherfordcountytn.gov I llustrations by children can be a critical tool in forensic investigations of child abuse. A recent study compared the results when child abuse victims were offered the opportunity to draw during questioning with results when victims were not offered this opportunity. "The act of drawing was not only an empowering experience for these children," said Dr. Katz. "We also found it to be forensically more effective in eliciting richer testimonies in child abuse cases. We had no idea the gap would be so great between those who drew and those who weren't given this option." A chance to express themselves Some 125 alleged child victims of sexual abuse were randomly selected for the field study. The children, aged 5-14, were questioned by nine well-trained forensic interviewers about a single occurrence of alleged sexual abuse. The children were divided into two sets -- a control group, questioned and allowed to rest during t...
Read more

Friday Factoids: TV Causes Diabetes, Diabetes Causes Erectile Dysfunction, Erectile Disfunction Is Embarassing.

Image
buczthebeginning.wordpress.com Today's Friday Factoids is about, well, to be polite, Erectile Dysfunction.  This is a taboo subject among us guys.  Women endlessly discuss everything and anything.  Men discuss sports.  And beer.  But mostly sports. Endlessly. The fact is that as men age, an appalling percentage of us suffer erectile dysfunction, a fancy way of saying our willy won't work. From the age of 30, the number of men who have unsatisfactory erections or none at all increases. In the over-60 age group, more than half of all men have been affected by erectile dysfunction.  I'm over sixty.  I won't admit which group I'm in, but you can guess.  So, how does this happen? According to research, the causes of that topic men won't discuss include (but are not limited to) - cardiovascular disease, diabetes , hormonal imbalance, neurological disease, the side-effects of medication and watching too much TV. Watchi...
Read more

M.I.T. Research Explains How Will Rogers Observation Works

Image
Finally it appears that MIT has gotten involved in proving Will's syllogism, "There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." Read his statement carefully.   ONE learns by reading.   A FEW who learn by observation. Then there's the rest of us. The reason for this, it turns out, is a special circuit in the brain that you or I need to have a functioning version of to actually learn by observing others.  Based on how we all behave, it is a circuit most of us must be missing.   Or perhaps it shorted out the first time we peed on an electric fence and it has yet to grow back.   *  *  *  *  * Brain circuit helps us learn by watching others Scientists pinpoint neural interactions that are necessary for observational learning Researchers have identified a brain circuit requir...
Read more