dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaSharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems
| Authors | A. Baronchelli, M. Felici, E. Caglioti, V. Loreto, L. Steels |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0509075 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509075 |
| DOI | 10.1088/1742-5468/2006/06/P06014 |
| Journal | J. Stat. Mech. (2006) P06014 |
Abstract
What processes can explain how very large populations are able to converge on the use of a particular word or grammatical construction without global coordination? Answering this question helps to understand why new language constructs usually propagate along an S-shaped curve with a rather sudden transition towards global agreement. It also helps to analyze and design new technologies that support or orchestrate self-organizing communication systems, such as recent social tagging systems for the web. The article introduces and studies a microscopic model of communicating autonomous agents performing language games without any central control. We show that the system undergoes a disorder/order transition, going trough a sharp symmetry breaking process to reach a shared set of conventions. Before the transition, the system builds up non-trivial scale-invariant correlations, for instance in the distribution of competing synonyms, which display a Zipf-like law. These correlations make the system ready for the transition towards shared conventions, which, observed on the time-scale of collective behaviors, becomes sharper and sharper with system size. This surprising result not only explains why human language can scale up to very large populations but also suggests ways to optimize artificial semiotic dynamics.
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"abstract": "What processes can explain how very large populations are able to converge on\nthe use of a particular word or grammatical construction without global\ncoordination? Answering this question helps to understand why new language\nconstructs usually propagate along an S-shaped curve with a rather sudden\ntransition towards global agreement. It also helps to analyze and design new\ntechnologies that support or orchestrate self-organizing communication systems,\nsuch as recent social tagging systems for the web. The article introduces and\nstudies a microscopic model of communicating autonomous agents performing\nlanguage games without any central control. We show that the system undergoes a\ndisorder/order transition, going trough a sharp symmetry breaking process to\nreach a shared set of conventions. Before the transition, the system builds up\nnon-trivial scale-invariant correlations, for instance in the distribution of\ncompeting synonyms, which display a Zipf-like law. These correlations make the\nsystem ready for the transition towards shared conventions, which, observed on\nthe time-scale of collective behaviors, becomes sharper and sharper with system\nsize. This surprising result not only explains why human language can scale up\nto very large populations but also suggests ways to optimize artificial\nsemiotic dynamics.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0509075",
"authors": [
"A. Baronchelli",
"M. Felici",
"E. Caglioti",
"V. Loreto",
"L. Steels"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph",
"cond-mat.stat-mech",
"cs.GT",
"cs.MA"
],
"doi": "10.1088/1742-5468/2006/06/P06014",
"journal_ref": "J. Stat. Mech. (2006) P06014",
"title": "Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509075"
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