Sergi Valverde🌍 Profile picture
Jul 13, 2021 6 tweets 6 min read Read on X
What is the origin of cultural and technological collapses?
Loss of cultural knowledge has enormous social and economic consequences. Can we predict cultural collapses? What can we do to avoid them?

Find more in our last preprint with @SDuranNebreda:
psyarxiv.com/dt6bx Image
We study three contemporary cases of cultural collapses in sociotechnical systems: @atari 2600 videogames, #cryptocurrency whitepapers and @Reddit posts. All three show a boom-and-bust in artifact diversity driven by collective dynamics. #ETdidntKillAtari @ibogost @NolanBushnell Image
We explore a purely endogenous origin of cultural collapses, driven by an imitation-innovation imbalance. Too much imitation leads to premature convergence and cultural uniformity. These emergent collapses display universal linguistic and complexity signatures. Image
We can recapitulate the boom-and-bust and statistical patterns with a simple model of tinkering and recombination of components. This framework can be used to define early warning signals, as well as the mechanisms required to mitigate imitation-driven cultural collapses. ImageImage
Using the Polya's urn as model of innovation was inspired by the seminal work of Francesca Tria, @loretoff and Vito D. P. Servedio and @stevenstrogatz.
nature.com/articles/srep0…
@loretoff @stevenstrogatz Instead of solely relying on the Polya's urn, we also validate our observations of cultural collapse by taking the same measurements in other (comparable) empirical systems: #Commodore Vic-20 vs #Atari 2600, #Crypto vs scientific papers, & two #Reddit communities. @CommodoreBlog Image

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More from @svalver

May 31
Very excited to share our @Trends_Ecol_Evo review paper on #punctuated_evolution: a pattern of long-term stability interrupted by dramatic changes. A thread on the origins of rapid change, from large #extinctions to socio-technological #disruption.🌍🧬🛠 doi.org/10.1016/j.tree…
Image
For 50 years, punctuated equilibria has been used to explain sudden species changes in the fossil record. 🦖🔍 But what if this concept goes beyond paleobiology? Here, we're expanding it to geology, molecular biology, anthropology, and even social and technological systems. Image
We make a clear distinction between punctuated equilibria (as applied to the fossil record) and the more general pattern of punctuated evolution, which involves multiscale feedback besides external drivers. It's a #complex_systems way of looking at evolving systems! @sfiscience
Read 11 tweets
Feb 15, 2021
I have just read the first chapter of Smil’s “Growth”, and yes, I think it is very interesting (although I suspect isn’t very optimistic about the future of society). @acorralcrm
Reading “Growth” piqued my curiosity about Pierre Verhulst and the origin of the logistic equation, which is so familiar to students of complex systems.
His story is not so well-known. Actually, his logistic equation was ignored and only rediscovered during the 1920s (this gap between invention and innovation has been a common phenomenon, e.g., Mendel’s experiments).
Read 8 tweets
Jun 1, 2020
In "The long and winding road: accidents and tinking in the evolution of software standardization", I review the obstacles in the quest for universal programming rules. Article available in English, Catalan and Spanish. (1/n)
Proud to have congributed to this special issue on "Standards: The Building Blocks of Complexity" (check out here: metode.org/revista/standa…). Many thanks to @Revista_Metode, @JuliPereto and @ManuelPorcar1 for their editing work.
For a long time, linguists and philosophers and mathematicians (like Leibniz) attempted to define an universal language, but with no avail. Borges in his essay "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" dismissed the whole task as an utopia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analy…
Read 9 tweets
Mar 9, 2020
So happy to see our paper “Coexistence of #Nestedness and #Modularity in Host-Pathogen Infection #Networks” published in @natecoevo. We uncovered hidden dimensions of infection networks, which challenges established views in #ecology.
nature.com/articles/s4155…
Our goal was to understand how the environment mediates in the pattern of host-pathogen interactions, i.e., nestedness and modularity. To do so, we gathered empirical data on plant-virus infection networks surveyed at different habitats in central Spain, from 2000 to 2002.
But standard analyses of bipartite networks reported ambiguous results, and could not explain structural dependence on seasonality and habitat differences. Looking at networks is helpful, but nearly not enough to fully grasp the complexity of natural infections.
Read 13 tweets

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