Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Seminar Series
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Room 411 West Hall
12:00 - 1:00 pm
SPEAKER:
Patrick Grim,
Professor Patrick Grim, Group for Logic & Formal Semantics, Philosophy,
Stony Brook; Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan
Title: Can Science Learn More When Scientists Learn Less? Modeling Question Difficulty and Epistemic Success across Scientific Networks
Abstract: A scientific community can be thought of as a network of interactive agents
attempting to answer questions on the basis of incomplete, conflicting, and
sometimes ambiguous data. The interaction between the structure of the
communication network and the nature of the question under investigation
affects both prospects for accuracy and speed to community consensus. In
some cases, it turns out, science *can* learn more when individual
scientists learn less. Here we build on previous work, both our own and
others', in order to get a firmer grasp on precisely what features of
investigatory networks work with what features of problem structure in
optimizing epistemic desiderata.
*CO-AUTHORS:*
*Daniel J. Singer , Steven Fisher, Adam Bramson, William Berger,
Christopher Reade,, Carissa Flocken, Adam Sales *
