zschaler2012early
Early fragmentation in the adaptive voter model on directed networks
"It all boils down to physics"
Coverage on the blog of the Rachel Maddow Show:
"Turns out physics can explain more than just why a ball bounces or a tea kettle whistles. Physics can also help explain why American politics is so polarized. We discovered this when Rachel was cited in a physics paper (pdf) published this month by the American Physical Society.
In the paper, researchers working with the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems devised a model of society. Red and green nodes represent people with different political persuasions, like Democrats and Republicans, and the gray lines between them represent communication, dialogue. A healthy society would look something like the image on the far left, where people have different ideas, and there's a lot of debate and discussion between them. An unhealthy society would look like the example on the far right, where there are two distinct ideologies and little-to-no communication between them. ..."
More here: (link)
