{"id":247,"date":"2008-01-29T00:37:15","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T05:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=247"},"modified":"2008-01-29T00:38:56","modified_gmt":"2008-01-29T05:38:56","slug":"why-travel-reduces-extremism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"How to reduce extremism? Travel!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/extremism.jpg\" title=\"Extremism\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/extremism.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Extremism\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Andre Martins studies agent-based computer models of extremism at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve heard from him before following his claim that <a href=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=119\">extremism is an emergent phenomenon<\/a> in our society.<\/p>\n<p>Now he&#8217;s back with the results of a study on how to reduce extremism.<\/p>\n<p>Martins creates a network model in which agents can hold any position on a continuous scale of opinion. Each agent updates its opinion using a simple calculation after observing the opinions of others nearby.<\/p>\n<p>Martins defines extremism as &#8220;an agent who supports one choice fervently, even when a large group<br \/>\nbelieves a different idea to be a better choice&#8221;. One of the impressive aspects of Martins&#8217; model is that extreme behaviour emerges naturally, just as it does in real societies.<\/p>\n<p>Now he has studied ways in which extremism can be reduced. He offers tantalising evidence that extremism is linked to the structure of a society because different types of networks produce different levels of extremism.<\/p>\n<p>But his most interesting conlcusion is that the mobility of agents within a network is crucial:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;The extremism problem can become far less important in societies where the mobility of its agents is above a certain threshold. Therefore, efforts to reduce such a mobility can have important negative impacts in the diminishing of extremism.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So  get moving.<\/p>\n<p>Ref: <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/0801.2411\">arxiv.org\/abs\/0801.2411<\/a>: Mobility and Social Network Effects on Extremist Opinions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andre Martins studies agent-based computer models of extremism at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. We&#8217;ve heard from him before following his claim that extremism is an emergent phenomenon in our society. Now he&#8217;s back with the results of a study on how to reduce extremism. Martins creates a network model in which agents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-calculatin","category-nets-n-webs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}