Regensburg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 14: Computational Social Science
SOE 14.3: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 7. September 2022, 16:00–16:15, H11
Idea engines: Innovation & obsolescence in markets, genetic evolution, science — •Edward Lee1, Christopher Kempes2, and Geoffrey West2 — 1Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Vienna, Austria — 2Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, USA
Innovation and obsolescence describe dynamics of ever-churning and adapting systems from the development of economic markets and scientific progress to biological evolution. The shared aspect is that agents destroy and extend the "idea lattice" in which they live, finding new possibilities and rendering old solutions irrelevant. We focus on this aspect with a simple model to study the central relationship between the rates at which replicating agents discover new ideas and at which old ideas are rendered obsolete. When the rates match, the space of the possible (e.g. ideas, markets, technologies, mutations) is static. A positive or negative difference distinguishes flourishing, ever-expanding idea lattices from Schumpeterian dystopias in which the system collapses. We map the phase space in terms of rates at which agents enter, replicate, and die. With higher dimensions, cooperative agents, or obsolescence-driven innovation, we find that the essential features of the model are preserved. In all cases, we predict a density profile of agents that drops close to new and old frontiers. With data, we reveal that the density signals a follow-the-leader dynamic in firm cost efficiency and biological evolution, whereas scientific progress reflects consensus that waits on old ideas to go obsolete. We show how the fundamental forces of innovation and obsolescence provide a unifying perspective on complex systems.