Misc,
The Emergence of Consensus
(2017)cite arxiv:1704.07767Comment: Comments welcome.
Abstract
The origin of population-scale coordination has puzzled philosophers and
scientists for centuries. Recently, game theory, evolutionary approaches and
complex systems science have provided quantitative insights on the mechanisms
of social consensus. This paper overviews the main dimensions over which the
debate has unfolded and discusses some representative results, with a focus on
those situations in which consensus emerges `spontaneously' in absence of
centralised institutions. Covered topics include the macroscopic consequences
of the different microscopic rules of behavioural contagion, the role of social
networks, and the mechanisms that prevent the formation of a consensus or alter
it after it has emerged. Special attention is devoted to the recent wave of
experiments on the emergence of consensus in social systems.
