Lecture
LCN2 seminar February 2026
- Date
- Friday 27 February 2026
- Time
- Address
- Gorlaeus
- Room
- BM. 2.26
70th LCN2 seminar
Speaker: Alexandru-Ionut Babeanu (LION)
Title: Exploring cultural complexity: from dynamical models to empirical structure
Abstract: We use a complex systems perspective to study "culture", which refers to the multitude of subjective, dynamical attributes, like opinions and preferences, characterizing a given (human) population. We first look at stylized models of cultural dynamics, driven by attribute-changing interactions between agents. Contemplating the potential use of such models for real-world forecasts, we examine what happens when such models are applied to empirically-specified initial states, where the agents' cultural profiles are based on the responses of real individuals in large-scale social surveys. We emphasize the constraining effect that empirical initial states have on the dynamics, which becomes rather predictable. This effect is independent of the data set from which the initial state is constructed, and the empirical structure responsible for it appears rather universal. We present a way of reproducing this type of structure, using a data-generating process based on mixing prototypes, which implements the idea that real-world culture is governed by an interplay of multiple, mixing rationalities. Cultural groups potentially induced by mixing rationalities are difficult to recognize using established clustering methods. We illustrate how random matrix methods allow for agnostic and statistically-robust identification of structural signals that may be informative of such cultural groups. This opens up a promising path to data-driven insights about the structure and dynamics of culture and other types of complex systems.
Snacks and drinks will be available after the seminar at the Fusiebar.