Phase Transition of a Non-Linear Opinion Dynamics with Noisy Interactions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: d'Amore, Francesco, Clementi, Andrea, Natale, Emanuele
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author d'Amore, Francesco
Clementi, Andrea
Natale, Emanuele
author_facet d'Amore, Francesco
Clementi, Andrea
Natale, Emanuele
contents In several real \emph{Multi-Agent Systems} (MAS), it has been observed that only weaker forms of\emph{metastable consensus} are achieved, in which a large majority of agents agree on some opinion while other opinions continue to be supported by a (small) minority of agents. In this work, we take a step towards the investigation of metastable consensus for complex (non-linear) \emph{opinion dynamics} by considering the famous \undecided dynamics in the binary setting, which is known to reach consensus exponentially faster than the \voter dynamics. We propose a simple form of uniform noise in which each message can change to another one with probability $p$ and we prove that the persistence of a \emph{metastable consensus} undergoes a \emph{phase transition} for $p=\frac 16$. In detail, below this threshold, we prove the system reaches with high probability a metastable regime where a large majority of agents keeps supporting the same opinion for polynomial time. Moreover, this opinion turns out to be the initial majority opinion, whenever the initial bias is slightly larger than its standard deviation.On the contrary, above the threshold, we show that the information about the initial majority opinion is "lost" within logarithmic time even when the initial bias is maximum.Interestingly, using a simple coupling argument, we show the equivalence between our noisy model above and the model where a subset of agents behave in a \emph{stubborn} way.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2005_07423
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Phase Transition of a Non-Linear Opinion Dynamics with Noisy Interactions
d'Amore, Francesco
Clementi, Andrea
Natale, Emanuele
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Computational Complexity
Social and Information Networks
Probability
In several real \emph{Multi-Agent Systems} (MAS), it has been observed that only weaker forms of\emph{metastable consensus} are achieved, in which a large majority of agents agree on some opinion while other opinions continue to be supported by a (small) minority of agents. In this work, we take a step towards the investigation of metastable consensus for complex (non-linear) \emph{opinion dynamics} by considering the famous \undecided dynamics in the binary setting, which is known to reach consensus exponentially faster than the \voter dynamics. We propose a simple form of uniform noise in which each message can change to another one with probability $p$ and we prove that the persistence of a \emph{metastable consensus} undergoes a \emph{phase transition} for $p=\frac 16$. In detail, below this threshold, we prove the system reaches with high probability a metastable regime where a large majority of agents keeps supporting the same opinion for polynomial time. Moreover, this opinion turns out to be the initial majority opinion, whenever the initial bias is slightly larger than its standard deviation.On the contrary, above the threshold, we show that the information about the initial majority opinion is "lost" within logarithmic time even when the initial bias is maximum.Interestingly, using a simple coupling argument, we show the equivalence between our noisy model above and the model where a subset of agents behave in a \emph{stubborn} way.
title Phase Transition of a Non-Linear Opinion Dynamics with Noisy Interactions
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Computational Complexity
Social and Information Networks
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.07423