Exploring the entropic nature of political polarization through its formulation as a isolated thermodynamic system.


Journal

Scientific reports
ISSN: 2045-2322
Titre abrégé: Sci Rep
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101563288

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
17 Mar 2023
Historique:
received: 08 10 2022
accepted: 14 03 2023
entrez: 18 3 2023
pubmed: 19 3 2023
medline: 19 3 2023
Statut: epublish

Résumé

Political polarization has become an alarming trend observed in various countries. In the effort to produce more consistent simulations of the process, insights from the foundations of physics are adopted. The work presented here looks at a simple model of political polarization amongst agents which influence their immediate locality and how a entropy trace of the political discourse can be produced. From this model an isolated system representation can be formulated in respect to the changes in the entropy values across all variables of the system over simulation time. It is shown that a constant entropy value for the system can be calculated so that as the agents coalesce their opinions, the entropy trace in regards to political engagements decreases as the entropy value across non-political engagements increase. This relies upon an intrinsic constraint upon agents imposing a fixed number of activities per time point. As a result the simulation respects the second law of thermodynamics and provides insight into political polarization as a basin of entropy within an isolated system without making assumptions about external activities.

Identifiants

pubmed: 36932289
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-31585-w
pii: 10.1038/s41598-023-31585-w
pmc: PMC10023742
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Pagination

4419

Subventions

Organisme : Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
ID : HR00112290104

Informations de copyright

© 2023. The Author(s).

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Auteurs

Alexander V Mantzaris (AV)

Department of Statistics and Data Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, 32816, USA. alexander.mantzaris@ucf.edu.

George-Rafael Domenikos (GR)

Laboratory of Applied Thermodynamics, Thermal Engineering Sector, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechniou 9, Zografou, 15780, Athens, Greece.

Classifications MeSH