From Spins to Traders: Model Transfer and Other Issues in the Philosophy of Science
The DEMS Economics Seminar series is proud to host
Patricia Palatios
(University of Salzburg)
ABSTRACT
Is there a common ground between the behavior of a flock of starlings and the polarization of opinions within human communities? Can we represent traders in a financial market just like spins in a magnet? For years, scientists have conjectured that a certain type of collective behavior ubiquitous in nature adheres to common principles, which can be captured by the physics of criticality. Originally, this idea was largely speculative, but the last three decades have witnessed an increase in the number of concrete models in biology and socioeconomics that rely on the physics of criticality. Although plenty of resources are currently spent in the hope that physics can help us prevent unwanted coordinated events, such as population collapse, political radicalization, or stock market crashes, the foundations for transferring physics to other sciences remain unclear. In this talk, I will address these questions by stressing the limits and strengths of the export of the physics of criticality to socioeconomic sciences.
The seminar will be in presence, Room 4096 - Building U7