The Dynamics of Concepts in a Homogeneous Community

The paper addresses informational interactions in a community and considers the dynamics of concepts that represent distribution of knowledge among the individuals. The evolution of a set of concepts maintained by a community is derived by the use of the concepts’ significance in the communication between “cognoscenti” and “dilettanti” and of birth-death processes. The dynamics of concepts depend on the allocation of communication resources and can be governed by an informational principle that requires minimum self-information of the set of concepts over a time horizon. With respect to that principle, the introduction of a new concept into a community’s disposal is shown to lead to a steady-state self-information, which is smaller than that before the introduction of the new concept.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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