Tag: Network approach

  • Playing with Worlds

    If we must play with toy worlds to see if we can mimic the “natural condition” of Hobbes, it is good to see whether our ambitions run into obstacles, Mr. Sum thought. I discuss how I proceeded. I started by choosing a geographic area that is composed of a number of (for the time being…

  • More is Different

    In 1993, Mr Sum witnessed how the internet turned the world upside down. This happened in the period from 1980, when he as an individual from the academic elite had access to it, until 1993 when everyone could use it to make his thoughts accessible to everyone else. That led to an explosive growth of…

  • What’s it about?

    Elsewhere it says: Mister Node may be right in assuming that taking measures against the spread of the COVID-19 virus often results in a move towards a forest fire architecture. That comment is about the meaning of the architecture of networks. In forest fires, this is determined by the distance between trees. A network can…

  • Two types of networks

    Networks are strange things, Mr. Node thought. It seems like there are two types of them. One for forest fires and one for logistics. The networks that arise when you strive for an average R0 value create the dynamics of the forest fire: By R0 = 1, most trees are too far apart to light…

  • A world filled with jurisdictions

    Anyone who wants to create a toy world that can be used to simulate how regulations work and are developed internationally needs at least a sort of sandbox in which geo-political structures can be sketched, and with that the infrastructure channels that can be used in cross-border trade. So areas have to be demarcated, boundaries…

  • Reconstruction

    I repeat: my name is Nobody, I am a virus and I infected 3 people in Wuhan on January 4. Around April 3 in Oegstgeest, the Netherlands, Mister Node wondered not only how I managed to reach and infect his near neighbor in 90 days, but whether thinking about the six-degrees of separation conjecture helps.…

  • Impulses and so on

    Understanding has to do with the abilities to recognize patterns, to describe them and to reason with them. Evolution is about resilience, not truth. Resilience also depends on the ability to interpret concepts in the short and long term — as the art of distinguishing liquidity and equity positions. And distinguish sufficiently clear that choices…

  • Mathematical and algorithmic models

    Anyone who wants to show how forces work in inanimate nature gets a long way by assuming that laws are universal and unchanging. This assumption often makes it possible to translate findings into the language of mathematics — the language of numbers. This has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that you can write down…

  • March 14, Oegstgeest

    It is March 14. Corona (COVID-19) has reached Oegstgeest and infected two villagers. We, in our 70s with problems, prefer house arrest with the acceptance of carefully protected purchasing and cycling leaves. The protection consists of not letting anyone in and wearing disposable latex gloves outside. We expect that it will take at least 2…

  • Meshes: wheels, trees, buses and clusters

    One way to look at the jumble of posts in this blog is like a messy network: a group of observations and insights (the nodes) that, it often seems, are connected randomly. That tangle network is (as I imagine) being represented and updated somewhere in my brain. From there it offers stories to my consciousness…