Bounded Confidence: A deceptively simple model

My talk will discuss the so called bounded confidence model (BC-model, for short). The model is very simple: Period by period, all agents average over all opinions that are not further away from their actual opinion than a given distance Epsilon, their `bound of confidence‘. The simplicity of the model is deceptive. Two decades ago, Ulrich Krause and I published an analysis of the model in which we overlooked completely a decisive feature of our model: For increasing values of Epsilon, our analysis back then suggests smooth transitions in the model’s behavior. But in fact, the transitions are wild, chaotic, and non-monotonic. In my talk I will present a completely novel approach to analyse the BC-model. In the new approach everything we overlooked at the time becomes directly obvious and, in a sense, unmissable.

Presential in the IFISC seminar room, Zoom stream at https://zoom.us/j/98286706234?pwd=bm1JUFVYcTJkaVl1VU55L0FiWDRIUT09