Zombie politics: evolutionary algorithms to counteract the spread of negative opinions

Abstract

This paper is about simulating the spread of opinions in a society and about finding ways to counteract that spread. To abstract away from potentially emotionally laden opinions, we instead simulate the spread of a zombie outbreak in a society. The virus causing this outbreak is different from traditional approaches: it not only causes a binary outcome (healthy vs infected) but rather a continuous outcome. To counteract the outbreak, a discrete number of infection-level specific treatments is available. This corresponds to acts of mild persuasion or the threats of legal action in the opinion spreading use case. This paper offers a genetic and a cultural algorithm that find the optimal mixture of treatments during the run of the simulation. They are assessed in a number of different scenarios. It is shown, that albeit far from being perfect, the cultural algorithm delivers superior performance at lower computational expense.

Rumor propagation meets skepticism: A parallel with zombies

“…For example, agents recovering after being removed, or the inclusion of demographic effects, may help avoiding the absorbing states, keep some degree of coexistence in the now fluctuating population and perhaps unveil new phenomena. Indeed, by reinserting stiflers back into the susceptible compartment [25] one obtains a cyclic model with four possible strategies (see Refs. [26,27] and references therein) where other coexisting states may be possible.…”

Skepticism and rumor spreading: The role of spatial correlations

“…Reference [39] emphasized that the mechanism used by skeptical agents to individually counteract the propagation of rumors is similar to the pop-culture scenarios for a zombie outbreak (both rumors and zombies may be directly eliminated by susceptibles agents). Such a picture has been previously used to communicate the science of real epidemics and the advantages of preparedness [43], while also motivating some theoretical studies [40][41][42]. On a global level, the current dissemination of pseudoscience and disinformation, along with the widespread phenomenon of authorities discrediting scientists (e.g., the recent climate emergency and coronavirus epidemic), everything facilitated by our technology, is the equivalent of a zombie apocalypse.…”

“…[39] between this bidirectional mechanism with the pop-culture concept of zombies and the related apocalypse. Interestingly, several mathematical models have been studied considering such apocalyptic scenarios [40][41][42]. Our model has an analogous mathematical structure, albeit its interpretation does not deal with the living dead but, instead, with the current crisis where fake news and disinformation may be out of control with profound consequences.…”

“…[39] and consider results for (i) the pair approximation that improves on the mean-field analysis and (ii) an agentbased version on one-and two-dimensional regular lattices and complex networks (random and scale free). Interestingly, there is a similarity between the behavior of skeptical agents in our model [39] and the mechanism introduced in the context of a zombie outbreak [40][41][42], whose analogy with real pandemics was previously explored for didactic purposes [43,44].…”

Skepticism and rumor spreading: the role of spatial correlations

“…[39] and consider results for i) the pair-approximation that improves on the mean-field analysis and ii) an agent-based version on one-and two-dimensional regular lattices and complex networks (random and scale-free). Interestingly, there is a similarity between the behavior of skeptical agents in our model [39] and the mechanism introduced in the context of a zombie outbreak [40][41][42], whose analogy with real pandemics have been previously explored for didac-tic purposes [43,44].…”