Simon Dedeo
Biographic Data
| ID | 137253 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simon Dedeo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simon |
| FAMILY NAME | Dedeo |
| SIGNATURE | DEDEO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Santa Fe Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5346-9393 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Sameness entices, but novelty enchants in fanfiction online
Cultural evolution is driven by how we choose what to consume and share with others. A common belief is that the cultural artifacts that succeed are the ones that balance novelty and conventionality. This “balance theory” suggests that people prefer works that are familiar, but not so familiar as to be boring; novel, but not so novel as to violate the expectations of their genre. We test this idea using a large dataset of fanfiction, a unique dat…
Public Patterns in Private Writing
Diaries seem to contain almost anything; how could it be otherwise, given the diversity of their authors, the variety of contexts in which they are authored, and the range of reasons for authoring them? But examining diaries en masse , using computationally assisted reading, discloses large‐scale commonalities obscured by the local variance. The Russophone diarists we examine appear to have a strong (if perhaps tacit) sense of the kind of reflect…
Prediction, Explanation, and Control
The abilities to predict, explain, and control might arise out of operations on a common underlying representation or, conversely, from independent cognitive processes. We developed a novel experimental paradigm to explore how individuals might use probabilistic mental models in these three tasks, under varying levels of complexity and uncertainty. Participants interacted with a simple chatbot defined by a finite-state machine, and were then test…
Large language models in the labyrinth
Epistemic phase transitions in mathematical proofs
Mathematical proofs are both paradigms of certainty and some of the most explicitly-justified arguments that we have in the cultural record. Their very explicitness, however, leads to a paradox, because the probability of error grows exponentially as the argument expands. When a mathematician encounters a proof, how does she come to believe it? Here we show that, under a cognitively-plausible belief formation mechanism combining deductive and abd…
Divergence and the Complexity of Difference in Text and Culture
Measuring how much two documents differ is a basic task in the quantitative analysis of text. Because difference is a complex, interpretive concept, researchers often operationalize difference as distance, a mathematical function that represents documents through a metaphor of physical space. Yet the constraints of that metaphor mean that distance can only capture some of the ways that documents can relate to each other. We show how a more genera…
State power and elite autonomy in a networked civil society
In response to failures of central planning, the Chinese government has experimented not only with free-market trade zones, but with allowing non-profit foundations to operate in a decentralized fashion. A network study shows how these foundations have connected together by sharing board members, in a structural parallel to what is seen in corporations in the United States and Europe. This board interlocking leads to the emergence of an elite gro…
No prominent works on this page.
State power and elite autonomy in a networked civil society
In response to failures of central planning, the Chinese government has experimented not only with free-market trade zones, but with allowing non-profit foundations to operate in a decentralized fashion. A network study shows how these foundations have connected together by sharing board members, in a structural parallel to what is seen in corporations in the United States and Europe. This board interlocking leads to the emergence of an elite gro…
Divergence and the Complexity of Difference in Text and Culture
Measuring how much two documents differ is a basic task in the quantitative analysis of text. Because difference is a complex, interpretive concept, researchers often operationalize difference as distance, a mathematical function that represents documents through a metaphor of physical space. Yet the constraints of that metaphor mean that distance can only capture some of the ways that documents can relate to each other. We show how a more genera…
Epistemic phase transitions in mathematical proofs
Mathematical proofs are both paradigms of certainty and some of the most explicitly-justified arguments that we have in the cultural record. Their very explicitness, however, leads to a paradox, because the probability of error grows exponentially as the argument expands. When a mathematician encounters a proof, how does she come to believe it? Here we show that, under a cognitively-plausible belief formation mechanism combining deductive and abd…
Prediction, Explanation, and Control
The abilities to predict, explain, and control might arise out of operations on a common underlying representation or, conversely, from independent cognitive processes. We developed a novel experimental paradigm to explore how individuals might use probabilistic mental models in these three tasks, under varying levels of complexity and uncertainty. Participants interacted with a simple chatbot defined by a finite-state machine, and were then test…
Large language models in the labyrinth
Sameness entices, but novelty enchants in fanfiction online
Cultural evolution is driven by how we choose what to consume and share with others. A common belief is that the cultural artifacts that succeed are the ones that balance novelty and conventionality. This “balance theory” suggests that people prefer works that are familiar, but not so familiar as to be boring; novel, but not so novel as to violate the expectations of their genre. We test this idea using a large dataset of fanfiction, a unique dat…
Public Patterns in Private Writing
Diaries seem to contain almost anything; how could it be otherwise, given the diversity of their authors, the variety of contexts in which they are authored, and the range of reasons for authoring them? But examining diaries en masse , using computationally assisted reading, discloses large‐scale commonalities obscured by the local variance. The Russophone diarists we examine appear to have a strong (if perhaps tacit) sense of the kind of reflect…
Computer Science (5 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Engineering (2 works) · Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI (2 works) · Linguistics (2 works) · Political science (2 works) · Psychology (2 works) · Sociology (2 works) · Advanced Text Analysis Techniques (1 work)