Social Dynamics

Brian Skyrms is Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and Economics at the University of California, Irvine. His interests cover a range of topics, including the evolution of conventions, the social contract, inductive logic, decision theory, rational deliberation, the metaphysics of logical atomism, causality, and truth. He is the author of Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information (OUP, 2010) and From Zeno to Arbitrage: Essays on Quantity. Coherence, and Induction (OUP, 2012).

Introduction
Part I: Correlation and the Social Contract
Introduction to part I
1. Evolution and the Social Contract
Part II: Importance of Dynamics
Introduction to part II
2. Trust, Risk, and the Social Contract
3. Bargaining with Neighbors: Is Justice Contagious?, with Jason Alexander
4. Stability and Explanatory Significance of Some Simple Evolutionary Models
5. Dynamics of Conformist Bias
6. Chaos and the Explanatory Significance of Equilibrium: Strange Attractors in Evolutionary Game Dynamics
7. Evolutionary Dynamics of Collective Action in N-person Stag Hunt Dilemmas, with Jorge Pacheco, Francisco Santos and Max Souza
8. Learning to Take Turns, with Peter Vanderschraaf
9. Evolutionary Considerations in the Framing of Social Norms, with Kevin Zollman
Part III: Dynamic Networks
Introduction to part III
10. Learning to Network, with Robin Pemantle
11. A Dynamic Model of Social Network Formation, with Robin Pemantle
12. Network Formation by Reinforcement Learning: The Long and the Medium Run, with Robin Pemantle
13. Time to Absorption in Discounted Reinforcement Models, with Robin Pemantle
Part IV: Dynamics of Signals
Introduction to part IV
14. Learning to Signal: Analysis of a Micro-Level Reinforcement Model, with Raffaele Argiento, Robin Pemantle and Stanislav Volkov
15. Inventing New Signals, with Jason McKenzie Alexander and Sandy L. Zabell
16. Signals, Evolution and the Explanatory Power of Transient Information
17. Co-Evolution of Pre-Play Signaling and Cooperation, with Francesco Santos and Jorge Pacheco
18. Evolution of Signaling Systems with Multiple Senders and Receivers
Index