No próximo dia 28 de Novembro de 2019, pelas 11h00 no Anfiteatro 2 do DCC (FC6 0.29), o Professor Francisco C. Santos irá dar uma palestra intitulada "The climate action game: cooperation and self-organization in an uncertain world".
A palestra é organizada pelo DCC-FCUP e pelo grupo de investigação CRACS-INESCTEC e é aberta a todos os interessados.
Short Bio:
Francisco C. Santos is associate professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of IST, University of Lisbon and senior researcher of the Group on AI for People and Society (GAIPS/INESC-ID). He obtained a PhD in computer science from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (AI Lab, IRIDIA-ULB and Machine Learning Group, Brussels, 2007). His research interests are in the development of computational tools to understand collective dynamics in social and life sciences. He works on algorithms for dealing with large-scale population dynamics and complex networks, with applications in evolutionary biology, environmental governance, socio-ecological systems, urban dynamics, and social robotics.
Title
"The climate action game: cooperation and self-organization in an uncertain world"
Abtract
When attempting to avoid global warming, individuals often face a social dilemma in which, besides securing future benefits, it is also necessary to reduce the chances of future losses. In this talk, I will resort to game theory and populations of adaptive agents to offer a behavioral model of this type of dilemmas, in which the risk of failure plays a central role in individual decisions. This model can be shown to capture some of the essential features discovered in recent key experiments, while allowing one to extend in non-trivial ways the experimental conditions to regions of practical interest. This approach also leads us to identify useful parallels between ecological and socio-economic systems, particularly in what concerns the evolution and self-organization of their institutions. Our results suggest that global coordination for a common good should be attempted through a polycentric structure of multiple small-scale agreements, in which perception of risk is high and uncertainty in collective goals is minimized. Whenever the perception of risk is low, our results indicate that sanctioning institutions may significantly enhance the chances of coordinating to tame the planet’s climate, as long as they are implemented in a decentralized manner. If time allows, I will also discuss the impact on public goods dilemmas of heterogeneous political networks and wealth inequality, including a distribution of wealth representative of existing inequalities among nations. Finally, I will provide theoretical and empirical insights on the impact of scientific uncertainty — both in what concerns the collective targets and the time window available for action — on individuals’ strategies and on the emergence of polarised of preferences.