Researchers have found a simple mathematical rule that covers many human confrontations or struggles and can help predicting future abnormal behaviors in such situations.
In the present study, researchers analyzed more than 100,000 events and have noted simple mathematical formula called as “power-law” having the form AB-C that can explain many human confrontations that are apparently not connected to each other such as one-on-one fights, child-parent struggles, cyber-attacks, civil unrest etc.
Researchers have found that usually in a confrontation, there is/are a weaker human/humanity (e.g. cyber-hackers, insurgents, terrorists, protestors, ultrafast traders, infant) and a stronger human/humanity (respectively, the national infrastructure, incumbent army, security forces, ruling government, global stock holders, parent), and the weaker “manages to inflict a series of attacks that typically escalates (rises)”.
According to researchers, this mathematical formula can help in forecasting future behavior.
“By picking out a specific baby (and parent), and studying what actions of the parent make the child escalate or de-escalate its cries, we can understand better how to counteract cyber-attacks against a particular sector of U.S. cyber infrastructure, or how an outbreak of civil unrest in a given location (e.g. Syria) will play out, following particular government interventions,” Neil Johnson, corresponding author of the study, said in a statement.
Our findings provide quantitative predictions concerning future attacks; a tool to help detect common perpetrators and abnormal behaviors; insight into the trajectory of a ‘lone wolf’; identification of a critical threshold for spreading a message or idea among perpetrators; an intervention strategy to erode the most lethal clusters; and more broadly, a quantitative starting point for cross-disciplinary theorizing about human aggression at the individual and group level, in both real and online worlds.
Simple mathematical formula describes human struggles – EurekAlert (http://goo.gl/0NuAfK)
Neil F. Johnson et al. (2013). Simple mathematical law benchmarks human confrontations Scientific Reports DOI: 10.1038/srep03463