Autori
Vilone, Daniele
Michelini, Matteo
Polizzi, Eugenia

Titolo
Incentivi sociali o inquinamento epistemico? Un modello ad agenti sull’emergere di credenze antiscientifiche
Periodico
Sistemi intelligenti
Anno: 2025 - Fascicolo: 3 - Pagina iniziale: 391 - Pagina finale: 416

The emergence of bad beliefs – beliefs that blatantly conflict with readily available scientific evidence – has been attributed to two competing theories. One posits that people hold bad beliefs to gain social benefits from members of their social circle. The other points to a polluted epistemic environment that impairs people’s capacity to form accurate judgments. In this work, we compare the collective-level implications of both theories. Specifically, we use an agent-based simulation to explore the collective dynamics generated by two models: one where beliefs are shaped by social incentives, and one where beliefs are only influenced by the epistemic environment. We find that in the first model – the social model, a stable minority of agents holding bad beliefs consistently emerges, regardless of initial conditions or network structure. By contrast, in the epistemic model, bad-belief clusters appear only in highly fragmented communities or when fanatics are present. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of these results for the debate concerning bad beliefs.



SICI: 1120-9550(2025)3<391:ISOIEU>2.0.ZU;2-N
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1422/119080
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1422/119080

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