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On the Consensus Threshold for the Opinion Dynamics of Krause-Hegselmann

Santo Fortunato
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Abstract

In the consensus model of Krause-Hegselmann, opinions are real numbers between 0 and 1 and two agents are compatible if the difference of their opinions is smaller than the confidence bound parameter ε. A randomly chosen agent takes the average of the opinions of all neighbouring agents which are compatible with it. We propose a conjecture, based on numerical evidence, on the value of the consensus threshold ε_c of this model. We claim that ε_c can take only two possible values, depending on the behaviour of the average degree d of the graph representing the social relationships, when the population N goes to infinity: if d diverges when N goes to infinity, ε_c equals the consensus threshold ε_i ~ 0.2 on the complete graph; if instead d stays finite when N goes to infinity, ε_c=1/2 as for the model of Deffuant et al.

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BibTeXRIS

Santo Fortunato. 2004-08-30. On the Consensus Threshold for the Opinion Dynamics of Krause-Hegselmann. https://doi.org/10.1142/s0129183105007078

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