nucleation

LIT-1034: Two Ways of Understanding Social Dynamics: Analyzing the Predictability of Emergence of Objects in Reddit r/place Dependent on Locality in Space and Time

2 min read

Properties4
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-13 (NOTE-725) from the arXiv PDF, v2 of 15 June 2022 (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.03563). A short, preliminary paper, worth reading only for its one suggestive contrast: on the 2017 canvas, a 3×3 local predictor recovers objects that spread by recolouring neighbours and misses designs coordinated off the canvas (THEORY-224). It has no baselines, and it models no participants, so it does not do what the exchange filed it for, estimating participants' reach. It is a pointer for QUESTION-084 and QUESTION-093, not evidence on them.
Tagscomplex-systems, social-science
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-725 — Adams, Fernandez & Witkowski — Two Ways of Understanding Social Dynamics
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-224 — Objects on a crowd-built canvas are of two kinds, those that spread by a local recolouring rule and are predictable from the canvas itself, and those copied from designs coordinated off the canvas, which local canvas dynamics do not predict

Graph View

Adams, A. M., Fernandez, J., & Witkowski, O. (2022). Two Ways of Understanding Social Dynamics: Analyzing the Predictability of Emergence of Objects in Reddit r/place Dependent on Locality in Space and Time. arXiv:2206.03563. ARXIV-2206.03563

Key takeaways

Read in full (NOTE-725).

  • Canvas-only. No annotations and no participant data. The 2017 canvas is treated as a 2D cellular automaton between 682 ten-minute snapshots.
  • Local rules. Radius-1 neighbourhood rules repeat more than radius-2 rules, possibly only because the space is smaller. No null model.
  • CNN on 3×3 patches. Prediction gets worse with horizon. It dips in the middle of the event while activity stays high.
  • Two kinds of object. At six hours the Blue Corner and German flags are partly recovered. The EU dove and the US flag, designs held off the canvas, are missed.
  • Thin evidence. There is no copy-the-last-frame baseline, no error bars, and the object contrast rests on one figure.

Why this is here

Registered for the r/place case (CASE-079). The exchange (A8) proposed it as a start on estimating how far different participants’ reach extends. The reading found that it does not do that. Its “locality” is a pixel’s spatial and temporal context on the canvas, and it models no participants. The filing summary (“different objects depend differently on spatial and temporal context”) was fair as far as it went. What the paper adds for the record is the contrast in THEORY-224: spreading objects are visible in the canvas’s own dynamics, and template-copied designs are not. That fits Litherland and Mørch (LIT-1037) on planning off the canvas, but it is illustrated, not measured.

Backlinks