通过阈值级联造成的制度性伤害
Institutional Harm through Threshold Cascades
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中文总结 AI 辅助
研究个体无意伤害他人时制度结构导致有害集体结果的问题，通过开发阈值级联模型给出安全制度条件，扩展到有符号影响并揭示功能与安全界限，分析两组平均场模型发现同质性阈值影响无害状态稳定性。
中文摘要 AI 辅助
社会科学家长期认为，即使个体无意伤害他人，所处的制度结构也可能导致有害的集体结果，但现有解释大多是定性的，未给出区分安全与不安全制度的精确条件。本文开发了一个阈值级联模型，其中主体有正激活阈值，有害行为不可逆，制度在加权网络上施加持续压力和同伴影响。给出了一个从制度结构和成员阈值可检查的充分必要条件，用于抵抗给定规模内的任何冲击。该标准扩展到有符号影响，产生了最小成本修复的凸优化公式，揭示了功能与安全之间的鲜明界限。当协调需要对同伴影响做出响应时，会出现进一步的矛盾，这可能使防止最易受影响群体的级联变得不可能。然后分析了两组成员受伤害难易程度不同的平均场模型。当一组单独不稳定但系统在完全混合下稳定时，组内不成比例的影响会产生一个尖锐的同质性阈值，超过该阈值无害状态变得不稳定。在模型中，对两组的相同处理通常不会使它们的级联鲁棒性相等。
英文摘要
Can a population of people not individually inclined to harm others nonetheless produce harmful collective outcomes, purely because of the institutional structure they inhabit? Social scientists have long argued yes, but existing accounts are largely qualitative and provide no precise condition distinguishing safe institutions from unsafe ones. We develop a threshold cascade model in which agents have positive activation thresholds, harmful behavior is irreversible, and the institution exerts both standing pressure and peer influence along a weighted network. We give a necessary and sufficient condition, checkable from the institution's structure and its members' thresholds, for resistance to any shock up to a given size. The criterion extends to signed influence, in which some peer effects counteract harm, and yields a convex optimization formulation for least-cost repair. It also reveals a sharp frontier between functionality and safety. An institution can coordinate its members and remain safe if and only if the exposure that coordination creates stays below the weakest member's net threshold. A further tension arises when coordination requires responsiveness to peer influence, which can make it impossible to prevent the most exposed group from cascading. We then analyze a mean-field model of two groups differing in how easily their members are pushed into harm. When one group is unstable in isolation but the system is stable under full mixing, disproportionate within-group influence creates a sharp homophily threshold beyond which the harm-free state becomes unstable. In the model, identical treatment of both groups does not generally equalize their cascade robustness.
