Capacities for abstract thinking and problem‐solving are central to human cognition. Processes of abstraction allow the transfer of experiences and knowledge between contexts helping us make informed decisions in new or changing contexts. While we are often inclined to relate such reasoning capacities to individual minds and brains, they may in fact be contingent on human‐specific modes of collaboration, dialogue, and shared attention. In an experimental study, we test the hypothesis that social interaction enhances cognitive processes of rule‐induction, which in (...) turn improves problem‐solving performance. Through three sessions of increasing complexity, individuals and groups were presented with a problem‐solving task requiring them to categorize a set of visual stimuli. To assess the character of participants’ problem representations, after each training session, they were presented with a transfer task involving stimuli that differed in appearance, but shared relations among features with the training set. Besides, we compared participants’ categorization behaviors to simulated agents relying on exemplar learning. We found that groups performed superior to individuals and agents in the training sessions and were more likely to correctly generalize their observations in the transfer phase, especially in the high complexity session, suggesting that groups more effectively induced underlying categorization rules from the stimuli than individuals and agents. Crucially, variation in performance among groups was predicted by semantic diversity in members’ dialogical contributions, suggesting a link between social interaction, cognitive diversity, and abstraction. (shrink)

The article discusses the use of algorithmic models in finance. Algo trading is widespread but also somewhat controversial in modern financial markets. It is a form of automated trading technology, which critics claim can, among other things, lead to market manipulation. Drawing on three cases, this article shows that manipulation also can happen in the reverse way, meaning that human traders attempt to make algorithms ‘make mistakes’ by ‘misleading’ them. These attempts to manipulate are very simple and immediately transparent to (...) humans. Nevertheless, financial regulators increasingly penalize such attempts to manipulate algos. The article explains this as an institutionalization of algo trading, a trading practice which is vulnerable enough to need regulatory protection. (shrink)

This article examines the financial technology of derivatives. Derivatives are financial products whose values are based on possible fluctuations in the values of underlying assets. Hence derivatives markets are markets that trade in the risks of other markets. In order for derivatives markets to function, forms of prognostication that can assess the possible future fluctuations of the underlying markets are necessary. What such prognostications do, the article argues, is to create information out of future possibilities. Building upon a notion of (...) virtuality derived from Gilles Deleuze, Ulrich Beck and Niklas Luhmann, the article shows how market risks and uncertainties, by means of prognostications, cease to be mere possibilities and instead come to have virtual existence. Through the technology of derivatives, uncertainty and risk can be rendered virtual and be traded. The article suggests that this technology is an example of a new way in which capitalism is now expanding self-referentially as it creates markets out of markets; and of how it is colonizing the future by developing new technologies for ‘hyper-speculation’, that is, speculation not in the possible developments of a given asset but simply in the risk of such speculation. (shrink)

The article is an introduction to a special section in TCS on the work of Niklas Luhmann. The first part of the article provides a general introduction to Luhmann's work with an emphasis on the basic elements of Luhmann's general systems theory, in particular Luhmann's notions of autopoiesis and meaning, and the traditions on which it is based. The second part of the text is a presentation of the articles in the special section.

This article argues that new sites of knowledge production, increasingly cultivated by the mass media, are threatening the role of academics and universities as traditional sources of expertise. Drawing upon the conceptual categories of Pierre Bourdieu, the article suggests an alternative way of understanding this ‚crisis of legitimacy’.

This article examines the financial technology of derivatives. Derivatives are financial products whose values are based on possible fluctuations in the values of underlying assets. Hence derivatives markets are markets that trade in the risks of other markets. In order for derivatives markets to function, forms of prognostication that can assess the possible future fluctuations of the underlying markets are necessary. What such prognostications do, the article argues, is to create information out of future possibilities. Building upon a notion of (...) virtuality derived from Gilles Deleuze, Ulrich Beck and Niklas Luhmann, the article shows how market risks and uncertainties, by means of prognostications, cease to be mere possibilities and instead come to have virtual existence. Through the technology of derivatives, uncertainty and risk can be rendered virtual and be traded. The article suggests that this technology is an example of a new way in which capitalism is now expanding self-referentially as it creates markets out of markets; and of how it is colonizing the future by developing new technologies for ‘hyper-speculation’, that is, speculation not in the possible developments of a given asset but simply in the risk of such speculation. (shrink)

This article reflects on some themes in Harrison White’s work in the context of China, where the social and cultural construction of markets is quite literal. We explore how we get markets where previously there were no markets and draw on White’s central themes of ‘uncertainty’, ‘value’ and ‘order’. We maintain a distinction, with White and with Frank Knight, of risk, on the one hand, and uncertainty, on the other, where ‘risk’ has to do with entities that are in principle (...) insurable or calculable and ‘uncertainty’ has to do with what is not calculable/insurable. An entrepreneur’s decision to enter a market, to invest in and enter a production market, entails what White calls a ‘commitment to facilities’. This, for White and Knight, is inherently incalculable, and hence uncertain. (shrink)

This article reflects on some themes in Harrison White’s work in the context of China, where the social and cultural construction of markets is quite literal. We explore how we get markets where previously there were no markets and draw on White’s central themes of ‘uncertainty’, ‘value’ and ‘order’. We maintain a distinction, with White and with Frank Knight, of risk, on the one hand, and uncertainty, on the other, where ‘risk’ has to do with entities that are in principle (...) insurable or calculable and ‘uncertainty’ has to do with what is not calculable/insurable. An entrepreneur’s decision to enter a market, to invest in and enter a production market, entails what White calls a ‘commitment to facilities’. This, for White and Knight, is inherently incalculable, and hence uncertain. (shrink)