High Entropy Alloys as a new metaphor in sociophysics

TL;DR

This paper proposes using the physical principles of High Entropy Alloys to develop new sociophysical models, expanding the metaphor beyond traditional magnetization-based approaches to encompass a broader range of social phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analogy between High Entropy Alloys and social systems, offering new tools and perspectives for modeling complex social interactions.

Findings

Calculated characteristics of HEA systems and their social mappings

Demonstrated potential for broader social concept modeling

Extended sociophysics metaphor beyond magnetization

Abstract

Most of the opinion dynamics models in sociophysics have their historic origin in studies two-dimensional magnetization phenomena. This metaphor has proven quite useful, as it allowed to use well known techniques, relating individual behaviours of single spins and their interactions, to large scale properties, such as magnetization or magnetic domains creation. These physical properties were then ``mapped'' to social concepts: spin orientation to a person's views on a specific issue, magnetization to global opinion on the issue, etc. During the past 20 years, the models were significantly expanded, using more complex individual agent characteristics and even more complex types of the interactions, but the power of the metaphor remained unchanged. In the current paper we propose to use a new physical system as the basis for new ideas in sociophysics. We shall argue that the concepts and tools devoted to studies of High Entropy Alloys (HEAs) could significantly broaden the range of social concepts ``addressable'' by sociophysics, by focusing on a wider range of global phenomena, arising from atomic properties, interactions and arrangements. We illustrate the new idea by calculating a few characteristics of a simple HEA system and their possible ``mapping'' into social concepts.