Structural Balance Theory is an 80 year old psychological theory that suggests some networks of relationships are more stable than others in a society. Specifically, the theory deals with positive and negative links between three individuals, where 'the friend of my enemy is my enemy' is more stable (and therefore more common) than 'the friend of my friend is my enemy'.
It's so interesting to see how complex actions can be modeled using, in this instance, Pardus, an online massively multi player game, to show how social interactions work from a mathematical perceptive. In Conway's Game of Life, complexity issues forth when simple rules are combined with recursion, thus creating evolving processes remarkably similar to how life operates on planet earth.
"If we define a religion to be a system of thought that contains unprovable statements, so it contains an element of faith, then Gödel has taught us that not only is mathematics a religion but it is the only religion able to prove itself to be one." - John Barrow, Pi in the Sky, 1992
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