On Interpretational Questions for Quantum-Like Modeling of Social Lasing

Abstract

The recent years were characterized by increasing interest to applications of the quantum formalism outside physics, e.g., in psychology, decision-making, socio-political studies. To distinguish such approach from quantum physics, it is called quantum-like. It is applied to modeling socio-political processes on the basis of the social laser model describing stimulated amplification of social actions. The main aim of this paper is establishing the socio-psychological interpretations of the quantum notions playing the basic role in lasing modeling. By using the Copenhagen interpretation and the operational approach to the quantum formalism, we analyze the notion of the social energy. Quantum formalizations of such notions as a social atom, s-atom, and an information field are presented. The operational approach based on the creation and annihilation operators is used. We also introduce the notion of the social color of information excitations representing characteristics linked to lasing coherence of the type of collimation. The Bose–Einstein statistics of excitations is coupled with the bandwagon effect, one of the basic effects of social psychology. By using the operational interpretation of the social energy, we present the thermodynamical derivation of this quantum statistics. The crucial role of information overload generated by the modern mass-media is emphasized. In physics laser’s resonator, the optical cavity, plays the crucial role in amplification. We model the functioning of social laser’s resonator by “distilling” the physical scheme from connection with optics. As the mathematical basis, we use the master equation for the density operator for the quantum information field.