I wonder if I’m misunderstanding something, or if you are.
Imagine a totalitarian society with one supreme leader. Drawing a simple graph of that, there’s one node at the top, connected to many nodes at the bottom. A tree. It seems to me that a tree is neither nested nor modular. If you want to identify freedom with nestedness, and autocracy with modularity, doesn’t this pose a problem?
First, “nestedness” is associated with being mutually beneficial; freedom is just one possible benefit.
I don’t know how your star graph would be measured. If the authors had published their definitions of nestedness and modularity, then I could compute the answer; but they didn’t. But I wouldn’t worry about that graph; it’s ambiguous because it’s small and simple; and it’s unlikely to describe any society, even a tribal one, for the same reason.
The issue isn’t the single special case of the star graph.
If you have a graph that is very centralized—a few “central” nodes have a lot of neighbors, and most of the edges are between “central” and “periphery” nodes—that’s not a star, but it’s “star-like.” Are such graphs nested or aren’t they?
I would imagine that certain kinds of exploitative human relationships are “star-like.”
I would imagine that certain kinds of exploitative human relationships are “star-like.”
Yes, definitely. Sorry, I don’t know the answer. The authors didn’t provide an email address, and neither of their University homepages have any contact information. They provided actual physical addresses, but I’m far too lazy for that.
I wonder if I’m misunderstanding something, or if you are.
Imagine a totalitarian society with one supreme leader. Drawing a simple graph of that, there’s one node at the top, connected to many nodes at the bottom. A tree. It seems to me that a tree is neither nested nor modular. If you want to identify freedom with nestedness, and autocracy with modularity, doesn’t this pose a problem?
First, “nestedness” is associated with being mutually beneficial; freedom is just one possible benefit.
I don’t know how your star graph would be measured. If the authors had published their definitions of nestedness and modularity, then I could compute the answer; but they didn’t. But I wouldn’t worry about that graph; it’s ambiguous because it’s small and simple; and it’s unlikely to describe any society, even a tribal one, for the same reason.
The issue isn’t the single special case of the star graph. If you have a graph that is very centralized—a few “central” nodes have a lot of neighbors, and most of the edges are between “central” and “periphery” nodes—that’s not a star, but it’s “star-like.” Are such graphs nested or aren’t they?
I would imagine that certain kinds of exploitative human relationships are “star-like.”
Yes, definitely. Sorry, I don’t know the answer. The authors didn’t provide an email address, and neither of their University homepages have any contact information. They provided actual physical addresses, but I’m far too lazy for that.