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  "slug": "ignorance-as-a-firewall-formalizing-functional-ignorance-for-systemic-stability-",
  "title": "Ignorance as a Firewall: Formalizing Functional Ignorance for Systemic Stability in Social Networks",
  "authors": [
    "Rowan Brad Quni-Gudzinas"
  ],
  "abstract": "Social systems frequently encounter truthful yet destabilizing information that can trigger panic, market crashes, or rapid opinion polarization. Existing interventions such as link deletion or bot mitigation are blunt and only partially effective. This paper fills the gap by constructing an analytical multilayer network model of belief exchange and introducing a functional ignorance heuristic that probabilistically suppresses the transmission of high‑impact truths. Deriving a reproduction‑number‑based threshold, we show that a suppression rate exceeding q^⋆=2/3 (i.e., discarding more than two‑thirds of destabilizing messages) drives the effective reproduction number below unity, guaranteeing subcritical cascades. An evolutionary‑stability analysis yields the condition c<pL for the heuristic to resist invasion by full‑transparency strategies. A worked example demonstrates that, under this suppression rate, a group’s capacity to absorb simultaneous revelations rises from six to twenty. Finally, we compare endogenous suppression with structural link deletion, showing that the latter’s elasticity is approximately one, whereas functional ignorance achieves a multiplicative reduction in cascade growth. These results suggest that platform moderators, corporate crisis managers, and policy makers can achieve systemic stability by embedding low‑cost, probabilistic ignorance mechanisms rather than resorting to costly network rewiring.",
  "abstract_markdown": "Social systems frequently encounter truthful yet destabilizing information that can trigger panic, market crashes, or rapid opinion polarization. Existing interventions such as link deletion or bot mitigation are blunt and only partially effective. This paper fills the gap by constructing an analytical multilayer network model of belief exchange and introducing a *functional ignorance* heuristic that probabilistically suppresses the transmission of high‑impact truths. Deriving a reproduction‑number‑based threshold, we show that a suppression rate exceeding \\(q^{\\star}=2/3\\) (i.e., discarding more than two‑thirds of destabilizing messages) drives the effective reproduction number below unity, guaranteeing subcritical cascades. An evolutionary‑stability analysis yields the condition \\(c<pL\\) for the heuristic to resist invasion by full‑transparency strategies. A worked example demonstrates that, under this suppression rate, a group’s capacity to absorb simultaneous revelations rises from six to twenty. Finally, we compare endogenous suppression with structural link deletion, showing that the latter’s elasticity is approximately one, whereas functional ignorance achieves a multiplicative reduction in cascade growth. These results suggest that platform moderators, corporate crisis managers, and policy makers can achieve systemic stability by embedding low‑cost, probabilistic ignorance mechanisms rather than resorting to costly network rewiring.",
  "date": "2026-10-21",
  "first_published": "2026-10-21",
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  "url": "https://papers.qnfo.org/papers/ignorance-as-a-firewall-formalizing-functional-ignorance-for-systemic-stability-",
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    "titles": [
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        "title": "Ignorance as a Firewall: Formalizing Functional Ignorance for Systemic Stability in Social Networks"
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