Bounded Confidence Opinion Dynamics

Deffuant model: cluster formation & polarization

Model Parameters

Deffuant: At each step, pick random pair (i,j). If |x_i - x_j| < ε: x_i += μ(x_j-x_i), x_j += μ(x_i-x_j)

HK: All agents update simultaneously towards local average of neighbors within ε.

Critical ε:
ε ≈ 0.5: consensus
0.3 < ε < 0.5: 2 clusters
ε < 0.3: polarization