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Simulating Societies

Posted by michael on from the playing-by-the-rules dept.

blamanj writes "Most of us were exposed fairly early to Conway's game of Life. A few simple rules produce a fascinating variety of behavior. Now, it appears that similar simulations can predict the behavior of populations and human societies."

10 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Related links... by qurob · · Score: 2, Informative

    A couple more samples...

    Music created using the game of life

  2. Turing Machine by qurob · · Score: 2, Informative


    If you're into this stuff, this link is cool.

  3. Worked with these guys in college by XDG · · Score: 4, Informative
    I worked with Epstein and Axtell in college. The author's description of them is spot on, and they are both fantastic people.

    If you found this article interesting, their book is a great exposition of their early work with emergent behaviors. You can find it at Amazon here:

    Growing Artificial Societies

    There is a similar article on complexity and emergent behavior in the latest Harvard Business Review.

    -XDG

  4. Re:A pebble in the sky by fwc · · Score: 3, Informative
    Used on amazon from $2.00..

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345335635

    It is quite a good story, actually.

  5. Re:A pebble in the sky by ThePilgrim · · Score: 2, Informative

    Amazon Pebble in the sky has it on limited avalibilaty

    --
    Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
  6. Further discussion... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    can be found on the other site:

    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/1/55731/685 53

    where this link/story was posted 10 days ago.

  7. Re:Hari Seldon by squidfood · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...None of these models are reversible...

    Part of this is the convergence problem. There are a large number of Life patterns that lead to a blinker or a blank screen. Starting with the blinker won't take you back to them. This doesn't invalidate running forward and matching to results. The real problem is finding the initial conditions.

  8. Re:Do not use your more recent data to set your mo by sphealey · · Score: 3, Informative
    If you use the data say 1970 - 1985 for building your model, you can use 1986 - 2002 as the 'future' you are trying to predict.
    That might take care of the explict side (although I would argue that), but it does not address the subconscious bias of the modeler in creating the model - after all, we already know what happened during those time periods. Nor the problem of self-selection described by cyberon22 above.

    sPh

  9. Re:...who wrote a really horrible book... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I have to echo some of the above problems. My master's thesis research was an implementation of a Sugarscape-like system using discrete event simulation. In the course of it I found some things in Epstein and Axtell that were not, or should not have been, replicable from the information given in their book.

    I'll be presenting my research at the SCI 2002 conference in July. For more info on discrete event simulation check out www.acims.arizona.edu, and for my research, http://www.zaft.org/gordon/XeriScape/index.htm (although I've not posted my research results yet due to some hardware problems).

    Gordon Zaft

  10. Introspective Models by gnovos · · Score: 3, Informative

    The main problem with models like these is that they do not often take into account the dynamic nature of the "rules" that govern the simulated people. In the real world, people are able to change the rules that they live by, self-programming in a sense. For example, if we were to run a model that used the "rules" that governed race-relations in the 1800 and attempt to run that simulation forward to today, we would find that the end result is drastically different than the world we live in today, becuase the rules themlesves are evolving as the simulation moves forward. Maybe when simulating frog populations, this kind of rule-changing is less common, but when simulating people, it will always happen.

    People have the ability to see the broader picture and alter the way the work in it. For example, in the scenario from the article where any particular square bases it's actions on the squares next to it, a "human" square would base it's rules on the squares next to it, BUT also on the makup of the board as a whole.

    Once the simulators begin to allow the rules themselves to change, then we will see some really amazing results.

    --
    "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"