Simulating Societies

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."

Comments

Issac Asimov's Harry Seldon

[darkonc]

This reminds me of Seldon's statistical sociology work in the Foundation series (most explicitly in the first book) -- where he expounds that, as a large group, people are statistically very predictible, and reasonably controlable as a result.

Other large scale societal modeling took place with The Club of Rome's Limits to Growth -- It used the SIMULA simulation language to investigate such questions as population growth, resource usage, environmental degradation and capital investment as co-related variables. They came to some very interesting (and even disturbing) conclusions.