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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."

1 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Multiagent Systems by mellifluous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This article is really describing modeling using multiagent systems. Though very simple multiagent systems may resemble cellular automata (such as Conway's Life), they are not the same thing. Though they have been described in very convenient graphical representations using grids in the article, agents can model more complex behavior and need not be determinisitic (i.e. they may have a random element).

    Another way to look at it is that cellular automata like Life use a single deterministic rule to govern the whole system. Agent-based systems, on the other hand, model goal-oriented behavior of the individual objects.

    Again, Conway's game can be viewed as a very special case of an simple agent system, but the spirit of what is being done with agent systems is typically more involved. Comparing these systems to Conway's game of Life may create an incorrect impression for those not familiar with agent programming.