Growing Artificial Societies

Growing Artificial Societies PDF Author: Joshua M. Epstein
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780262050531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
""Growing Artificial Societies" is a milestone in social science research. It vividly demonstrates the potential of agent-based computer simulation to break disciplinary boundaries. It does this by analyzing in a unified framework the dynamic interactions of such diverse activities as trade, combat, mating, culture, and disease. It is an impressive achievement." -- Robert Axelrod, University of Michigan How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? "Growing Artificial Societies" approaches this question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviors such as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are seen to "emerge" from the interaction of individual agents following a few simple rules. In their program, named Sugarscape, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a "bottom up" social science that is capturing the attention of researchers and commentators alike. The study is part of the 2050 Project, a joint venture of the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution. The project is an international effort to identify conditions for a sustainable global system in the next century and to design policies to help achieve such a system. "Growing Artificial Societies" is also available on CD-ROM, which includes about 50 animations that develop the scenarios described in the text. "Copublished with the Brookings Institution"

Growing Artificial Societies

Growing Artificial Societies PDF Author: Joshua M. Epstein
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780262050531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
""Growing Artificial Societies" is a milestone in social science research. It vividly demonstrates the potential of agent-based computer simulation to break disciplinary boundaries. It does this by analyzing in a unified framework the dynamic interactions of such diverse activities as trade, combat, mating, culture, and disease. It is an impressive achievement." -- Robert Axelrod, University of Michigan How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? "Growing Artificial Societies" approaches this question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviors such as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are seen to "emerge" from the interaction of individual agents following a few simple rules. In their program, named Sugarscape, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a "bottom up" social science that is capturing the attention of researchers and commentators alike. The study is part of the 2050 Project, a joint venture of the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution. The project is an international effort to identify conditions for a sustainable global system in the next century and to design policies to help achieve such a system. "Growing Artificial Societies" is also available on CD-ROM, which includes about 50 animations that develop the scenarios described in the text. "Copublished with the Brookings Institution"

Agent_Zero

Agent_Zero PDF Author: Joshua M. Epstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158886
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The Final Volume of the Groundbreaking Trilogy on Agent-Based Modeling In this pioneering synthesis, Joshua Epstein introduces a new theoretical entity: Agent_Zero. This software individual, or "agent," is endowed with distinct emotional/affective, cognitive/deliberative, and social modules. Grounded in contemporary neuroscience, these internal components interact to generate observed, often far-from-rational, individual behavior. When multiple agents of this new type move and interact spatially, they collectively generate an astonishing range of dynamics spanning the fields of social conflict, psychology, public health, law, network science, and economics. Epstein weaves a computational tapestry with threads from Plato, Hume, Darwin, Pavlov, Smith, Tolstoy, Marx, James, and Dostoevsky, among others. This transformative synthesis of social philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and agent-based modeling will fascinate scholars and students of every stripe. Epstein's computer programs are provided in the book or on its Princeton University Press website, along with movies of his "computational parables.? Agent_Zero is a signal departure in what it includes (e.g., a new synthesis of neurally grounded internal modules), what it eschews (e.g., standard behavioral imitation), the phenomena it generates (from genocide to financial panic), and the modeling arsenal it offers the scientific community. For generative social science, Agent_Zero presents a groundbreaking vision and the tools to realize it.

Generative Social Science

Generative Social Science PDF Author: Joshua M. Epstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400842875
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Agent-based computational modeling is changing the face of social science. In Generative Social Science, Joshua Epstein argues that this powerful, novel technique permits the social sciences to meet a fundamentally new standard of explanation, in which one "grows" the phenomenon of interest in an artificial society of interacting agents: heterogeneous, boundedly rational actors, represented as mathematical or software objects. After elaborating this notion of generative explanation in a pair of overarching foundational chapters, Epstein illustrates it with examples chosen from such far-flung fields as archaeology, civil conflict, the evolution of norms, epidemiology, retirement economics, spatial games, and organizational adaptation. In elegant chapter preludes, he explains how these widely diverse modeling studies support his sweeping case for generative explanation. This book represents a powerful consolidation of Epstein's interdisciplinary research activities in the decade since the publication of his and Robert Axtell's landmark volume, Growing Artificial Societies. Beautifully illustrated, Generative Social Science includes a CD that contains animated movies of core model runs, and programs allowing users to easily change assumptions and explore models, making it an invaluable text for courses in modeling at all levels.

Reputation in Artificial Societies

Reputation in Artificial Societies PDF Author: Rosaria Conte
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461511593
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Reputation In Artificial Societies discusses the role of reputation in the achievement of social order. The book proposes that reputation is an agent property that results from transmission of beliefs about how the agents are evaluated with regard to a socially desirable conduct. This desirable conduct represents one or another of the solutions to the problem of social order and may consist of cooperation or altruism, reciprocity, or norm obedience. Reputation In Artificial Societies distinguishes between image (direct evaluation of others) and reputation (propagating meta­belief, indirectly acquired) and investigates their effects with regard to both natural and electronic societies. The interplay between image and reputation, the processes leading to them and the set of decisions that agents make on their basis are demonstrated with supporting data from agent­based simulations.

Self-Organization in Biological Systems

Self-Organization in Biological Systems PDF Author: Scott Camazine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212929
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
The synchronized flashing of fireflies at night. The spiraling patterns of an aggregating slime mold. The anastomosing network of army-ant trails. The coordinated movements of a school of fish. Researchers are finding in such patterns--phenomena that have fascinated naturalists for centuries--a fertile new approach to understanding biological systems: the study of self-organization. This book, a primer on self-organization in biological systems for students and other enthusiasts, introduces readers to the basic concepts and tools for studying self-organization and then examines numerous examples of self-organization in the natural world. Self-organization refers to diverse pattern formation processes in the physical and biological world, from sand grains assembling into rippled dunes to cells combining to create highly structured tissues to individual insects working to create sophisticated societies. What these diverse systems hold in common is the proximate means by which they acquire order and structure. In self-organizing systems, pattern at the global level emerges solely from interactions among lower-level components. Remarkably, even very complex structures result from the iteration of surprisingly simple behaviors performed by individuals relying on only local information. This striking conclusion suggests important lines of inquiry: To what degree is environmental rather than individual complexity responsible for group complexity? To what extent have widely differing organisms adopted similar, convergent strategies of pattern formation? How, specifically, has natural selection determined the rules governing interactions within biological systems? Broad in scope, thorough yet accessible, this book is a self-contained introduction to self-organization and complexity in biology--a field of study at the forefront of life sciences research.

Social Physics

Social Physics PDF Author: Alex Pentland
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594205655
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A landmark tour of the new science of "idea flow" outlines revolutionary insights into the mysteries of collective intelligence and social influence, explaining the virtually unlimited data sets of today's digital technologies and the considerable accuracy of information from social networks.

Multi-Agent Programming:

Multi-Agent Programming: PDF Author: Rafael H. Bordini
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387892990
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Multi-Agent Systems are a promising technology to develop the next generation open distributed complex software systems. The main focus of the research community has been on the development of concepts (concerning both mental and social attitudes), architectures, techniques, and general approaches to the analysis and specification of multi-agent systems. This contribution has been fragmented, without any clear way of “putting it all together”, rendering it inaccessible to students and young researchers, non-experts, and practitioners. Successful multi-agent systems development is guaranteed only if we can bridge the gap from analysis and design to effective implementation. Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications presents a number of mature and influential multi-agent programming languages, platforms, development tools and methodologies, and realistic applications, summarizing the state of the art in an accessible manner for professionals and computer science students at all levels.

Higher Education in the Global Age

Higher Education in the Global Age PDF Author: Daniel Araya
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135042373
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Discussions on globalization now routinely focus on the economic impact of developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. Only twenty-five years ago, many developing countries were largely closed societies. Today, the growing power of “emerging markets” is reordering the geopolitical landscape. On a purchasing power parity basis, emerging economies now constitute half of the world’s economic activity. Financial markets too are seeing growing integration: Asia now accounts for 1/3 of world stock markets, more than double that of just 15 years ago. Given current trajectories, most economists predict that China and India alone will account for half of global output by 2050 (almost a complete return to their positions prior to the Industrial Revolution). How is higher education shaping and being shaped by these massive tectonic shifts? As education rises as a geopolitical priority, it has converged with discussions on economic policy and a global labor market. As part of the Routledge Studies in Emerging Societies series, this edited collection focuses on the globalization of higher education, particularly the increasing symbiosis between advanced and developing countries. Bringing together senior scholars, journalists, and practitioners from around the world, this collection explores the relatively new and changing higher education landscape.

Growing Explanations

Growing Explanations PDF Author: M. Norton Wise
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390086
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
For much of the twentieth century scientists sought to explain objects and processes by reducing them to their components—nuclei into protons and neutrons, proteins into amino acids, and so on—but over the past forty years there has been a marked turn toward explaining phenomena by building them up rather than breaking them down. This collection reflects on the history and significance of this turn toward “growing explanations” from the bottom up. The essays show how this strategy—based on a widespread appreciation for complexity even in apparently simple processes and on the capacity of computers to simulate such complexity—has played out in a broad array of sciences. They describe how scientists are reordering knowledge to emphasize growth, change, and contingency and, in so doing, are revealing even phenomena long considered elementary—like particles and genes—as emergent properties of dynamic processes. Written by leading historians and philosophers of science, these essays examine the range of subjects, people, and goals involved in changing the character of scientific analysis over the last several decades. They highlight the alternatives that fields as diverse as string theory, fuzzy logic, artificial life, and immunology bring to the forms of explanation that have traditionally defined scientific modernity. A number of the essays deal with the mathematical and physical sciences, addressing concerns with hybridity and the materials of the everyday world. Other essays focus on the life sciences, where questions such as “What is life?” and “What is an organism?” are undergoing radical re-evaluation. Together these essays mark the contours of an ongoing revolution in scientific explanation. Contributors. David Aubin, Amy Dahan Dalmedico, Richard Doyle, Claus Emmeche, Peter Galison, Stefan Helmreich, Ann Johnson, Evelyn Fox Keller, Ilana Löwy, Claude Rosental, Alfred Tauber

Collapse

Collapse PDF Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141976969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times