Doug, You wrote: > One will seldom, if ever get identical behavior from two different > codes, even if the inputs are identical. > > The emergent behavior that could be observed from EpiSims, The SIMS, and > Second Life, assuming the latter two could emulate responses to the > introduction of a viral pathogen, will vary based directly on the > differences of granularity with with the agents are implemented in the > simulations.
Given that the "agents" in The Sims and Second Life are avatars for real people, one could argue that their code is more realistic than agent code. Their granularity is basically as small as one can get - some MMORPGs allow for more than one character per player but they are still one character per character. One problem I can see would be that MMORPGs in general suffer from the lack of full participation - EpiSims models every second of human behaviour for a large population, but MMORPG players are not playing their avatars all of the time. I wonder if some combination would play to the strengths of both systems. Could one use something like EpiSims running at wall-clock speed as the background for avatars played by real people? Then the simulated people agent code could self-modify on the fly to model the behaviour of the real people. I'm starting to sound like the explanation of the fake Rock Ridge in "Blazing Saddles". -- Ray Parks [EMAIL PROTECTED] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA Department Mobile:505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
