What kind of explanation of social behavior would satisfy you?
On Jun 26, 2007, at 8:31 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
Epstein has a new book and MIT Tech Review are running an article
on artificial societies on the back of it
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18880/page1/
And again, there's that old chestnut: these models explain, not
predict. Do we still believe this? I agree - they do not predict,
but do they even explain? I'm getting increasingly troubled about
this whole notion that the rules the researcher puts in the agents
actually have some sort of analog in actual people. Even when
conclusions are presented as "this is AN explanation" not "this is
THE explanation", I suspect that the ABM researcher is being
somewhat optimistic.
So what is the relationship between the rules in the artificial
agents and the rules in real people?
Robert
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
