I think Marcus gets to the problem. I want agents that can create new agents that have new functionality -- or equivalently modify their own functionality in new ways. I don't see how NetLogo lets you do that. You need the ability to manipulate the rules themselves. Just creating a class of agents that you call rules doesn't do that. It doesn't provide a way to create new functionality.
As Marcus said, think of it as having an agent with a built-in Genetic Programming system that it can use to generate and test possible rules. When it finds good ones, it either creates a new agent with those rules or it replaces its own rules with that new rule set. I don't see how NetLogo lets you do that without building an awful lot of new stuff. -- Russ On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[email protected]>wrote: > > > In this case the object labeled "rule" is still the same, but only > because the effect of the rule has been altered within the agent, which for > metaphorical purposes should be sufficient. > > I'd say it comes down to whether or not predicate/action pairs can be > defined on the fly. So long as there a way to make new functions that test > for things and also can describe new > states of the world (of which one part is more predicate/action pairs), > then it should work fine for hybrid genetic programming / ABM. I'd put > this under the general category of `rewriting systems'. > > There is an important practical difference between, say, forking the GCC > compiler every time a variant agent is proposed, versus having lightweight > just-in-time native code compilation from first class programming language > objects. You can crudely approximate the latter with more and more ad-hoc > hacks (like you mention) in almost any kind of programming or modeling > environment, but why not use tools well suited to the job? In the end an > ad-hoc interpreter for will be clumsy and slow compared to the work of > programming language implementors who spend years on design, tuning and > optimization. > Marcus > > > ============================================================ > 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 >
============================================================ 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
