All,
I have tried to stay out of this discussion because I know even less about this
subject than usual, if such a thing is possible. But .....
Russ Abbott wrote:
In a service-oriented agent-based model the agents have the ability to
reconfigure themselves dynamically and perhaps even to add new agents and new
stock nodes. In a stocks and flows model, the structure of the network static.
Which led me to wonder if there is any thing lurking in the notion of
"self-reconfiguration" here that might be making the programing more difficult.
What would be lost (or gained) if we replaced the words "ability to
reconfigure themselves" with the words "sometimes are reconfigured". That's
the thing about metaphysics: cant live with it; cant live without it. At the
risk of saying something both controversial and incomprehensible, isnt the
notion of self-organization literally a non starter because, in control theory,
the control parameter, the measure by which the system takes stock of its own
organization, is always some part or feature of the system, not the whole
system. It's a cue.
all be best,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: Antony W. Iorio; [email protected];
[email protected]; Lowe,Donald
Sent: 8/28/2009 5:49:40 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Agents, stocks, and flows
In a discussion with a colleague today we talked briefly about stocks and flows
networks. It struck me that a stocks and flows model is a limited sort of
service-oriented agent-based model. In a service-oriented agent-based model,
agents accept inputs and produce outputs -- the simplest version being a supply
chain. That's really a stocks and flows model in which the agents control the
flows. Important differences are:
In an agent-based model, the agents are assumed to be autonomous in various
ways. In a stocks and flows model the flow rates are not autonomous. The flow
rates are equations that don't have the ability to change themselves.They are
assumed to be facts about the nature of the domain being modeled.
In a service-oriented agent-based model the agents have the ability to
reconfigure themselves dynamically and perhaps even to add new agents and new
stock nodes. In a stocks and flows model, the structure of the network static.
So this raises the question whether anyone knows of any work in stocks and
flows modeling that addresses stocks and flows networks that are flexible in
the ways just mentioned.
-- Russ
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