An Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling
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William Henry Jackson Florida Mammoth 1893 “Brown’s landing, Rice Creek.” Note the enormous 18×22 inch “mammoth plate” view camera set up on the bow o
[See the full post at: An Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling]This is a great introduction. By inspecting our motivators we can get an understanding of why we are where we are.
There have been social structures that have survived longer than the “capitalist model” that we are presently “enjoying”. (Egypt, Rome etc.)
For those systems to have lasted as long as they did, they had to have put in impediments in their structures that would minimize the constant driving motivators inherent in everyone.
If you look at the historical documents you will see them.
I will summarize …
1. Motivator #1 “I want to have a better life than my parents and I want my children to have a better life than I have”
( I want my kids to give me the lifestyle that I have always dreamed about.)
Shows how the power of one (or two) can be influential. The example of purple hats is a simple one, but the thresholds for new ideas are difficult to quantify. Some agents may be better able than others to sense the thresholds of others, sense ideas waiting to happen that is.
Who knows who`s carrying the idea that will cause the emergent thang to happen . . .
Great article.
It is the “followers” who dictate the “leader,” not the other way around. People are always putting ideas out there, yet few take hold. As you say, the students must be ready for the message.
TPTB (politicians, media, police) have done a good job so far of portraying OWS as a radical group. But people are not stupid, they know the truth, yet I think TPTB are keeping them happy “enough” by providing food stamps, subsidized housing, extended unemployment, et cetera.
People move on pain/suffering, which apparently is not severe enough yet. So far they are hoping that everything returns to normal; in essence, their eyes are closed, they don’t want to see. Present, short-term thinking is their way of life, not long-term.
Geeeees!
Original post has disappeared and what is worst … my answer
Therefore, a repeat for the hacker.
This is a great introduction. By inspecting our motivators we can get an understanding of why we are where we are.
There have been social structures that have survived longer than the “capitalist model” that we are presently “enjoying”. (Egypt, Rome etc.)
For those systems to have lasted as long as they did, they had to have put in impediments in their structures that would minimize the constant driving motivators inherent in everyone.
If you look at the historical documents you will see them.
I will summarize …
1. Motivator #1 “I want to have a better life than my parents and I want my children to have a better life than I have”
( I want my kids to give me the lifestyle that I have always dreamed about.)
For some reason, your posts are not showing up, jal. I see your name, but your two posts are empty. Maybe I’m doing something wrong?
“UC Berkeley Professor Philip Tetlock in a study of the accuracy of predictions found that people who carry many models in their head, the foxes, are right far more often than people who carry one big model, the hedgehogs. Even better than foxes, however, are people who can create formal models. These are people who can put their assumptions about the world on paper (or rather a computer), and then test those models by running simulations through time with them.”
Wow!
Hedgehogs – people who refuse to let the outside world impinge on their preconceptions.
Foxes – people suffering from cognitive dissonance but choose not to let it get them down.
Unnamed wise ones – people who form a working hypothesis and then continually test and amend it against new data coming in.
And the accuracy of their predictions (drum roll) …………… increase in descending order. Who knew? Thank the lord for these academics.
reposted from BusinessInsider.com
Great article. You failed to mention the role of George Soros’ Open Society project in the social unrest. He made his billions based on an understanding of complexity theory. Through Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the resulting observer effect, his Quantum Fund optimized its returns based on the unbalanced markets created by the imperfect and biased observer.
As long as we maintain bias (racial discrimination for example), the system is easily gamed against the weak hand by the strong hand. How hard is it to buy real estate on the good side of the tracks when you know buyers are fearful of crossing over to the bad side of the tracks? Then as a strong hand once the value is driven out of the ghetto, you simply move in with a redevelopment plan that is sufficiently large to reset the belief system with bulldozers and fresh landscaping. It’s nothing more than the investor monetizing the racial bias of people who would prefer to fear their neighbor while willingly transferring wealth to a hedge fund.
The question for the agent is simple: yes or no, truth or lie, alive or dead? We each answer the question, but rather than listening to the still, tiny voice inside, we listen to anything and everything else. That’s how the gamers game you everyday. Turning the tables on them is easy. Changing your beliefs?… not so easy.
In a classic example, we’re getting ready to witness this again in the wake of the MERS mortgage fraud settlement. The bar is being set extremely high for the liquidation of foreclosed and bank owned properties and special opportunities are being offered exclusively for large funds to roll up these properties. The Department of Housing and Urban Development requires a $1 billion minimum investment and hand-selected their own list of Managing and Marketing Contractors (mostly former executives and politicians) that will be allowed to hand this windfall of publicly insured (i.e. Fannie, Freddie, etc.) money over to their cronies. .
Dave Harrison
http://www.tradewithdave.comI see that some images are being accepted without any problem.
I’m going to repost my first post without an image.
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This is a great introduction. By inspecting our motivators we can get an understanding of why we are where we are.
There have been social structures that have survived longer than the “capitalist model” that we are presently “enjoying”. (Egypt, Rome etc.)
For those systems to have lasted as long as they did, they had to have put in impediments in their structures that would minimize the constant driving motivators inherent in everyone.
If you look at the historical documents you will see them.
I will summarize …
1. Motivator #1 “I want to have a better life than my parents and I want my children to have a better life than I have”
( I want my kids to give me the lifestyle that I have always dreamed about.)
US puppet government prepares once more: https://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness
Thank you Jerry Mcmanus for this submission. I now see with new eyes.
I don’t know where you live but in Canada there is a woman’s social organization who wear purple hats on their outings. Some of the hats are quite elebaorate.
The ” peer effect ‘ brings to mind ” no man is an island “.Interesting ideas. Perhaps it gives some insight into the social upheavals we’re seeing although it seems a somewhat mechanistic fashion. But I do take issue with the Occupy Wall Street having “barely made a ripple.” There are Occupy movements around North America and the world. They’ve changed the conversation, highlighting economic injustice with the 1% — 99% concept. And they’ve sown seeds which will probably bloom this spring. Imagine, an American Spring 😀
Jerry, I continue to think about your essay…Perhaps I misunderstand ” globalization ” as our leaders would have it with a world bank, a one world order. Your essay seems to fly in the face of that ambition in that systems will naturally segregate into like or comfort zones. It takes force to keep all cultures playing by the same rules and I doubt, in the end, that that strategy will work. Is it possible that media/propagadanda can create homogeny, can override systems behaviour?
Thanks all, for the kind comments.
@Patrick
My apologies, I should have qualified the “barely made a ripple” comment with “compared to the Arab Spring”. Yes, you are absolutely right we have seen a widespread movement, but AFAIK little has actually changed, yet.@ scandia
That’s a very interesting question. Probably more than I can chew in a simple comment, except to say that hierarchies also self organize in complex systems. The late ecologist H.T. Odum observed that this pattern can be seen in many systems, both living and non-living, and at many different scales. He went on to speculate that it is related to the universal hierarchy in energy and other resources, where large quantities at lower grades are increasingly concentrated in smaller quantities but at much higher “quality” (not to be confused with “better” or “worse”, quality in this context is not a moral judgement). Much like the trophic levels seen in ecosystems.So I guess I would answer that globalization and the attendant propaganda is another in a long line of historical examples of empires self organizing into a system where energy and resources are concentrated from a wide but relatively weak periphery into a powerful center.
The addition of large quantities of extremely high quality concentrated fossil sunlight has just enabled us to do it on a much, MUCH grander scale than ever before, at least for a brief but shining moment.
Thanks Jerry. I ,whoops, forgot about scale:) Stoneleigh has written about scale in the past .
Speaking of hierarchies self organizing I read to-day that Cameron says Britain needs a larger airport. Does it? Or does the ” the powerful centre ” need one?This article is about the results coming out of iterative processes which high speed computers make possible. Set a few rules and and a zero point and let it rip. Often the results are quite unexpected. Prior to computers, running these iterative processes was tedious to impossible. One successful example of the process is the game Monopoly which the creator, Lizzie Phillips, set up in 1904 to show how the rules of capitalism, starting out with everybody even, always would up with one dude with a stogie and a top hat holding all the marbles. One reason why I am not a true libertarian. What seems to aggravate the libertarian crowd on ZH the most is that its those other guys like Dimon and Blankfein who are on top. But back to Monopoly, I wonder how many eight-year-olds on rainy afternoons realized that they were running a pre-computer iterative demonstration?
The impartial social economics agenda separates every one of us, this is favorable for some but unfortunate for many. So thinking about Agent-Based Modeling, this is way far to expect specially we are in a modern world where both capitalism and socialism are fast evolving with only few are benefited.
Regards.
Andy Martin Foster
“works at Atlanta Talent Agency – see us here https://www.toptalentmodel.com/info.html“
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