[FRIAM] JASSS (and despair)

[Robert Holmes]

Ah, if it was just a case of them drawing conclusions about these artificial
societies. Unfortunately the authors explicitly state that their conclusions
apply to real societies. In this issue alone they explain the paucity of
women in corporate management, the effect of mass media on cultural
dynamics, the distribution of land holdings in the Caparo Forest Reserve in
Venezuela, and more. These papers all claim that their conclusions explain
real world behaviours; all without even the most rudimentary comparison with
real measurements.

Robert

On 6/30/07, Marcus G. Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
> Robert Holmes wrote:
> > I dunno, after our discussions about the nature of explanation,
> > reading JASSS left me thoroughly depressed. Want to guess how many
> > papers compared their simulation results with real historic data?
> I don't see a problem because their study is of _artificial_
> societies.   The development of math and methods for study of a subclass
> of abstract processes...
>
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