[FRIAM] Article on Epstein

[Pamela McCorduck]

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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