X-Message-Number: 4375
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: PROGRAM PATTERNS SOCIETAL EVOLUTION
Date: Mon, 8 May 95 13:28:46 +0200 (CET DST)


Forward of letter <> from 
 (Edupage):

PROGRAM PATTERNS SOCIETAL EVOLUTION
Researchers at the Brookings Institution have developed a computer program
that generates artificial societies and tracks how they evolve over time.
The Computerrarium program uses a "bottom up" approach, in which elaborate
structures emerge from the collective interaction of as many as 1,000
"individuals" following a few very simple rules.  Each individual has a
unique set of characteristics (randomly assigned at the outset), both fixed
and variable.  The program is still under development but the two
researchers have already found that their digital people behave more like
real humans than the consumers depicted in most economic textbooks:  "If we
make the agents less like Homo economicus and more like Homo sapiens --
that is, relax these very stringent assumptions -- important laissez-faire
assumptions (of standard economic theory) do not hold up very well." 
(Tampa Tribune 5/5/95 BayLife 3)

David S. Stodolsky, PhD,  Euromath Center,  University of Copenhagen
Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. 
 Tel.: +45 38 33 03 30. Fax: +45 38 33 88 80. (C)


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