On agent-based modeling and computational social science

“Agents also differ in their level of complexity: according to a classic distinction introduced by Wooldridge and Jennings in their influential work (Wooldridge and Jennings, 1995), agents in a “strong” sense are capable to manipulate and reason upon mental representations; otherwise they are…”

“, 2010) and that of epidemics (Pastor-Satorras and Vespignani, 2001).”

“The popularity of sociophysics grew even more under the influence of success stories, especially concerning the domain of pedestrians’ crowd (Helbing et al., 2000) and that of epidemics (Pastor-Satorras and Vespignani, 2001).”

“Examples of this application of ABM abound and are among the best cited works so far worked out in this field. phenomena trace back to as early as 1971, when the famous (Schelling, 1971) model of segregation was published in the Journal of Mathematical Sociology.”

“…acknowledgment, when the proceedings of a Sackler Colloqium of the National Academy of Sciences, under the title “Adaptive Agents, Intelligence, and Emergent Human Organization: Capturing Complexity through Agent-Based Modeling,” held in October 2001, were published on PNAS (Bonabeau, 2002).”

“Again, current models (Deffuant et al., 2001; Galam, 2002; Hegselmann and Krause, 2002; Castellano et al., 2009), find that the structure of the network of communication affects opinion dynamics.”

“…to emerge from a set of heterogeneous strategies, from TIT-FOR-TAT (Axelrod, 1997) to strong reciprocity (Boyd et al., 2003), from image-scoring (Nowak and Sigmund, 1998) to reputation-building (Pinyol et al., 2012), and finally group selection (Di Tosto et al., 2007); social control is found…”

“Inductive computational science is certainly not new (Newell and Simon, 1976).”

“Again, current models (Deffuant et al., 2001; Galam, 2002; Hegselmann and Krause, 2002; Castellano et al., 2009), find that the structure of the network of communication affects opinion dynamics.”

“…2010), but also from partner selection, and finally from gossip (Giardini and Conte, 2012); norms emerge from punishment (Galán and Izquierdo, 2005), which in turn is but a TIT-FOR-TAT strategy, but can also emerge from conditioned preferences (Bicchieri, 2006), and from habituation (Epstein, 2008).”

“Hence, cooperation in Prisoner’s Dilemma is found to emerge from a set of heterogeneous strategies, from TIT-FOR-TAT (Axelrod, 1997) to strong reciprocity (Boyd et al., 2003), from image-scoring (Nowak and Sigmund, 1998) to reputation-building (Pinyol et al., 2012), and finally group selection (Di…”

“…cooperation in Prisoner’s Dilemma is found to emerge from a set of heterogeneous strategies, from TIT-FOR-TAT (Axelrod, 1997) to strong reciprocity (Boyd et al., 2003), from image-scoring (Nowak and Sigmund, 1998) to reputation-building (Pinyol et al., 2012), and finally group selection (Di Tosto…”

“Often, this is defined in opposition to Equation-Based Modeling (see for example Dyke Parunak et al., 1998; Cecconi et al., 2010).”

“Again, current models (Deffuant et al., 2001; Galam, 2002; Hegselmann and Krause, 2002; Castellano et al., 2009), find that the structure of the network of communication affects opinion dynamics.”

“These are meant to either reproduce some real-world setting or phenomenon [a typical example is the Anasazi culture simulation (Axtell et al., 2002)], or to build up and observe would-be worlds (Casti, 1997).”

“Theory-driven, non-ad-hoc models of phenomena generated by intelligent behavior may be relatively difficult to calibrate (Heckbert et al., 2010).”

“For example, topological properties of complex networks are found among the main factors affecting epidemic dynamics (for a review, see Yang et al., 2007).”

“Therefore, the utility of a complex agent model to simulate the real-world system (i.e., showing that the model’s results match the real-world data) is questionable (Crooks et al., 2008).”

“…2007); social control is found to emerge from ostracism (Xenitidou and Elsenbroich, 2010), but also from partner selection, and finally from gossip (Giardini and Conte, 2012); norms emerge from punishment (Galán and Izquierdo, 2005), which in turn is but a TIT-FOR-TAT strategy, but can also emerge…”

“Unlike laws of nature, Agent Based models of socio-economic phenomena are countless and not always consistent (see Alfi et al., 2009).”

“These are meant to either reproduce some real-world setting or phenomenon [a typical example is the Anasazi culture simulation (Axtell et al., 2002)], or to build up and observe would-be worlds (Casti, 1997).”

“Studies of different types and levels of downward causation are much less frequent (to cite some exceptions, see Gilbert, 2002; Conte et al., 2013).”

“…inspired by the success of hard sciences, the substantial failure to apply such a minimality procedure to social science is testified by centuries of failed attempts, starting from what had been announced as “Social Physics” in the seventeenth century (for an historical perspective, see Ball, 2002).”

“While it is difficult to control the inner validity a complex agent-based model (Cioffi-Revilla, 2002; Windrum et al., 2007), to calibrate it and manipulate parameters values so to reflect a real-world system is hard.”

“) was ranked as the fourth most important among the top-ten hard problems the social sciences will have to address in the near future (Giles, 2011).”

“…were bent to applications needs, such as policy modeling and traffic optimization (Grether et al., 2010), distributed communication over the Internet (Chen, 2009), electricity market (Guerci et al., 2010), financial crisis (Sornette, 2003), epidemics (Pastor-Satorras and Vespignani, 2001).”

“…social phenomena with BDI based models also abound in the literature (about 7060 “BDI social simulation” cites on Google Scholar on March, 18th 2013), and usable platforms to implement them are under consolidation, from Jason (Bordini et al., 2007) to Netlogo extensions (Sakellariou et al., 2008).”

“…from TIT-FOR-TAT (Axelrod, 1997) to strong reciprocity (Boyd et al., 2003), from image-scoring (Nowak and Sigmund, 1998) to reputation-building (Pinyol et al., 2012), and finally group selection (Di Tosto et al., 2007); social control is found to emerge from ostracism (Xenitidou and…”

“Under the pressure of complex systems science, which is gaining ground in the study of social phenomena (Helbing and Balietti, 2011b), agent-based simulation is increasingly expected to meet a further, and connected, important requirement, i.e., to be fed by massive data in real-time.”

“A decade ago, social, and behavioral science dropped the disciplinary label (Conte, 2002) under the influence of an entirely new field, ABM.”

“This is not the forum for discussing sophisticated technical solutions (but for a review of techniques to that purpose, the reader might be referred to Paolucci et al., 2013) to the problem of making ABM more apt to the requirements of BigData science.”

“Agents are usually defined (see Conte, 2009) as autonomous systems that operate transitions between states of the world, based on mechanisms and representations somehow incorporated into them.”

“Often, this is defined in opposition to Equation-Based Modeling (see for example Dyke Parunak et al., 1998; Cecconi et al., 2010).”

“Although the rich cognitive models tag appeared since the early nineties (for a recent example see Dignum et al., 2010), the amount of models inspired from it remains negligible.”

“…to reputation-building (Pinyol et al., 2012), and finally group selection (Di Tosto et al., 2007); social control is found to emerge from ostracism (Xenitidou and Elsenbroich, 2010), but also from partner selection, and finally from gossip (Giardini and Conte, 2012); norms emerge from punishment…”

“To deal with this challenge, agent-based simulations were bent to applications needs, such as policy modeling and traffic optimization (Grether et al., 2010), distributed communication over the Internet (Chen, 2009), electricity market (Guerci et al., 2010), financial crisis (Sornette, 2003),…”

“One example is the attempt to model agents on the basis of a personal utility function, on which much work on agents has been done over the past 30–40 years or so, and that has also been criticized as for its micro plausibility (Antunes and Coelho, 2004).”

“This is not the forum for discussing sophisticated technical solutions (but for a review of techniques to that purpose, the reader might be referred to Paolucci et al., 2013) to the problem of making ABM more apt to the requirements of BigData science.”

“To deal with this challenge, agent-based simulations were bent to applications needs, such as policy modeling and traffic optimization (Grether et al., 2010), distributed communication over the Internet (Chen, 2009), electricity market (Guerci et al., 2010), financial crisis (Sornette, 2003), epidemics (Pastor-Satorras…”

“Speci fi cally, for social sciences (Conte and Paolucci, 2014; Gilbert, 2007b; Gilbert and Terna, 2000; Ternaet al., 1998), agent-based modeling and simulation are widely used to model social phenomena such as crowd behavior (Kountouriotis et al., 2014; Luo et al., 2008), opinion dynamics (Banisch…”

“S4A), which features a concurrent, parallel investigation of the same phenomena or subject from many relevant disciplinary perspectives or an integration of them (Conte and Paolucci, 2014).”

“Ironically, ABMs are often criticized for simultaneously being too simple (regarding the rules and specifications) and too “complex” (mainly with respect to the model behaviours) (Conte and Paolucci, 2014).”