2. SugarScape By Mitch Quinn Email: mitchquinn@sympatico.ca

3. Outline Introduction Life and Death on the SugarScape Sex, Culture and Conflict Sugar and Spice Disease Processes Conclusions

4. Introduction Growing Artificial Societies –Social science from the bottom up. By: Jushua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell A product of the 2050 Project, a collaborative effort of the Brookings Institution, The Santa Fe Institute, and the World Resources Institute.

5. Introduction Social sciences as the hard sciences The model – ‘transdiscipline’ from the emergent behaviour Started from Thomas Schellings efforts Agent-based models of social processes == “artificial Societies” Emergent behaviours that reflect real life situations. Leads to better understanding of how one can influence society development in the future.

6. Introduction The experiments involve three basic ingredients: –Agents –Environment –Rules We “grow” the collective structures “from the bottom up”. More complications as we progress

7. What is Sugarscape ? Cellular Automata + Agents = Artificial Society The agent society and its spatial environment are coupled.

8. Life and Death on the Sugarscape Landscape –Distribution over a grid of levels of sugar –Agents - Ants Vision Metabolism Others characteristics – smarter ants Chap 2 fig 2

9. Life and Death on the Sugarscape Carrying capacity Migration Distribution of Wealth CompuTerrarium Social Connection Chap 2 fig 6

10. Sex, Culture and Conflict: The Emergence of History Growing distinct populations A ‘proto-history’ The story Correlation between known real life society and the artificial society. “reverse-engineering” to explain how we got to where we are now. Or explain what happened in the past in order to get us to today

11. Sex, culture and Conflict: The Emergence of History The ingredients: –Sexual reproduction –Tribe formation –Combat

12. Sugar and Spice: Trade comes to the Sugarscape Sugar versus Spice –Metabolism –Preferences –Trade –Finite life –Credit –The welfare of the individual leads to the welfare of the whole. Chap 4 fig 1

13. Disease Processes Historical influence of disease –Prohibition of pork and beef (Mad Cow) –HIV, Black Death –War and Conquest Adaptive agents spreading disease and influence of other social processes

14. Conclusions A Society is born So now we have an artificial society which includes: movement, resource gathering, sexual reproduction, combat, cultural transmission, trade, inheritance, credit, pollution, immune learning, and disease propagation. Quite a complex, multidimensional artificial society and is only the beginning

15. Conclusions Further Examination Other Traditional Models –Homogeneous vs heterogeneous –Spatial components –Local vs global information –Focus on Dynamics –Beyond Methodological Individualism

16. “THE” Conclusion(s) “The point of departure in agent- based modeling is the individual: They give agents rules of behaviour and then spin the system forward in time and see what macroscopic social structures emerge” and Methodological Individualism

17. Where to go from here? Can you grow it? More extensions –Ring World –Etc ? ! Very useful and useable application An easy read, even for a sociology neophyte as myself.

18. Questions ??