21,975 research outputs found
Reflections on the Complexity of Ancient Social Heterarchies: Toward New Models of Social Self-Organization in Pre-Hispanic Colombia
All political systems have limitations in their information processing and action capacities to face large-scale crises and challenges, but especially if they happen to be too hierarchically and centrally controlled systems. In contrast, some other cultures whose political structure is heterarchically organized, such as the Zenú, the Muiscas, and the Tayronas in pre-Hispanic Colombia, presented adaptiveness even without advanced scientific knowledge and without powerful centralized top-down control. We therefore propose that creating and analyzing computer models of their decentralized processes of management could provide a broader perspective on the possibilities of self-organized political systems. Our hope is that this approach will eventually go beyond the scope of basic science. It seeks to promote more computer-model-based research of social systems that exhibit an adaptive balance of flexibility and robustness, i.e., systems that do not rely on the current ideal of rule-based control of all systemic aspects, with the practical aim of improving current social and political processes
Load-Sharing Policies in Parallel Simulation of Agent-Based Demographic Models
Execution parallelism in agent-Based Simulation (ABS) allows to deal with complex/large-scale models. This raises the need for runtime environments able to fully exploit hardware parallelism, while jointly offering ABS-suited programming abstractions. In this paper, we target last-generation Parallel Discrete Event Simulation (PDES) platforms for multicore systems. We discuss a programming model to support both implicit (in-place access) and explicit (message passing) interactions across concurrent Logical Processes (LPs). We discuss different load-sharing policies combining event rate and implicit/explicit LPs’ interactions.
We present a performance study conducted on a synthetic test case, representative of a class of agent-based models
A Biased Review of Sociophysics
Various aspects of recent sociophysics research are shortly reviewed:
Schelling model as an example for lack of interdisciplinary cooperation,
opinion dynamics, combat, and citation statistics as an example for strong
interdisciplinarity.Comment: 16 pages for J. Stat. Phys. including 2 figures and numerous
reference
The role of homophily in the emergence of opinion controversies
Understanding the emergence of strong controversial issues in modern
societies is a key issue in opinion studies. A commonly diffused idea is the
fact that the increasing of homophily in social networks, due to the modern
ICT, can be a driving force for opinion polariation. In this paper we address
the problem with a modelling approach following three basic steps. We first
introduce a network morphogenesis model to reconstruct network structures where
homophily can be tuned with a parameter. We show that as homophily increases
the emergence of marked topological community structures in the networks
raises. Secondly, we perform an opinion dynamics process on homophily dependent
networks and we show that, contrary to the common idea, homophily helps
consensus formation. Finally, we introduce a tunable external media pressure
and we show that, actually, the combination of homophily and media makes the
media effect less effective and leads to strongly polarized opinion clusters.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure
Social Evolution: New Horizons
Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary
thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced
in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring
cooperation to its proper place. In this contribution, the most important
controversies and open research avenues in the field of social evolution are
reviewed. It is argued that a novel theory of social evolution must integrate
the concepts of the science of Complex Systems with those of the Darwinian
tradition. Current gene-centric approaches should be reviewed and com-
plemented with evidence from multilevel phenomena (group selection), the
constrains given by the non-linear nature of biological dynamical systems and
the emergent nature of dissipative phenomena.Comment: 16 pages 5 figures, chapter in forthcoming open access book
"Frontiers in Ecology, Evolution and Complexity" CopIt-arXives 2014, Mexic
Overview on agent-based social modelling and the use of formal languages
Transdisciplinary Models and Applications investigates a variety of programming languages used in validating and verifying models in order to assist in their eventual implementation. This book will explore different methods of evaluating and formalizing simulation models, enabling computer and industrial engineers, mathematicians, and students working with computer simulations to thoroughly understand the progression from simulation to product, improving the overall effectiveness of modeling systems.Postprint (author's final draft
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