Re: [Swarm-Modelling] social dynamics

[Otto Cordero]

Darren,

I have reviewed your article and I have found some very interesting issues
on it, it is mostly what I was looking for. If I understood well, the agents
join in parties according to their political preferences, but those
preferences are static. I would like to see what happens if the criteria
(upon which two agents decide to join together or to split away) changes
over time, probably this criteria would be conditioned to the state of the
environment or to the inner state of the agent. Another thing that caught my
attention is that the agents' goal is to form the biggest coalition, so in
this sense the coalition is an end by itself. I would rather like to see
agents forming groups as a medium to achieve their goals.
I would work on this and let you know as soon as I have some results,

Thanks,

Otto.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Schreiber" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Swarm-Modelling] social dynamics


>
> My model of political party formation does essentially what you are
> talking about.  Individual agents look around in the "issue space" to
> see what other agents have similar political views to them.  They form
> a coalition with their closest neighbor.  Recursively, the coalitions
> look to see what other agents or coalitions are closest and form
> super-coalitions.  The end result is political parties composed of
> coalitions of coalitions.  I haven't been working on this project for a
> few years, but an explanation, graphics, and the paper are located on
> my website: (http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~dschreib).
>
> I'm finishing my dissertation right now using brain imaging to study
> political thinking.  My next step is to merge the insights from my
> neural microfoundations into the macro-scale party model and show how
> ideology is an emergent property of political dynamics.
>
> On a much less serious note, the cocktail party model
> (http://zia.hss.cmu.edu/econ/homework00/2/cocktail.html) that Troy
> Tessier and I wrote at the Santa Fe Institute a number of years ago
> also has people forming social groups.  Agents search the room looking
> for someone interesting to talk with.  They talk until they get bored
> or someone more interesting passes by, at which point they move off in
> search of more interesting conversation.
>
> I am similarly interested in anyone pursuing this line of work, so keep
> me informed.
>