6. Putting it all together. 


Now to the difficult part – making agents interact with each other.

It's easier to wrap one's mind around this if we don't try to perceive a program doing all this, but think of different units that are connected.

Imagine a lot of ordinary computers that each has a unique personality programmed (and the personality parameters are adjustable). From all of these goes cables to a server that functions like the server for a multi player on-line game (like Sim-City), which processes all input from different players, to make a unified game experience.

The computers are also connected to network hubs that represent different kinds of social media, groups of friends, workplaces and so on. Not every computer is connected to every hub. Some may have few connections and other have more, like we have different numbers of friends and social circles (by choice or because of our personalities).

The opinions of the computers will be affected by other actors through these hubs. For example; if a unit is linked to a lot of computers with strong opinions on a matter, it might change its own opinion, depending on how impressionable it is, which in turn depends on other personality factors. A computer can initiate or terminate connections, so if it is curious and open-minded, it will have more connections and to programs with different values and convictions.

Now we can start to study how ideas spread and also calibrate personality traits, so that the opinions match what we see in our societies. This can't be done manually because it's far too many parameters to tweak, but we're getting better at automated machine learning.

We now have a vast network of computers that influence each other to different degrees, and will reach an equilibrium until new inputs come from outside the network.

We will start out by trying to mimic human behaviour as best as we can and let the different computers represent the actual distribution of personalities, as far as we know. But after the simulation will adjust all agents in different ways, we don't care if it goes against our understanding of psychology, as long as it simulates our society well.

Of course, all of this can be simulated on one big computer, instead of a swarm of PC:s.


Related Wikipedia links:

SimCity (multiplayer on-line game)

Multi agent system

Automated machine learning


I have in a few posts, sketched an outline for how I imagine Psychohistory could work. I hope I can expand on this later. In the next post, I will look into what has been done already, in regard to modelling the future.


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