Due to lack of time and motivation, I will probably not post anything more on this blog.

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  5. Building the framework for a simulation. Before we start to populate our simulation with agents, we should understand how the world works. Economists have produced innumerable theories about the laws that govern societies – often idealizing and simplifying the world to be able to express them in simple equations. I would like to see another approach, using machine learning to deduce how the economy functions. Take a country with good statistics and describe every county or municipality (except a few that are used to check the models' predictions). Begin with basic parameters like demographics (number of inhabitants, age, born and dead last year, age of death, moving in and out, occupations, distribution of income, unemployment) and production (agriculture, natural resources, industry). From there it's easy to find direct correlations between parameters (we don't need to worry about causation). There are also methods to find complex correlations and patterns. When...
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  3. How do you describe a person? We need to be able to calculate an agent's behaviour from a limited set of quantifiable parameters. So how do you define a character's personality? It's the fact that we are different, that creates the problems we have in society, but it also creates positive dynamic forces and makes life interesting. This is what the field of psychology is all about, and I must say I think they have failed to accomplish the fundamental task of figuring out how we differ from each other and how much. A popular but rather meaningless pursuit, is to divide people into types. That's a too simplistic approach. Let me try to identify the many different layers of our personality that affects how we live. First we have physiological needs – for food, sleep, warmth – and they are basically the same for everyone, so they are not good measurements to define an individual. At the next level we have psychological needs, which differ a little more from person ...
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  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 ...
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