Monday, April 04, 2005
Physics of Society
Futurology gets a little more exact: Guardian article on Philip Ball's: Critical Mass: The Physics of Society. (Published under a different title in US ...: Critical mASS: How One Thing Leads to Another ) Covers issues of modeling people's group behavior, most recently suggested in agent-based technologies. Do not have the book as yet, but it looks to be interesting. Is it possible to model people in a way that is statisically meaningful? Yes thats been done fairly well,depending opon the measures you care about. Is predictive at some individual level? Not clear. Can provide true emergent behavior? In this too the jury is out ... I have not seen it as yet. This book appears to be non-technical, for a technical view of the complexity of models of people see: Journal of Artificial Societies ... See also Ball's article in PhysicsWeb.
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