A system of IAC neural networks as the basis for self-organization in a sociological dynamical system simulation

Abstract

This sociological simulation uses the ideas of semiotics and symbolic interactionism to demonstrate how an appropriately developed associative memory in the minds of individuals on the microlevel can self-organize into macrolevel dissipative structures of societies such as racial cultural/economic classes, status symbols and fads. The associative memory used is based on an extension of the IAC neural network (the Interactive Activation and Competition network). Several IAC networks act together to form a society by virtue of their human-like properties of intuition and creativity. These properties give them the ability to create and understand signs, which lead to the macrolevel structures of society. This system is implemented in hierarchical object oriented container classes which facilitate change in deep structure. Graphs of general trends and an historical account of a simulation run of this dynamical system are presented.

Autonomous Tags: Language as Generative of Culture

“…SISTER is a study of the "free tags" of the original symbolic interactionist simulation of the emergence of social classes (Duong 1991). The free tags were the equivalent of words in a language, but applied to the identification of people.…”

“…The first symbolic interactionist simulation (Duong, 1991, Duong andReilly 1995) was a simulation of a workforce of employers and employees. In some of the runs, for example, there were 3 employers and 50 employees in a society.…”

“…However, there is another variation on tags, the symbolic interactionist simulation technique, that was developed before Holland's complex adaptive system research program, the Echo project (Duong 1991, Holland 1992. Like Echo, symbolic interactionist simulation recognizes the primacy of signs in the formation of living systems, but differs from Echo in that its agents have autonomous perception of the meaning of signs.…”

The Power of Social Cognition

“…In cognitive agent systems (Anderson 1996), schema-like representations have been used to produce human-like cognition as agents learn tasks, and agents may have many schema (implemented as production rules, a specific form of schema that use if-then structures) active simultaneously. Work by Duong and Reilly (1995) used a hierarchy of neural-networks to implement schema theory and model Mead's Symbolic Interactionism (Mead 1925), producing a hiring model showing racial bias. (2004) suggest, and give empirical evidence, that chunks of human memory are "activated" when they are used.…”

The nexus cognitive agent-based model

“…However, simpler forms of reaction to the other agents can model interlocking dependencies as well. A role-based division of labor, prices, and money emerged from the SISTER through coevolving genetic algorithms in agent minds, but the institutions of social class, status symbols and racism emerged from its predecessor SDSS through changes in architecture of neural networks in agent minds [2]. Axtell, Epstein and Young's program on the emergence of social class subsequently made use of simple rules to do the same thing [3].…”