Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life

Miller, John H.; Page, Scott E.

doi:10.1515/9781400835522

Cited by 831 publications

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“…Reconsidering the efficacy and economic sustainability of more systemic, network-informed options could help us to consider interventions that would not even be contemplated when looking solely at an individual level [44] Finally, we need a complexity-friendly policy narrative. While the conventional narrative is based on a top-down, outside-in control mantra, the new narrative should be based on simple ideas, drawn from complexity studies in a variety of fields, from markets and organisations to urban development [2,7,33].…”

Section: Challenges Towards a Complexity-friendly Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In each system, whether natural, technological or social, a recurrent finding of complexity studies is that there is no linear relation between cause and effect, so that the magnitude of input and expected output is not proportional [33]. This is because of the influence of initial conditions, the presence of interaction and systemic factors and the emergence of threshold effects and tipping points that are endogenously generated by the system of interest when it reacts to the external input [20].…”

Section: Challenges Towards a Complexity-friendly Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a Complexity-Friendly Policy: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Equilibrium Thinking in Economics and Public Policy

Squazzoni

2017

Understanding Complex Systems

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This chapter aims to discuss certain limitations of the dominant equilibrium thinking in policy and explore more complexity-friendly alternatives. If societies and markets are viewed as complex, non-equilibrium systems, understanding nonlinear, adaptive and evolving patterns emerging from agent behaviour in network structures is fundamental for policy purposes. This requires improved realism of the behavioural and social foundations on which policies are based. We must also reconsider the mantra of incentivisation, institutional design and the top-down regulation that typically dominates conventional policy. Recent cases of financial market regulation and health policies can help us to understand the importance of looking at the subtle ways in which people or organisations behave when exposed to social influence, and pre-existing social norms and network externalities. Changing the current policy narrative and exploring complexity-friendly concepts, instruments and methods requires a shift of focus of policy-making from forecast and prediction of system equilibrium in order to understand and manage complex social systems better.

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Section: Challenges Towards a Complexity-friendly Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges Towards a Complexity-friendly Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Complexity-Friendly Policy: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Equilibrium Thinking in Economics and Public Policy

Squazzoni

2017

Understanding Complex Systems

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“…Many ACE models are motivated with the argument that the economy exhibits organised complexity (Miller and Page, 2007). The implementation is straightforward: The use of classes allows to specify heterogeneous agents with the same attributes that interact with each other and their environment.…”

Section: Social Systems Show Organised Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Agent-based computational models– a formal heuristic for institutionalist pattern modelling?

Gräbner

2015

Journal of Institutional Economics

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Institutionalist economists have always been criticizing the neoclassical way of studying the economy, especially because of its obsession to a very strict and flawed formalism. This formalism receives critique also from advocates of agent-based computational economic (ACE) models. The criticism seems to be similar to that of institutional economists. Although some authors consider ACE models to belong to a completely new way of thinking about economics, many concepts of ACE have been anticipated by institutionalists: Although using a different vocabulary, ACE proponents speak about cumulative causation, realistic agents, explanatory models, dynamic relations among individuals and the necessity to see the economy as an systemic whole rather than from an atomistic perspective. Consequently, the emergence of the ACE framework may not be left unconsidered by institutionalist economists. This paper investigates the consistency of ACE models with the institutionalist research program as defined by Myrdal, Wilber and Harrison and other original institutionalists and discusses whether ACE models can be a useful heuristic for institutionalist "pattern modelling". I study the ability of ACE models to provide a holistic, systemic and evolutionary picture of the economy, the conception of agents in ACE models, and ask whether they can help to understand the social stratification of a society with its power relations. I also compare ACE models with earlier attempts to formalize institutionalist analysis, e.g. by Bush and Elsner (Theory of Institutional Change), Hayden (Social-Fabric-Matrix) or Radzicki (System Dynamics).

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“…[55] We can find that theory by recognizing that organisms at any level of organization are complex adaptive systems -that is, they can be described in terms of dynamic processes involving flows of material, energy and information. [35,56,57] As living systems, they are complex adaptive systems that are open (i.e., exchange material, energy and information with their environments) and self-organizing (by means of interactions among their elements), with emergent properties. Relevant kinds of organizational functions at the superorganism level can therefore be extracted from 'living systems' theory, [58], 'minimal life' theory, [59][60][61] collective animal behaviour, [57] and eusocial insect ecology (where these societies are treated as superorganisms), [42][43][44]62] as well by comparison to the set of organs in multi-cellular organisms like Mammals, and the Indian caste system (taken as an example of a human superorganism) (see Table 1 below).…”

Section: A Theory Of Superorganism Functionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral action as cheater suppression in human super organisms: Testing the human superorganism approach to morality

Aunger

Greenland

2014

Preprint

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'For it is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and other things [of this sort]; and partnership in these things is what makes a household and a city.' (Aristotle, The Politics 37)Aristotle. The Politics. Trans. Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. AbstractLarge-scale human groups cannot rely on shared genetic interests or dyadic reciprocity to ensure social cohesion as genetic similarity is low and indirect reciprocity is rife; nevertheless, such societies continue to cohere, due to the evolution of novel regulatory mechanisms that inhibit defaulting on social obligations: moral sentiments and actions. The present paper argues that the extent of moral concern can be most usefully identified by defining the set of functions required to sustain a human 'superorganism'. These functions are determined to be boundary, production, distribution, storage, control, structure, enforcement, signaling, memory, excretion, perception and reproductive functions. Moral obligations to act arise when individuals default on contributing to these functions. To test this approach, roughly 80,000 respondents from over 200 countries completed a web-based experiment hosted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). This experiment elicited a suite of responses to a set of 33 short scenarios derived from the 13 domains of superorganism function. Results indicate that all functions are moralized, while violations falling outside this domain (social conventions and individual decisions) are not. People living in larger communities exhibited stronger moral sentiments and action propensities, consistent with the greater interdependence of living in groups with more social roles. Such people were also more likely to see the function of the justice system as supporting group-level protection rather than personal recrimination or restitution, were more willing to engage in punishment of those who failed to punish cheaters, and more offended by those who choose not to contribute to social welfare. These results support the contention of Human Superorganism Theory that large-scale human groups strongly rely on moral propensities to regulate those who fail to perform superorganismal functions. Given this supporting evidence, we believe this new approach to defining the moral domain has implications for fields ranging from psychology to legal theory. Defining the moral domainUntil recently, morality was largely the domain of philosophers. A typical debate might involve defining why killing another human being is wrong (taken as one of the foundations for a good society). Answers might include: because it will destabilize society and lead to general unhappiness (the consequentialist position of Berkeley), or because it violates the Golden Rule of doing to others what we would want them to do to us (subscribed to by deontologists like Kant), or because people of good upbringing and hence virtuous character would not be inclined to do so (the posi...

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Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life

Cited by 831 publications

References 0 publications

Towards a Complexity-Friendly Policy: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Equilibrium Thinking in Economics and Public Policy

Towards a Complexity-Friendly Policy: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Equilibrium Thinking in Economics and Public Policy

Agent-based computational models– a formal heuristic for institutionalist pattern modelling?

Moral action as cheater suppression in human super organisms: Testing the human superorganism approach to morality

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