Reddit reviews Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up (Complex Adaptive Systems)
We found 3 Reddit comments about Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up (Complex Adaptive Systems). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
While I'm parsing through this, I'll recommend Epstein and Axtell's "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up." The authors use adaptive agent-based computational simulations to model population dynamics, trade, conflict, and disease. The agents possess heterogeneous characteristics and although--for the case of trade--their actions can approach a statistical equilibrium, it need not be Pareto-optimal. Trade is carried out locally based on two agents' marginal rates of substitution for two commodities, so the Walrasian central auctioneer is thrown out. They use some pretty simple rules for individual behavior yet achieve some insightful emergent results.
Edit: Also, /r/ComputationalEcon exists if anyone is interested.
This is a good book, though a bit old now. If you're interested in agent-based simulations, a lot of great work has been done since then -- I'd suggest starting with something like Growing Artificial Societies, or reading up in general on Sugarscape and the models that have followed it.
Both these and The Limits to Growth lead to "systems thinking," which Meadows wrote about in Thinking in Systems. That book in turn (along with many others) was a big influence on my game designs, and on my book about game design and systems thinking. Understanding how systems and games work together is vital, IMO, for building virtual worlds.
Responding publicly to: "Any recommendations for stuff to read about agent based modeling?"
One of the best resources for agent based modeling is the modeling tool, NetLogo. It's developed by Northwestern:
https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
It has TONS of sample models in quite a few different disciplines to see how things work.
Railsback and Grimm have a nice textbook style book on agent based modeling (http://www.amazon.com/Agent-Based-Individual-Based-Modeling-Practical-Introduction/dp/0691136742)
Mitchel and Resnick have a smaller book focused on the concepts of ABM called Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. (http://www.amazon.com/Turtles-Termites-Traffic-Jams-Explorations/dp/0262680939)
Lastly Growing Artificial Societies by Epstien (http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Artificial-Societies-Science-Adaptive/dp/0262550253). He developed generative models of economics using an environment he called "Sugarscape".
Another popular modeling system is Repast (written by people at Argonne National Labs) but I think it's not as easy for the non-programmer to get started with. If you happen to be near University of Oregon, they are having a complexity conference later this month that features a day-long seminar on Repast taught by some guys from Argonne.
http://calendar.uoregon.edu/event/exploring_complexity