. An on-going project investigating group formation, stereotyping and cultural evolution using an artificial society is outlined. Agents culturally interact by exchanging behavioural rules and cultural markers. They economically interact by playing games of the Prisoners Dilemma. The mode of game play is novel because agents apply stochastic repeated game strategies not to individuals but to subjectively stereotyped groups (based on cultural makers). Agents consequently treat stereotyped groups as single players with whom they are involved in an on-going game of iterated PD. It is envisaged that such cultural processes may display a form of "second order emergence" [11] in which agents come to recognise the cultural groupings that have emerged within the society. Some initial experimental results are presented with tentative observations. 1 Introduction In complex social worlds, individuals are required to interact with many strangers using limited knowledge and bounded rationality. ...

Numerous researchers and practitioners have turned to complexity science to better understand human systems. Simulation can be used to observe how the microlevel actions of many human agents create emergent structures and novel behavior in complex adaptive systems. In such simulations, communication between human agents is often modeled simply as message passing, where a message or text may transfer data, trigger action, or inform context. Human communication involves more than the transmission of texts and messages, however. Such a perspective is likely to limit the effectiveness and insight that we can gain from simulations, and complexity science itself. In this paper, we propose a model of how close analysis of discursive processes between individuals (high-resolution), which occur simultaneously across a human system (broadband), dynamically evolve. We propose six different processes that describe how evolutionary variation can occur in texts— recontextualization, pruning, chunking, merging, appropriation, and mutation. These process models can facilitate the simulation of high-resolution, broadband discourse processes, and can aid in the analysis of data from such processes. Examples are used to illustrate each process. We make the tentative suggestion that discourse may evolve to the “edge of chaos. ” We conclude with a discussion concerning how high-resolution, broadband discourse data could actually be collected. KEY WORDS: broadband discourse; communication; self-organization; complex adaptive system.

As part of Watts and Strogatz's small-world model of complex networks, local information mechanisms such as landscape properties are used to approximate real-world conditions in social simulations. The authors investigated the influence of local information on social simulations based on the small-world network model, using a cellular automata variation with added shortcuts as a test platform for simulating the spread of an epidemic disease or cultural values/ideas. Results from experimental simulations show that the percentage of weak individuals should be considered significant local information, but vertex degree influences and the distribution patterns of weak individuals should not. When exploring contagion problems, the results encourage a future emphasis on setting and the proportions of specific values of local information related to infection strength or resistance, and a reduced emphasis on the detailed topological structure of small-world network models and the distribution patterns of specific values of local information.

Philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and biologists have studied the concept of benevolence for many years. Recently, researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have begun considering it, but they have chosen a definition based only on the mathematical utility for an individual agent. This definition is incomplete. As a result, many AI researchers criticize benevolence, thinking it contradicts both autonomy and rational theory. In this dissertation, I argue that benevolence should also have a classical basis that recognizes the moral goodness of an agent and includes social awareness. I describe and analyze benevolent agents in multiagent systems (MAS). First, I present a complete definition and motivations for benevolence that is appropriate for MAS. Then, I describe requirements for the structure and behavior of benevolent agents and construct a simulator, called Mattress In the Road (MIR), that can analyze and verify such requirements. Using MIR, simulations of benevolence ar...

Creating common ground in a community of people who do not all know each other is a chickenand-egg problem: members do not share enough common ground to support the kinds of conversations that help build it. “Folk Computing ” technology is designed to help build community in informal, face-to-face settings by giving users a playful way of revealing shared assumptions and interests. Drawing on the communicative process found in folklore, Folk Computing devices facilitate the creation, circulation and tracking of new, digital forms of lore. These digital folklore objects serve as social probes: they circulate among people with whom they resonate, thereby revealing the boundaries of groups who share the underlying beliefs, knowledge and experiences that give the lore meaning. Folk Computing uses technology to enhance the community building functions of folklore in three important ways: it supports the circulation of more interactive and media-rich lore, it

List of participants

Abstract not found

Justify our existence in 250 words or less. Contents 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Scope of This Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2 Organization of This Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 Historical Overview 4 2.1 The First Selectionist Models of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.1 Walter Bagehot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.2 William James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.3 Gabriel Tarde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2 1900--1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.1 Alfred Lotka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.2 Peter Medawar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.3 Karl Popper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.4 Donald T. Campbell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.5 Jacques Monod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 # Corresponding Author 1 2.2.6 Ste...

A widely held belief in financial economics suggests that stock prices always adequately reflect all available information. Price movements away from fundamentals are assumed to occur only infrequently, if at all. "False" prices are supposed to be corrected by the counter-actions of "rational" investors reestablishing equilibrium. However, empirical evidence of widespread irrationality among investors as well as theoretical insights into the properties of complex systems suggest that this view is too static. In fact, it can be shown that under certain conditions dynamic disequilibria have a considerable probability of being "locked in".

Cultural selection theory has been rejected by many social scientists. The objections against this theory are listed and commented. Some of the objections can be dismissed as expressions of preference for one perspective over another. Different perspectives lead scientists to make different kinds of discoveries, but all perspectives are valid, and no theory or perspective can cover all aspects of social phenomena. The limitations of cultural selection theory are discussed and some improvements are proposed. It is concluded that cultural selection theory can explain certain phenomena that other theories cannot explain, especially phenomena that are unplanned or unintended.