New Scientist: Simulated society may generate virtual culture

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Spiffor
They are extremely confident in their AI.

AI?

Is this an automatically running computer simulation or an online community with people controlling the characters?

I thought this was like The Sims Delux

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
AI?

Is this an automatically running computer simulation or an online community with people controlling the characters?

I thought this was like The Sims Delux

Nope. There are no humain players. They are simulations of humans, with complex electronic personalities, app'rently.

[aneeshm]

This holds out hope for finaly turning sociology into a testable , hard science . Sociology professors , I guess , must be quaking in their boots .

The hard part will be getting the societal constants right ( and identifying the societal constants , of course ) .

[aneeshm]

Oh yeah , and I almost forgot - "Lord of the Flies" , anyone ?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Nope. There are no humain players. They are simulations of humans, with complex electronic personalities, app'rently.

Hmm....

<--- Skeptical

[Datajack Franit]

Great! They created an expensive, scientific version of The Sims

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by aneeshm
This holds out hope for finaly turning sociology into a testable , hard science . Sociology professors , I guess , must be quaking in thier boots .

Considering that they can only derive their model of human behaviour from the analyses of psychologists and sociologists, such simulations are actually more likely to feed academic circle jerking than to put it in question.

The hard part will be getting the societal constants right ( and identifying the societal constants , of course ) .

Well, duh. Sociology and psychology struggle to find middle-range models that can predict human behaviour with some sort of accuracy. Considering that these simulations can not produce genuine humans, but simplifications taken from sociology and psychology, I fear it won't bring much.

[FrostyBoy]

What if you just include the basic emotions and instincts?

Maybe from there, the AI will build on itself.


Example, happy man and angry woman have child, child has a slightly different emotion, a varient of the parents, which is completely new to the world.

[Provost Harrison]

My God, look at the person at the front of the picture - it's The Architect! It's happening!

[LDiCesare]

The fact we see nothing about violence makes the whole thing subject to caution.
Anyhow, it is funny to see that one of Lem's short stories has become a reality: Scientists creating an artificial life and culture, whose inhabitants wonder about the existance of God, and whose creator will have, due to budget reasons, to pull the plug and let them all die.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Considering that they can only derive their model of human behaviour from the analyses of psychologists and sociologists, such simulations are actually more likely to feed academic circle jerking than to put it in question.

AIUI, these aren't modeled to behave like humans. They develop their own behavior. But this sort of thing can be immensely valuable to psychology and sociology as sciences, in that we can potentially view the formation of structures that are present in our societies.

[Dr Strangelove]

The problem is that people didn't begin by moving around as individual "agents" growing food and procreating, they evolved as social animals hunting and gathering in small kinship/tribal groups. The results of the study aren't likely to be useful.

[Kuciwalker]

however, at some point, this social aspect evolved

[OzzyKP]

I think his point that we were social before we were even human.

[Kuciwalker]

As is mine.