Posted by
Jochen Fromm-3 on
Jun 09, 2006; 8:23am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FW-SFI-Seminar-Complexity-Parallel-Computation-and-Statistical-Physics-tp521927p521980.html
I have read the book "Harnessing Complexity" as well, and was a
bit disappointed. It is small and contains no interesting models.
IMHO his classic books about "The Evolution of Cooperation"
and "The Complexity of Cooperation" are much better. As you know, the
first is about the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and in the second
he presents the "Dissemination Model" which explains the emergence
of culture through local convergence and global polarization, and
his "Tribute Model" (for "building political actors") which captures
some of the essential properties of power and tries to explain
the origin of nations and empires. His agent based models are simple,
but that's their beauty. The complexity should be in the results, not
in the model itself.
-J.
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Michael Agar
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 8:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unified Theory
[...] I'm just reading Axelrod and Cohen's Harnessing
Complexity, a book that means to introduce a broader audience who are
thinking about organizations to complexity science. They organize the
book in sections on variation, interaction and selection and do a
nice job of introducing some of the differences that have to be
included in a social and cultural millieu.