No, I'm not upset. I believe the original question was (paraphrasing)
approach). A population is comprised of old, young, immuno-suppressed, and
"normal" healthy individuals. Any particular disease will propagate at
the population. An avatar-based simulation would not be any better
system being modeled. Disease such as influenza is spread by contact, and
patterns, your results will be meaningless. An avatar-based simulation
supposedly get better representations of human decision processes. I don't
believe that. And in particular, I don't believe it when it comes to
>
> Doug,
>
> You wrote:
> > Please explain how the "avatars" will know when they have been infected
> > by a virus, and how they will respond to that.
>
> The avatar may or may not know, depending upon the implementation.
> The real question is whether the player of the avatar knows. This is
> something that would have to be crafted into the simulation. Let me
> write this up in a logical way.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> if the AVATAR is exposed to the disease then
> if the exposure is sufficient then
> //(ACPLA > X, transferred virii > 50% infection probability or whatever)
> set the infected flag in the AVATAR
> set incubation time
> start the incubation timer counting to incubation time
> endif
> endif
>
> // Player continues to play AVATAR normally
> // Ignore infectious incubation periods for now
> // Increment incubation timer each second as part of simulation cycle
>
> if the incubation timer is equal to incubation time then
> set the active flag in the AVATAR
> set the disease time
> // This could be to death, to recovery, or other outcome
> start the disease timer counting to disease time
> endif
>
> // Then, for each simulation cycle
>
> look up symptoms using disease timer
> inform player of AVATAR symptoms
> // "You feel tired and your muscles ache."
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The player of the AVATAR should respond in an appropriate way,
> probably based on their real-life experience. Some will ignore the
> symptoms until their AVATAR starts functioning poorly (doesn't move as
> fast, doesn't notice the bus about to run them down, or whatever). Some
> will promptly go to a doctor. Some may seek advice from other AVATARs
> representing trusted counselors (parents, grandparents, etc). All of
> these will have different effects on the spread of an epidemic and are
> not something you would think to model. That's the point of using real
> humans - they do the darndest things that you'd never expect. If you
> don't take those strange actions into account, your sim could give you
> an answer that has nothing to do with the real world.
>
> > In fact, please explain how the "avatars" know when go to work,
>
> How do you know when to go to work? Somebody told you. If you have
> real humans playing an AVATAR in your simulation, they will have to be
> briefed on the role they must play.
>
> "You're a computer scientist who has to arrive at the lab every
> morning at 0830, gets a half hour for lunch somewhere between 1100 and
> 1300, and may go home at 1700."
>
> > when and where to go shopping,
>
> "You open the refrigerator to see what you can make for dinner and
> there's nothing there."
>
> > know when an epidemic has been announced;
>
> "You hear the funny honking of the emergency broadcast network on
> your car radio. An announcer says there is an epidemic raging in your
> town."
>
> > how they will respond to a decreed intervention strategy of keeping the
> kids home
> > from school?
>
> "The emergency announcer says you must keep your kids home from
> school."
>
> In the type of MMORPG we're talking about, its likely that the kids
> are not played by real people but by your agents. The interaction
> between the agents and the parent will drive the actions of the parent
> AVATAR's player. If the simulation informs the parent that their kids
> are driving them crazy, the parent may decide not to keep them home from
> school. If the initial briefing informed the role-player that they are
> short on money, they may decide not to stay home with the kids or to let
> the kids roam freely while the role-player's AVATAR goes to work.
>
> > What will be the "avatar" level of compliance to the
> > declared regime of intervention strategy? How many will accept
> > anti-viral treatment? How many will wear masks to work? How many will
> > comply to government requests to self-isolate when they become
> > symptomatic?
>
> These are all decisions that the player will make in playing the
> AVATAR. That's the point of using real people to help your simulation
> be real. We would have to design mechanisms to provide the correct
> feedback to the player. You already mentioned that your sim has
> provision for poor folks who can't afford not to work. The player would
> just be informed of the same information - "Your rent is due next Friday
> and you don't have enough money." - to which the player can either
> decide to go to work or to follow orders and stay home. To get the
> reasonable results from the players, the sim needs to provide feedback.
> This doesn't have to be realistic as long as the result is the same.
>
> MMORPGs have mechanisms to do this type of thing without requiring
> every actor be role-played. In Star Wars Galaxies, certain professions
> can "mine" resources - these aren't just minerals. Rather than play out
> the various processes required for mining minerals or growing plants,
> the player has to spend time in a certain spot in the game world
> clicking on a point or something. Each click increments the resource
> count by a miniscule amount. The intent is that the AVATAR spends time
> in a particular location doing some activity to collect resources. It's
> the spending of time and lack of movement/participation that is the
> behaviour to be modeled, not the actions necessary to collect the
> resources.
>
> > How will an "avatar" determine when it has become
> > symptomatic?
>
> All we can do is tell the player that their AVATAR has certain
> symptoms. Depending upon whether we want to make this easy or not, we
> can use the same words as the government request or use different words
> that require the player to interpret them - just as a person would have
> to interpret their symptoms in a real epidemic. Some people think they
> can't move they ache so badly and others think the muscle ache is a
> minor annoyance. In a straight simulation, you model this with some
> sort of normal distribution of how many will comply. I'm proposing that
> we model compliance with real people and then turn around and use that
> number in the agents.
>
> > With what level of resolution will these "avatars" behave in the
> simulation?
>
> That's the real difficulty. In effect, we would be federating two
> simulations in the same structure, and getting timing to match between
> two federated simulations is always a problem. We have the most control
> over the agent simulation - we can run it faster or slower to match the
> turn speed we give to the human-played AVATARs. Fortunately, it isn't
> necessary for the human players to enter their actions every second -
> they can enter courses of action (go out door - get in car - drive to
> work - walk into office - ....) which can then be played out in time to
> match the agent simulation. If the agent sim runs faster than
> real-time, we can see if that still matches the COA level of the human
> players. If the agent sim is too fast, we can throttle it back (or add
> more agents). If the agent sim runs too slow, we can coarsen the time
> for each turn for the human - instead of asking the human player to
> choose what their AVATAR does for the next five minutes, we ask them to
> choose for the next ten minutes.
>
> I'm detecting a certain stridency in your replies. I hope I'm wrong
> and you're not upset at my suggestion. That's all this is - a
> suggestion. It may not be feasible and I certainly have no stake in
> this idea. It was just something I threw out based on my experience as
> a role-playing gamer and my limited knowledge of MMORPGs.
>
> --
> Ray Parks rcparks at sandia.gov
> IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024
> IORTA Department Mobile:505-238-9359
>
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641
>
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>
>
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