Simulation Summer School Slides

I am at the ESSA Summer School at Surrey University.  I lasts the whole week.

All the slides (as they are uploaded) will be at:
     http://www.simian.ac.uk/courses/essa-summer-school-2011/presentations

My talk (yesterday) was entitled "The Impossibility of Social Simulation" and you will find the slides at the above link.

Abstract:

It is often forgotten how difficult the task of a social simulator is.  In this talk I start by discussing some of these difficulties.  I move on to discussing some of trade-offs that are inevitable with social simulation, including that between relevance and rigour.  These difficulties and trade-offs are related to the various possible purposes for the simulation of social phenomena including those of conceptual clarification, prediction, explanation and mechanism analysis.  Those embarking on this complex and difficult task are exhorted not to fudge these issues, but to consider them carefully, make them explicit and accept the consequences of their choices.