My talk at NESS@ECCS 2011: Mundane Rationality as a basis for modelling and understanding behaviour within specific contexts

Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/mundane-rationality-as-a-basis-for-modelling-and-understanding-behaviour-within-specific-contexts-9251997

Abstract:
The paper starts out by pointing out the context-dependency of human cognition and behaviour, pointing out that (a) human behaviour can change sharply across contexts but also that (b) behaviour within a given context can sometimes be described in relatively simple terms .  It thus argues against a grand theory of rationality that seeks to explain and/or generate human behaviour across of contexts.  Rather it suggests an alternative approach whereby  "mundane" accounts of rationality are used which are specific to a limited number of contexts.  Such an approach has its particular difficulties, but allows the integration of narrative accounts of possible behaviours using a variety of social mechanisms at the micro level with comparisons with aggregate macro data.  It is noted that in the resulting simulations that equilibria are simply not relevant within plausible timescales.

My talk at ECCS2011: Using a Data-Integration Model to Stage Abstraction in Voter Turnout

Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/using-a-dataintegration-model-to-stage-abstraction-in-voter-turnout

Abstract:

A simulation model is presented that represents belief change, based on Thagard’s theory of explanatory coherence, within a population of agents who are connected by a social network. In this model there are a fixed number of represented beliefs, each of which are either held or not by each agent. These beliefs are to different extents coherent with each other – this is modelled using a coherence function from possible sets of core beliefs to [-1,1]. The social influence is achieved through gaining of a belief from another agent across a social link. Beliefs can be lost by being dropped from an agent’s store. Both of these processes happen with a probability related to the change in coherence that would result in an agent’s belief store. A resulting measured “opinion” can be retrieved in a number of ways, here as a weighted sum of a pattern of the core beliefs – opinion is thus an outcome and not directly processed by agents. Results suggest that a reasonable rate of copy and drop processes and a well connected network are required to achieve consensus, but given that, the approach is effective at producing consensuses for many compatibility functions. However, there are some belief structures where this is difficult.

My talk @ 2011 ESSA Summer School: "The Impossibility of Social Simulation"

 Video is at:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmAKbI3wqOU

Other information (slides, abstract) posted previously:
    http://bruceedmonds.blogspot.com/2011/07/simulation-summer-school-slides.html

Diagrams of Phillips' Fluid Mechanical Model of the economy

First of the real thing...

...then as a cartoonist in Punch depicted it!

A brief interview of me by David Hales

At the ESSA summer school in Surrey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPHTFU7Vi0A

To see other interviews, including Paul Omerod, Warrent Thorngate and Edmund Chattoe-Brown go to David's youtube page http://www.youtube.com/user/daphal

A paper on simulation experiment design for social simulation

Opening the ‘Black Box’ of Simulations: Transparency of Simulation Models and Effective Results Reports Through the Systematic Design of Experiments

Iris Lorscheid
Hamburg University of Technology

Heine Bernd-Oliver
affiliation not provided to SSRN

Matthias Meyer
Technical University Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH)

Abstract:

Many still view simulation models as a black box. This paper argues that perceptions could change if the systematic design of experiments (DOE) for simulation research was fully realized. DOE can increase (1) the transparency of simulation model behavior and (2) the effectiveness of reporting simulation results. Based on DOE principles, we develop a systematic procedure to guide the analysis of simulation models as well as concrete templates for sharing the results. A simulation model investigating the performance of learning algorithms in an economic mechanism design context illustrates our suggestions. Overall, the proposed systematic procedure for applying DOE principles complements current initiatives for a more standardized simulation research process.


http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1860904


Bruce Edmonds

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.

A blog post urging the unpicking of the Hetrodox economic "hairball"

On the Real World Economics Review Blog

entitled: Unpicking the anti-neo-classical “hairball”, so that what we are for is not defined by what we are against

My presentation at FuturICT meeting in Zurich 16th June 2011

On "Participatory Policy Modelling"

Slides at:
   http://bruce.edmonds.name/slides/Participatory%20Policy%20Modelling%20-%20BE.ppt

My talk at "Complexity of Evolutionary Processes Workshop" in Manchester

Using data sets to simulate evolution within complex environmentsBruce Edmonds
The talk suggests a way to investigate whether environmental complexity affects evolutionary processes. The suggestion is to use complex data sets that derive from the observation/measurement of natural systems. The data set is spread accross a space defined by two of the variables in the data set. The genome of individuals encode a model that tries to predict the outcome variable from the independent variables in the set. Resources in the model are gained by individuals local to a data point predicting the outcome variable better than its competitors. Once the contribution of resources to all individuals is decided, then an evolutionary process takes place, preferentially propogating and mating fitter individuals (so the less fit die). This is illustrated with an evolutionary model using the Cleveland Heart Disease Data Set. Evolution on this is compared to evolution on a data set with similar distributions of values for each variable but chosen independently of each other, so with the noise and shape of the original but without the complexity. Illustrative results showing that the change in environment significantly affects how evolution proceeds is exhibited and discussed. It is suggested that the same approach could be used to test the assumptions (e.g. the adequacy of a simple environment) in many models of evolutions, as well as investingating whe environmental complexity might affect evolution and what kind of complexity.
 
A talk at the IOP workshop:
  http://www.theory.physics.manchester.ac.uk/~galla/ncpmeeting2011/ncpmeeting.html
 
My slides can be found at:
  http://bruce.edmonds.name/slides/Complexity%20of%20evol%20processes%20-%20BE.ppt

CfP: SPECIAL ISSUE ON “SIMULATION AND LAW”

CfP: SPECIAL ISSUE ON “SIMULATION AND LAW”

Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law
Editors: K.D. Ashley; G. Sartor; A. Oskamp.
ISSN: 0924-8463 (print version) ISSN: 1572-8382 (electronic version)

The Special Issue on “SIMULATION AND LAW” aims to promote
collaboration between the fields of agent-based simulation (ABS) and
the legal domain, bringing together ideas and researchers from both
communities.

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law contains information on
theoretical or empirical studies in artificial intelligence, cognitive
psychology, jurisprudence, linguistics, or philosophy that address the
development of formal or computational models of legal knowledge,
reasoning, and decision making. It also includes in-depth studies of
innovative artificial intelligence systems that are being used in the legal
domain as well as gives space to studies that address the ethical and
social implications of the field of artificial intelligence and law.

The target of this Special Issue is to stimulate the interplay of both
disciplines, as well as to prompt a reflection exercise on the prospects
of using agent-based simulation to study socio-legal phenomena, as
well as the potential that such an interaction could have in law- and
policy-making processes.

IMPORTANT DATES/ DEADLINES                                       
Abstract Submission: June 24th, Friday
Acceptance Notification: July 22nd, Friday
Paper Submission: November 4th, Friday
Acceptance Notification/Reviewers Reports: December 30th, Friday
Final Version Due: February 10th Friday

PUBLICATION AND SUBMISSION DETAILS                            
Submissions should be up to 16 pages maximum (including figures,
tables, bibliography, abstract etc) in the journal’s format (details can be
found in http://www.springer.com/computer/artificial/journal/10506 ).

REVIEW PROCESS                                                        
All submissions will go through a peer review process, with at least
two independent PC members reviewing each submission.
Following the first reviewing process, authors will be required to revise
their papers which will undergo a second review process before
publication in the journal.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE                                                
Giovanni Sartor
European University Institute, Law Department
Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9
Tel (office): +39-055-4685-528, Fax: +39-055-4685-200
Tel (secretary): +39-055-4685 275
E-mail: giovanni.sartor@eui.eu
http://www.iue.it/LAW/People/Faculty/CVs/sartor.shtml

Eunate Mayor
European University Institute, Law Department
Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9
I-50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), ITALY
Tel (cell): +39-327-735-0409
E-mail: eunate.mayor@eui.eu

An introductory talk: "What is Agent-Based Social Simulation?"

A talk I gave as part of the Methods@Manchester project.

Available (sound, links and slides) at:
   http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/methods/abss/

2nd CFP AEGS@AAMAS-2011: the uses of Agents for Education, Games and Simulations (long)

A call for papers for a workshop I'm involved in...

Second CfP for the AAMAS-2011 workshop on 

the uses of Agents for Education, Games and Simulations

at the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC) in Taipei, Taiwan on May 2 or 3 2011

In Conjunction with AAMAS 2011

http://www.windmill-cottage.net/AEGS-11/index.html

Rationale and technical description
===================================

Training for complex situations in human societies such as in education, business transactions, military operations, medical care and crisis management can be provided effectively using serious games and simulations. In these types of games and simulations the role of agents to model and simulate naturally behaving characters becomes more and more important. Especially in situations where the games are not just meant to provide fun, but are used to support the learning process it is important that the games achieve their goal and do not just distract (or entertain) the trainee.

A major aim of this workshop is to discuss how to model rational (or non-rational, but natural) behaving agents who are embedded in a social context with other characters and humans. This is especially important when both characters and humans can be pro-active but also have to react to the behaviour of others in their environment.  Thus these characters should have some social conscience of themselves and others and base their decisions for actions on this knowledge. Of course social knowledge may consist of detailed knowledge such as that some person has been your long time friend and thus can be trusted to help you, but also general knowledge such as that society looks bad at people that cheat but adores people that grasp opportunities.  Thus we aim to model also different levels of action and interactions. Both the operational ones such as gestures and general way of animating characters, the tactical decisions such as negotiation tactics when trying to get some help and long term strategies such as behaving cooperative towards your boss in order to secure a promotion.  One of the interesting questions is how these should be modelled and how they interact? And how do current agent architectures support these models?

In general the technologies used in game engines and multi-agent platforms are not readily compatible due to some inherent differences of concerns. Where game engines focus on real-time aspects and thus propagate efficiency and central control, multi-agent platforms assume autonomy of the agents. And while the multi agent platforms offer communication facilities these can or should not be used when the agents are coupled to a game. So, although increased autonomy and intelligence may offer benefits for a more compelling game play and may even be necessary for serious games, it is not clear whether current multi agent platforms offer the facilities that are needed to accomplish this.

In this workshop we want to bring people together that address  the particular challenges of using agent technology for games and simulations in particular for educational contexts. 

The workshop will have four main themes:

1. Technical
What techniques are suitable for agents that are incorporated in educational contexts, games and simulations. How to balance intelligence and efficiency? How to couple the agents to the game/simulation and manage this coupling’s information flow? How to deal with the inherent real time nature of the game engine environment? How to couple long and short time interactions?

2. Conceptual
What information is available for the agents' use, either through the educational context, or from the system, through for example, the game or simulation engine?  How can reaction to events be balanced with goal directed behaviour?  How are ontological differences between information used by agents and information from the domain handled?  How do we choose the actions of an agent?   Too high level gives little control; too low level makes the agent inefficient.

3. Design
How do we design interactive systems containing intelligent agents? How do we determine what agents should do and should not do, such that local autonomy and story line are well balanced. How do we design the agents themselves that are embedded in other (possibly diverse) systems (including the behaviour authoring tools and methodologies)?

4. Education
It is also important that we introduce both the design and construction of these collaborative autonomous systems into the computer science curriculum and develop ways of encouraging their effective utilisation across the curriculum.  Contributions to the workshop will be welcomed that provide a mixture of relevant theoretical and practical understanding of both the teaching and use of multi-agent systems in educational and entertainment research, together with practical examples of the use of such systems in real application scenarios.  These will be written for students, teachers, producers, directors and other professionals who want to improve their understanding of the opportunities offered by the use of multi-agent systems in teaching and entertainment scenarios of all types.

Important Dates
===============

Deadline for receiving papers                       January 30 2011
Notification to authors                             February 27, 2011
Camera ready paper                                  March 7, 2011
Workshop                                             May 2 or 3, 2011

Submission Procedure
====================

The workshop welcomes submissions of original works relevant to the topics described above. This year, the workshop will accept submissions of both full papers (maximum 16 pages, LNCS format) and short papers (maximum 8 pages, LNCS format).

Short papers are encouraged as a mechanism for the timely reporting of interesting but preliminary work, that may not as yet have the level of evaluation or detail that would be expected for a regular paper. The program chairs may, at their discretion, accept papers that were submitted as regular papers as short papers, if the authors have explicitly agreed to this when registering their papers.

All accepted regular papers will receive a slot for oral presentation in the conference. The accepted short papers will serve as the basis for discussions during the workshop. If warranted they may be converted to regular papers for the post-proceedings by incorporating the results of these discussions.

Submissions will be peer reviewed rigorously and evaluated on the basis of adherence, originality, soundness, significance, presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall quality of their technical contribution. More details about the review process can be found in the conference page.

The papers should be formatted according to LNCS specification and submitted as PDF files. Instructions and templates can be found at
            http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.
Final Papers must be submitted on A4 in PDF format. Your paper should not include page numbers.

All final manuscripts should be uploaded to easychair no later than

        Sunday 30th January 2011
        ========================

The submission web site is http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=AEGS-11
Submissions violating the formatting guidelines will be excluded from the reviewing process.
At least one author of all accepted papers is expected to attend the Workshop.
All accepted papers will be informally published in the Workshop proceedings, and the organisers intend to organize a LNCS publication of the workshop proceedings.

PC Committee
============
# Elisabeth Andre (DFKI, Germany)
# Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Ulster, UK)
# Paul Shueh-Min Chang, (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)
# Shu-Heng Chen, (National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan)
# Bill Clancey (NASA, USA)
# Rosaria Conte (ISTC-CNR, Italy)
# Vincent Corruble (LIP6, France)
# Yves Demazeau (CNRS-LIG, Grenoble)
# Virginia Dignum (Technical University Delft, The Netherlands)
# Alexis Drogoul (LIP6, France)
# Bruce Edmonds (MMU, UK)
# Corinna Elsenbroich (University of Surrey, UK)
# Klaus Fischer (DFKI, Germany)
# Rachel E. Goshorn(Naval Postgraduate School, USA)
# Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto University, Japan)
# Annerieke Heuvelink (TNO, The Netherlands)
# Dirk Heylen (Univ of Twente, The Netherlands)
# Koen Hindriks (Delft University, The Netherlands)
# Jane Hsu (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
# Toru Ishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
# Wander Jager (Groningen University, The Netherlands)
# Lewis Johnson (Alelo Inc., USA)
# Gal A. Kaminka (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
# Petros Kefalas (CITY Institute/Sheffield University GR)
# Irving King (Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK)
# Yasuhiko Kitamura (Kwansei Gakuin University)
# Stefan Kopp (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
# Mike van Lent (SOAR technology, USA)
# Michael Lewis (University of Pittsburg, USA)
# MeiYii Lim (Heriot-Watt University, UK)
# Chin-Yew Lin (Microsoft Research Asia, China)
# Shou-De Lin, (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
# Simon Lynch (Univ. of Teeside, UK)
# Eleni Mangina (Phelan, University College Dublin, Ireland)
# Stacy Marsella, (ISI, Univ of Southern California, USA)
# Michael Mateas, (University of California at Santa Cruz, USA)
# Riichiro Mizoguchi (Osaka University, Japan)
# Toni Moreno (Univ. Rovira i Virgili, ES)
# Hector Munoz-Avila (Lehigh university, Bethlehem, USA)
# Emma Norling (MMU, UK)
# Anton Nijholt (UT, The Netherlands)
# Gregory O'Hare (University College Dublin, Ireland)
# Joost van Oijen (VSTEP, The Netherlands)
# Jeff Orkin (MIT, USA)
# Julian Padget (University of Bath, UK)
# Ana Paiva (IST, Portugal)
# Agostino Poggi (Univ degli Studi di Parma, Italy)
# Colin Price (University of Worcester, UK)
# Michal Pechoucek (CTU, Czech rep.)
# David Pynadath  (USC, USA)
# Geber Ramalho (UFPE, Brazil)
# Gopal Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)
# Debbie Richards(Macquarie University, Australia)
# Avi Rosenfeld (JCT, Israel)
# Ilias Sakellariou (UOM, GR)
# David Sarne (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
# Maarten Sierhuis (NASA, USA)
# Barry Silverman (UPenn, USA)
# Von-Wun Soo (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)
# Pieter Spronck (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
# Demosthenes Stamatis (TEIHE, GR)
# Ioanna Stamatopoulou (South-East European Research Centre, Thessaloniki, GR)
# Katia Sycara (CMU, USA)
# Duane Szafron (U of Alberta, Canada)
# Rainer Unland (University of Duisburg-Essen, GER)
# Harko Verhagen (Stockholm University/Royal Institute of Technology, SWE)
# Joost Westra (UU, The Netherlands)
# Uri Wilensky (Northwestern University, USA)
# R. Michael Young (North Carolina State University, USA)


Organizers
==========

1    Dr Martin Beer
    Communications and Computing Research Centre
    ACES
    Sheffield Hallam University
    Email: m.beer@shu.ac.uk

2    Cyril Brom
    Department of Software and Computer Science Education
    Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
    Charles University in Prague
    email: brom@ksvi.mff.cuni.cz

3    Von-Wun Soo,
    Department of Computer Science
    Institute of Information Systems and Applications
    National Tsing Hua University
    email:soo@cs.nthu.edu.tw

4    Frank Dignum
    Department of Information & Computing Sciences
    Utrecht University
    The Netherlands
    e-mail: dignum@cs.uu.nl

Poster on "Data Integration Models" @ ECCS2011

Edmonds. B. (2010) Data-Integration Models (poster). Eurpean Conference on Complex Systems 2010 (ECCS), Lisbon, September 2010. 

Available at: http://cfpm.org/cpmrep211.html

This one the ECCS2010 Best Poster Award.

31st August I am an invited speaker at MALLOW 2010

MALLOW is: The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW 2010)

Details at: http://mallow2010.emse.fr/

Towards a Science of Socially Intelligent ICT- a workshop - 3rd August London

See http://phoenixweb.open.ac.uk/~jeff_johnson/ASSYST_Perada_WS.html

In the programme I think I am:

Title to be announced
Speaker to be announced

but in reality I will talking on  "The Roots of Social Intelligence and their Implications for Socio-Technical Systems"

Ends with a "Champagne Reception"! 

Worrying Rumours from EPSRC

At a meeting of the newly funded "Complexity in the Real World" programme, someone reported from a meeting called by the EPSRC (PIs in charge of major EPSRC grants).  At that meeting it was reported that even under a mild set of 10% cuts to the research council's funding then the council has a choice between rescinding some grants and not funding any new ones (due to existing commitments).

Apparently the council:

1. along with similar councils refusing to submit a plan for 40% cuts as requested by the government
2. wants to continue funding new projects and hence may rescind existing grants, via the mechanism of asking recipient institutions to decide on 10% cuts on its EPSRC funded projects (with "ringfencing" for certain areas - doctoral centres, complexity projects etc.)

Samos 2010 Summit on ICT for eGovernance and Policy Modelling

I went to this as a member of the "CROSSROAD Scientfic Committee".  It was basically a networking event with workshops to brainstorm ideas for future EU funding in this area.  Rather pretentiously they issued a communique at the end!

Details at:
     http://samos-summit.blogspot.com/2010/07/samos-2010-summit-declaration.html

Context and Changing Behaviour - a talk at the Workshop on Modelling Behaviour Changes in Large Organisations

The slides from my talk are at:
             http://bruce.edmonds.name/context and changing behaviour.ppt

2 new papers on Context and Science/Simulation

CPM-10-209
             Complexity and Context-Dependency - Bruce Edmonds
CPM-10-210
             Context and Social Simulation - Bruce Edmonds