Another new member

[Ebenezer Tolman]

My name is Ebenezer and I am a health care worker. I read about "complex adapting systems" some years ago and became interested in agent-based modeling. How do different actors within a system decide when to cooperate and not to? How do we evaluate cost-based modeling as we try to navigate our viewed choice sets? Which assumptions do we use consciously, and which ones are not explicit, but still in force?   I have been reading books for the last 5 years or so, on ideas loosely termed "complexity", "chaos", "general systems theory", "game theory", "holism", "semiotics", and so forth, and am always on the lookout for people to bounce ideas around with.   My two main focii are: 1. How do ideas percolate through society, and how do they change as they pass from one user to another? How do ideas shape us as we become their vectors, and how much do we 'distort' the message we received by adapting it to our own selfish concerns?   2. As alluded above, how do individual agents (actors, people, characters, citizens) decide how to navigate complex and shifting environments that provide both opportunity and hazard? And how do our plans of action distort the very environment we move through? I term this "agent heuristics in multivariate settings".   My website is called "adaptingsystems.com", and consists of mainly book reviews plus some of my own ideas.   http://adaptingsystems.com/default.aspx   Thanks,   Eb

[Robert Link]

Eb,

Good to have you here!

On the topic of "how do ideas percolate...", have you read "The
Tipping Point"? If not, you might find some good stuff there. It
approaches the notion of propagation of ideas using a metaphor if
epidemiology, without recourse to needless invention of new entities.
Put differently, it talks memes without recourse to the concept of
memes. Very cool stuff.

Best,

--
Robert Thomas Hayes Link, Esq.
(626) 826-7323
http://netlaw.robertlink.org
r...@robertlink.org
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