Hot Spots & Complex System – Update 2
I’ve fallen behind about 2 weeks on where I wanted to be at this point in my work. At this point I would have wanted to have a few ideas and a solid understanding as to where I’m heading but without a goal it’s hard to gauge how well I’m doing. Yes there’s doubt each step of the way.
Current Accomplishments
I read through the paper, Modeling civil violence: An agent-based computational approach, which the Net-Logo Model, Rebellion, is based on once again to understand what this is all about.
The paper in a nutshell
The paper outlines 2 scenarios. The first, models a world where a central government attempts to control its population with different tools, cops and government legitimacy. The second model (which I find interesting) models a world where a central government has no acting force and the conflict is between 2 groups within its borders.
I find this second model interesting because given a small L (legitimacy for the other group to live) genocide occurs in all instances. Even when introducing peacekeepers the outcome is genocide most of the time. Interesting.
Reaction to reading
My reaction was more to the author introducing an extra variable into the complex system, the peacekeeper. How one small variable gleaned a very interesting picture of the world. Though a, “no duh Sherlock. Of course thats going to happen”, entered into my head this as a good variable to introduce.
This lead me to think…”im thinking too hard here. Lets keep this simple”. I went back to my note and looked at a single item in the paper which had me thinking. The author mentions there are a few agents which hold a private grudge yet never revolt. I wanted to see this in action and decided to update the code to see these agents.
Since each agent has a perceived-grievance variable which can be 0-100, where the higher value depicts a high change of revolting if the probability of said agent wont get taken to jail I set all agents with perceived-grievance > 50 to pink. (Screen shot to come)
A few questions
Online Courses
On the recommendation of Prof Abbott, I’ve begun to take the Complex Systems lecture. Though I’m still in the first lecture its proving to be interesting so I will continue.
Research Papers
Prof Abbott mentioned I should look at papers which were recently published and I have started the process using 3key terms
1. Conflict Resolution
2. Counter Terrorism
3. Terrorism – government policy.
I identified 20 papers
Concerns & Next Steps
My concern? Is this correct? Going back through my notes with Prof Dozier to look at his PowerPoint deck as well as the “Design Science Framework”
Armando Padilla
Zend Framework 1.8 Released
How to set up Zend_Tool on Windows.
Zend Framework – Simple Caching ‘ab’ Test.
About Author
