What algorithms have been suggested to abstract ABMs (ie to generate from one ABM another ABM that is more abstract) with the hope of obtaining ABMs that are more effective in some way?
A DICTIONARY DEFINITION: Abstraction is the process of taking away or removing characteristics from something in order to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics.
I am not an expert in this area, but one possible interpretation might be that there exists a meta-meta model such that all ABMs are instances of the same meta-meta model. Newell and Simon (1972) established that if a particular instance of Agent based model A gives result R, then the sufficiency of theorem “R if A” has been established for deterministic models.
==> Veerendra K Rai:
I'm not sure that meta-meta models (eh?) are relevant?
And did Newell and Simon really use the phrase "Agent based model" -- I don't think anyone used that phrase back in 1972... but maybe I am wrong! Page ref?
===> James Doran
Please rfer to page 4 of the document to be found on this link.
http://www.dis.anl.gov/agent20XY/proceedings/1999_Proceedings.pdf
Thank you for the link, Veerandra!
I see that Rob Axtell used "Agent-based Model" in 1999, in the context of looking back to an observation made by Newell and Simon in 1972 about Model --> Result being a kind of sufficiency theorem (N&S presumably not using the phrase "agent-based modelling"). OK -- no surprises there.
Returning to abstraction of agent-based models. I would like to be able to prove or disprove the CONJECTURE that in any AMB abstraction chain (ie a sequence of ABMs such that each is an abstraction of its predecessor in the sequence) there is one and only one model effectiveness peak.
I would also like to know in what circumstances abstraction removes intelligent agents from an ABM.
These ambitions seem to need (mathematically/computationally) precise definitions of at least: agent, intelligent agent, agent-based system, agent-based model, model effectiveness of an ABM, and ABM abstraction chain (and peak).
Has anyone done something like this? Any good pointers and/or ideas?
Jim
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