Humans as agents / psychology / economics. Instead of making mathematical models of rational agents, have people write code that predicts the behaviors of rational agents or humans. Test the “human bots” against empirical experimental results of humans in different situations, to demonstrate that the code accurately models human behavior.
Mechanism design. Show that according to different incentive structures, humans will behave differently, and use this to optimize the incentive structures accordingly.
Most social science. Make agent-based models to generally help explain how groups of humans interact with each other and what collective behaviors emerge.
I guess when I said, “Much of academic progress”; I should have specified, “Academic fields that deal with modeling humans to some degree”; perhaps most of social science.
Could you give a few specific examples where you imagine agent-based models would help?
Sure,
Humans as agents / psychology / economics. Instead of making mathematical models of rational agents, have people write code that predicts the behaviors of rational agents or humans. Test the “human bots” against empirical experimental results of humans in different situations, to demonstrate that the code accurately models human behavior.
Mechanism design. Show that according to different incentive structures, humans will behave differently, and use this to optimize the incentive structures accordingly.
Most social science. Make agent-based models to generally help explain how groups of humans interact with each other and what collective behaviors emerge.
I guess when I said, “Much of academic progress”; I should have specified, “Academic fields that deal with modeling humans to some degree”; perhaps most of social science.