Social Simulation

One of the benefits of being a post grad is that you get a greater freedom to push at the boundaries of your subject. Overly excited technology journalists may call it the cutting edge, for social scientists it's more likely to be a paper cut from a new book but it's still at the forefront of human knowledge.

I'm already thinking about what I want to do for my dissertation next year and I have given some thought to methodology and I've got interested in social simulation. If your looking to get a good introduction to the subject Simulation for the Social Scientist 2nd Edition by Nigel Gilbert and Klaus G. Troitzsch and the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation certainly qualify.

Keen observers of social science will notice it's just getting to grips with explanation. Now we do find it very difficult to actually prove causation. More realistically what is often proven is a strong correlation attached to a theory about why the independent variables effect the dependent. The promise of social simulation is the ability to predict what will happen in the future. Not only in a micro context but using multi agent and multi level modeling to try to understand emergent behaviour on a macro level.

For instance we already know that inequality exacerbates a range of social problems but what we can't do is say to government if X policy is pursued it will have Y effect on inequality and produce Z social effects with enough certainty to be relevant to contemporary political debate. Or if a company does something how the perceptions of its customers will change and if it will alter their propensity to purchase the companies products. Whoever can work that one out is in line for a handsome pay day.