What if? Explaining the Past; Predicting the Future

The evolution of the universe, the solar system, the earth, life itself and culture are characterized by an increase in complexity. What if the world were constituted with certain rules of interaction and not others? These are the questions that multiagent (multicausal) models investigate in ways that discourse, mathematics and calculus cannot. Often called numerical simulations, these worlds are representations of agency in space with time sliced thinly. The dynamics of the interaction of large populations of agents is typically beyond our cognitive ability, leading to the notion of emergence, the appearance of surprising complex global patterns from simple local rules of behavior and arrangements of initial conditions. Explorations of complexity inform the philosophies of computation and evolution and find wide applications in the sciences, engineering, humanities and arts. This afternoon we look at some of the worlds that our students have created from the bottom up, in much the same way that evolution has created the complexity we see. As scientists we observe resulting patterns, and from those we hypothesize the processes that give rise to them. As policy makers we engineer the components which we hope will lead to desired emergent outcomes. As humanists we recognize the limitations of natural language and embrace computation to help us understand the world. All at Duke interested in Media Arts + Sciences are welcome. Drinks & light snacks provided.