Behavior and Social Interaction
By designing programs that effectively mimic social
interaction between people, scientists hope to gain a broader
understanding of many sociological phenomena. For instance, many of
us are quite familiar with the every day annoyance of traffic jams.
What many people don't realize is that most traffic jams are not
caused by accidents or construction. In fact, the worlds best
scientists are at a loss to remedy rush hour traffic jams such as the
type that choke off the Long Island community at the end of each
work-day. This is because they do not fully understand that cause as
of yet. Mainly, this lack of knowledge is due to the overwhelming
complexity of the situation - millions of drivers in millions of cars,
each affecting the actions of the others. However, if scientists were
to program a million cars into a supercomputer, and program
intelligence as complex and random as that of the average driver into
a supercomputer, then they would have something that has not
previously existed - a working model of rush-hour traffic that they
can experiment with without spending the tax-payers money on grand
infrastructure schemes that have proved largely ineffectual. You see,
using ALife as a tool, scientists are poised to solve many of today's
social ills.