Second International Workshop on
Regulated Agent-Based Social Systems:
Theories and Applications (RASTA'03)

Workshop date: 23 June, 2003

Abstract for

9:15 - 10:15

Social Dilemmas and Agent-Based Modelling: Why Aren't We All Psychopaths? and How Can We Reduce Water Pollution? (Invited talk)
Nick Gotts   

The talk is in two main parts. The first is a broad survey of approaches to the understanding of human cooperation and altruistic behaviour, the second draws on this survey in describing a current piece of agent-based simulation work on river basin management planning and the control of pollution due to rural land use.
Psychopaths are characterised primarily as lacking in conscience and empathy. They are not necessarily violent, but will lie, cheat and even kill if this appears expedient, undeterred by guilt or shame. This picture is actually rather close to the portrait of the instrumentally rational "Homo economicus" drawn by neoclassical economics. There would seem to be clear advantages in such a selfish and calculating approach to life, in terms of material gain and (taking a Darwinian perspective), opportunities to reproduce. Yet everyday observation, and empirical study of "social dilemmas" such as the "Prisoner's Dilemma" and the (misnamed) "Tragedy of the Commons", indicate that cooperative behaviour beyond what is obviously advantageous is common, and that heroic extremes of altruism occur with significant frequency. How is it that such behaviour survives, and how can agent-based models help us to understand it?
Attempts to control environmental pollution often give rise to social dilemmas: for each individual polluter, it is advantageous to avoid the costs of reducing pollution - yet if all do so, all may end up worse off than if all had restrained themselves. Attempts to model such situations have generally assumed that the benefits of avoiding restraint, and costs such as social disapproval, can be directly compared. They have also, in general, assumed that all the potentially polluting agents face equivalent sets of choices. In our planned agent-based models of river basin pollution, we drop both these assumptions: agents are allowed to have multiple and possibly inconsistent top-level goals, and asymmetries between upstream and downstream land managers are taken into account.

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Last modified: 18.06.2003 Daniel Moldt
Programme of RASTA'03: http://www2.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/tgi/events/rasta03/programme.html