Assessing the Safety
of (Numerical) Representation in Social Simulation
By: Bruce Edmonds
Date: 15th Sept 2005
CPM Report No.: CPM-05-153
Presented at the ESSA 2005 conference in
September in Koblenz, Germany.
The nature and
function of representation in social simulation is analysed into the:
representational; necessary; and significant. Conditions for a
reliable use of a simulation are then formulated. The special
case of numerical representation is then considered. Three
simulations that use numerical representation at their heart are
discussed, one in detail. It is found that small changes in the
representation (ones indistguishable using observation) can cause
significant changes in the outcomes, and so are unsafe in terms of
informing us about the target phenomena.