Gossip, Sexual Recombination and the El Farol Bar:
modelling the emergence of heterogeneity

CPM Report No.: 97-31
By: Bruce Edmonds
Date: December 1997

An extended version published as: Edmonds, B. (1999). Gossip, Sexual Recombination and the El Farol bar: modelling the emergence of heterogeneity. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 2(3), <http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/2/3/2.html>

 

Abstract

Brian Arthur's `El Farol Bar' model is extended so that the agents also learn and communicate. The learning and communication is implemented using an evolutionary process acting upon a population of mental models inside each agent. The evolutionary process is based on a Genetic Programming algorithm. Each gene is composed of two tree-structures: one to control its action and one to determine its communication.

A detailed case-study from the simulations show how the agents have differentiated so that by the end of the run they had taken on very different roles. Thus the introduction of a flexible learning process and an expressive internal representation has allowed the emergence of heterogeneity.

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