Emergent Order

[Martin Hash]

Here's how I would write code to simulate an economy (economies are everything, not just money): every bird (actor in the economy) would be object oriented with goals of its own. There are a LARGE number of birds in the flock. There are also global variables like wind, time of day, time of year, etc. Each bird would also have programmed responses to what happens when the birds around it do something. Each bird is individually affected by the randomness around it: air pockets, other flying objects, it's personal eyesight & hearing, randomness is muscle strength, etc. Then START the simulation and see what the flock does. If you run the simulation a 1000 times, there will be a probability of outcomes, some more probably than others. Now change some factor, usually a global variable, and run the simulation a 1000 times again: has the distribution of probabilities changed, and if so, is there a new most probable outcome, and what is its single probability? This kind of simulation is the only way I would listen to any self-proclaimed economic fortuneteller.