When science distinguishes itself by being able to know and manipulate processes at the micro- and the nano scales, and also at the macro- and galaxy scales, something exceptional occurs in between. There, it seems, science has to accept the unpredictability of the future — on individual, institutional, and ecological levels. Here knowledge is about the past and expectation is about the future. In this transition area lie Heracles’ crossroads, dividing those who place their hopes on the challenges of the unpredictable (the virtuosi) from those who place their hopes on their preference for (some say addiction to) familiar certainties (the victimi). Where science supports virtuosity rather than victimization I am in.
The framework I use for gaining some social understanding is meant to help constrain the scope of conceptual models that guide implementation of complex adaptive networked agent-based simulation. Conceptual models are frameworks for understanding. I use ABCM Simulation, for simulation based on Agent Based Conceptual Models.
The framework I use rests on a few assumptions.
Where labor can be distributed, doing so is often efficient. Specialist skills will emerge and specialists will congregate in different disciplines that focus on their own particular values in their own particular domains and with their own particular methods, aiming to answer their own particular questions in their own particular technical languages.
With time, such specialists will no longer understand each other’s languages.
As our societies evolve, the challenges that they face need not tally with such divisions in disciplines. Huge risks often require the recombination of many specialist perspectives.
Recombination is difficult. Multiple values need be acknowledged and considered concurrently.
I assume here that ABCM simulation is useful. I offer a framework for integrating into one conceptual model, multiple perspectives on how an App performs.
The values that I use in the framework lurk behind big words. I use veracity, loyalty, security, money and fitness.
These values relate to equally big words for the functions they require, to research for veracity, to cluster for loyalty, to coerce for security, to exchange for money and to evolve for fitness. All five functions depend on communication infrstructures.
Together these values and urges form the social climate of the day. And I assume that the behavioral preferences of the day are sensitive to this climate.