Complex Models to Understand Complex Social Situations

Abstract

Now we know that the complexity scale can be climbed up to efficient models of pedestrian traffic. Can we proceed further, to more complex (and important!) situations, to address social issues such as unemployment, wage inequalities and economic growth? Again, the path forwards seems obvious: let’s take into account all the important mechanisms to create realistic models. After all, computers are powerful enough to handle millions of entities, and, as our life has been digitalized, we have lots of data about human societies. Can we simply succeed by brute force? The following examples should convince you that it is not that simple! In short, making a model more realistic by adding poorly controlled mechanisms often leads to poor understanding and no predictive power. More is different, not better.