Talk:Computational sociology
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Actors and social change agents are of key importance. Roles, functions and even methods apply to social computation. (Any well formed term pair works either way IMO). Using object methods ( i.e. a totally neutral stance outside of the model) sociologists can observe without effecting the test case... or so it is presumed. Actually as in physics, no observation can be 100% removed from that which is observed. If this is even remotely true for elementary particles then how much more so of Human Beings?
The Unified Modeling Language has elaborate constructs to deal with such entity relationships as manager/worker, buyer/seller, lawyer/client, teacher/student and heaven forbid even master/slave. In the one-to-one world those relationships are fairly urbane. Certainly, they have been used in many 'data warehouse metamodels' and other 'object-oriented' database schemes. But Human Beans are not objects! They are Actors, agents or heaven again forbid subjects.
But what of say, the relationship between a local law enforcement group and a street gang. How do you squeeze this use case into a meaningful model? Now you have complex one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many dynamic heirarchies - relationships that will do their best to defy all standards, definitions, conventions, procedures, methods and everything else you throw at them. Yes Computational Sociology is a science of enormous complexity.
The first reference to "Simulation for the Social Scientist" (2nd ed.) refers to the title as an "on-line book". It's not. It's just an order form for a print book, though with some useful links to free software.
