Seminar: David Chin, "CCPV: Coherence-Based Modeling of Cultural Change and Political Violence" (9/10/2009)

CCPV: Coherence-Based Modeling of Cultural Change and Political Violence
David Chin
Professor, Information and Computer Sciences

CCPV is an agent-based simulation system that allows users to analyze the long-term effects of different policies on configurations of culture (ideologies, values, and beliefs) in specific localities of the world, and predict the effect of this cultural change, in interaction with economic and political structural conditions, upon the level and targets for violent collective action in such localities. The simulation system will inform users which policy alternatives are most likely to minimize long-term violence and offer inference traces that allow policymakers to see the relevant information and logical inferences that led to each of its conclusions.  The system will encode its agents with cultural information based on available quantitative data, content analysis of ethnographic and historical documents, as well as through an innovative virtual communities crawler based upon social network and cultural theories, all validated and supplemented by regional studies specialists. In addition, up-to-date and empirically tested social science theories of both cultural change and human decision-making will be implemented into agent algorithms to predict individual and group behavior.