Last Saturday saw the second segment of Humanist Society Singapore’s Psychology Talk Series. Entitled: “Agent-Based Modeling Game Theory”, the talk started out with participants filling out one of two questionnaires, picked out at random. This would provide the data points for the Ultimate Game afterwards.
Dr Ronald Ng is a medical doctor with an interest in complexity and emergent phenomenon, which his how he got into Agent-based Modeling (ABM). This is where individual objects, animals or people are allowed to interact with each other and their environment within a computer programme. By varying the parameters like sample size, time duration etc we are able to study phenomena like traffic jams and bird flocking.
After the opening, we were given the results of the opening experiment. In the ultimatum game, one person (the giver) is given a sum of money to divide between themselves and one other person (the receiver). The receiver can then either accept or reject that amount, and if the receiver rejects that amount, then the giver does not get anything either. So the game that the giver is playing is to estimate the smallest amount possible to give the receiver, so that the receiver will not reject the offer, and that the giver will be maximising his payoff. Sure enough, our results corresponded closely to the global average of 49% to 39%.
Dr Ng then introduced other variables to his models like learning capacity, reputation and cooperation. We were introduced to concepts like the ‘Prisoners’ Dilemma’ as well as Jonathan Haidt’s foundations of proto-morality. All of this gave us an insight of how morality and evolve, with the caveat that it does not amount to proof that it happened this way.
After the break, sensing that some attendees who still were hungry for more, Dr Ng delved into an extra session outlining “Deterministic Chaos” introducing us to dynamic systems with a sensitivity to initial conditions. We were wowed by the mind-blowing ‘chaos game’ where a seemingly random process performed repeatedly yielded a self-replicating pattern called the Sierpinski triangle.
The next talk, “The Evolution of Psychology & Morality” by Dr. John Michael Elliott, takes place on 27 October 2018 (Saturday), 6-8:30pm at 100 Victoria Street, #B1-01, Singapore 188064 NLB , Level 5 , Imagination Room.
