Changing the Rules of the Game

1. Changing the Rules of the Game Dr. Marco A. Janssen Department of Spatial Economics

2. Research questions • How do rules emerge, get selected and be remembered in social ecological systems? • What can we learn from (computational models of) immune systems and language development?

3. Contents • Puzzles from empirical studies of common pool resources. • Immune system • Language development • Methodology • Modeling self-organization of institutions • Discussion

4. Common Pool Resources • Are used by multiple-users • For which joint use involves subtractability, that is, use by one user will subtract benefits from another user’s enjoyment of the resource • It is difficult to exclude users

5. Management of CPRs • Economic Theory predicts Nash equilibrium and overharvesting • Solutions to derive cooperative solution: • Government will manage the resource • A market will be created • Laboratory experiments and field studies show an alternative: self-organization of institutions.

6. Factors important for self-organization • Type of communication • Building up mutual trust relationships • Rules how to monitor and sanction defined by the local users and implemented by local users • Memory of successful solutions by taboos, rituals, religions, etc.

7. Immune System • Distributed system which is able to detect and eliminate invasions of pathogens. • Detection: self vs non-self • Response: generation antibodies • Memory: storing successful responses

8. Pathogens • Bacteria • Parasites • Viruses • Fungi

9. Detection

10. Recognition

11. Response - Continue generation of new cells. - Replication of cells which bind lots of pathogens: Antibodies - Antibodies neutralize pathogens

12. Impact of Memory

13. Artificial Immune Systems • Distributed systems for information processes. • Origin: • study of immune systems • bio-algorithms: • genetic algorithms • neural networks

14. Language development • Different perspectives on language. • Universal grammar/language: • Genetic transmission • Localized hard-wired neurological structures: crickets and songbirds • Higher animals learn language gradually: training parameters of neural network

15. Complex adaptive system approach • Language: • result of local interactions of language users • self-organizing process • agents benefit from being understood (fitness) • clustering of agent with same language/dialect

16. Methodology • Games: • game theory for institutions, repeated games with prisoners dilemma • language games, imitation games • evolution of grammar: fitness related to mutual understanding

17. Vowels

18. Emergence of vowels by adaptive imitation games (De Boer, 2000)

19. Methodology (II) • Networks: • Neural networks: learning by finding the right connection strengths • Immune networks: maintaining immune memory, spreading information over other parts of the network. • Social networks.

20. Methodology (III) • Evolutionary Computation • Genetic and evolutionary algorithms: • fitness • selection • mutation • (cross-over)

21. Modeling self-organization of institutions • Coding rules • Creating rules • Selecting rules • Remembering rules

22. Coding rules • Grammar of Institutions (Crawford and Ostrom, 1995) • Rules are build up from 5 components: • Attributes (characteristics of the agents) • Deontic: may/must/must not • Aim: action of the agent • Conditions: when, where and how • Or else: sanctions when not following a rule

23. Creation of Rules • Mutations and cross-over • Immune systems: constant generation of new lymphocytes • Language: interaction with other groups and with new experiences: • Computer led to new words (e-mail & internet) and new meanings (windows & mouse) • Social groups: jargon of scientists

24. Genetic Libraries

25. Selection of Rules Rules: Constitutional Collective Operational Levels of analysis: Constitutional Collective Operational choice choice choice Processes: Formulation Policy-making Appropriation Governance Management Provision Adjudication Adjudication Monitoring Modification Enforcement

26. Selection of rules (II) • Criteria for success • Social networks • Mutual trust relationships • Recognition of trustworthy others (reputation, symbols, indirect reciprocity)

27. Remembering Rules • Law, universities, taboos, rituals, religions • Reinforcement and disturbances • Resilience • Redundancy

29. Coverage of antigen space by antibodies

30. Fitness versus redundancy (Hightower et al, 1995)

31. Fitness related to redundancy (Hightower et al, 1995)

32. Training the system • Allow small disturbances to maintain training of the strength of the network, the diversity and functional redundancy

33. Discussion • Empirical evidence for self-organization of institutions. • Formal models may help to explain observations. • But how to formally model how rules emerge, get selected and be remembered?

34. Discussion (II) • We may learn from similarities and differences between institutions, immune systems, and language development. • Computational tools exists to simulate immune systems and language development • Toward computational laboratories for social-ecological systems.