Does an agent have "live" on a world???

[glen e. p. ropella]

address@hidden writes:
 > Does an agent have to "physically" exist on a give world?  That is if a
 > simulation create 1000 agents in a population, but only had room for 200
 > at a time, could they exist in limbo, until they were called into
 > existence by another agent/or schedule?  
 > Using my problem/solution simulation as an example, lets say a given
 > problem agent needed to carry 25 solutions, but only had space on the
 > display to display 8 of them, could the rest "exist" in limbo, until it
 > decided to drop them, display them, or whatever? 

Not only *can* they exist; but, they will exist unless you explicitly
drop them.  In fact, we recommend doing something akin to this in
a simulation where the agent population is not constant, i.e. where
death occurs.  We recommend that the agents are moved from physical
reality to "purgatory" to await death.

The important distinction is whether or not your agents will be
static and *not* a part of the coevolutionary, larger, "world"
that is the process space.  In the reaperQueue example, the agents
are static and are no longer participating in the integration of
the world forward in time.  Another example of this would be an
Agent Cache, where when an agent either wasn't very active or was
scheduled for removal, is put on a list of inactive agents that
are available for reinstatement at a later time.  They're still
not participating in the world, but, could at a later date.

Now, the other kind would be the kind that aren't participating
in the "space" or the set of spaces upon which some aspect of 
the process is shown, but are still participating in the coevolution
of the process as a whole.  Say you have 8 solutions actively modifying
the "space" while the rest aren't.  That doesn't really stop those 17
from talking to each other and talking to the agents who are modifying
the space.  They would be like a bunch of angels inspiring some 
bible writers there on earth.  The bible writers are modifying the
world, but the angels are modifying the bible writers. [grin -- sorry]

 > Its kind of like the "if a tree falls in the forest..." If an agent
 > isn't observable, does it cease to exist? 

Not at all.  Plus, the concept of complete observability still applies.
Everything is observable in a Swarm model because we have access to 
the Swarms, the schedules, the objects, the source code, ObjC, GCC, and,
if you're lucky, the operating system.  We want X-ray vision, here!
[Ref: 
http://www.santafe.edu/projects/swarm/archive.modelling/list-archive.9709/0018.html]

glen
-- 
{glen e. p. ropella <address@hidden> |  Send lawyers, guns, and money!  }
{Hive Drone, SFI Swarm Project         |            Hail Eris!            }
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