Agent-Based Model: A dynamic computer simulation containing autonomous agents interacting in space and time. Used to study the emergence of complex behaviors. Primary topic of Mel’s PhD. 

(stay with me… I promise we’ll circle back to food)

The concept of an agent-based model (ABM) is pretty simple to grasp. It’s a simulation where agents (like people) move through space (like a building or a landscape) and interact in some way. ABMs have a variety of applications across different domains but I have taken the concept of an ABM to heart and turned it into somewhat of a living, breathing Merigold Analytics product.

The living ABM experience – Equal parts discipline and indulgence. More creative than corporate. 

The core tenets of an ABM are central to its design:

• The model must not have prescribed outcomes. In other words, one should not use the model’s source code to preordain specific occurrences or interactions. The actions and interactions in the simulation must occur probabilistically, or with some degree of randomness.
• The agents in the model must be diverse. Ideally, there are several classes of agents that behave differently in different scenarios. We’ve all heard that resilience lies in diversity – in agriculture, in team structure, in network science. This is also true for a simulation’s agent population, which should be heterogenous by design.
• Things in the simulation must occur naturally. Also known as emergence, this is probably the most core tenet of ABMs. The true art of an ABM is in architecting, designing, curating, and, yes, coding, the environment. The environment hosts the agents and provides a real-time runtime for those agents to interact. 

The run button is where the magic in an ABM happens. You’ve created, you’ve curated, you’ve provisioned the environment.

You press run and you see what happens. If agents interact. How agents interact. What results from their interaction. All of this emerges organically.

It isn’t anything you code. It isn’t anything you expect. It just happens.

The confluence of disparate parts, pieces, concepts, and people (heterogenous agents, if you will) is what a truly elegant ABM is all about. How to bring these things together in brilliant equilibrium. How to curate an ambiance of #equalpartsdisciplineandindulgence.

Completing my PhD in CSS (Computational Social Science) made me realize that brilliance and beauty lie in the consistent and strategic combination of multiple things – bringing all the parts and pieces together.

I conceived OneandahalfSlices 60 days before graduating with my PhD. Its creation was under the pretense that, much like good ABMs result from the successful curation of both agent population and environment, a healthy existence – living well – results from the successful combination of multiple things. Bringing those things all together into one, artistic, deep, connected life experience.

Open flame. Nutrition. Sustainable agriculture. Machine Learning. Local. Mobility. Art. The Ocean. Depth. Breadth. Aesthetic. Culture. Curiosity. Consistency. Spontaneity. Synthesis. Networks. Technical acumen. Teams. People.

There’s an intersection point. It is Merigold’s instantiation of a living ABM in the first OneandahalfSlices experience. The setting: the street where I grew up, learned to surf, learned to wonder. Designed with lessons learned from The Childhoods of Exceptional People.

This summer, we convene. We get salty.