The Third Way of Agent-Based Social Simulation and a Computational Account of Emergence

This paper interprets a particular agent-based social simulation (ABSS) in terms of Conte's third way of understanding agent-based simulation. It is proposed that the normalized compression distance (derived from estimates of Kolmogorov complexity) between the initial and final macrolevel states of the ABSS provides a quantitative measure of the degree to which the results obtained via the ABSS might be obtained via a closedform expression. If the final macrolevel state of an ABSS can only be obtained by simulation, this confers on agent-based social simulations a special status. Future empirical (computational) work and epistemological analyses are proposed.