Sociophysics simulations

Check if we need one Introduction: Physicists since a long time have tried to apply their skills to fields outside physics, with more or less success. Econophysics is a big fashion at present, though partly based on the wrong belief that economists did not make empirical observations of financial markets or made no Monte Carlo simulations where rational judgement is replaced by random decisions. Also Frederick Soddy ventured into economics after his 1921 Nobel prize in chemistry. Quantum mechanics co-inventor Erwin Schrödinger more than half a century ago wrote a book asking " What is life ? " , long before today's interests in biophysics and bioinformatics. Sociophysics has been around for at least three decades, with or without that name [1, 2, 3, 4]. The present review summarizes some of the more recent simulations in sociophysics and is clearly biased by the personal preferences and experience of its author. We ignore here car traffic simulations [5, 6], scale-free networks [7], social percolation [8] and active Brownian particles [9] since they were reviewed recently. Instead we look at the models of Bonabeau et al [10], Sznajd [11] and similar consensus models [12, 13]. We concentrate on simple models which take about one page of Fortran program, available from [email protected]. We thus update similar summaries published before [14, 15]. Hierarchies: How come someone is born into nobility, and others are members of the proletariat. Some scientists are given tenure, and others have to leave academia The elites of all countries and all times has always some explanations, like the Grace of God having them put into the upper levels of society. Statistical Physicists, of course, assume these hierarchies to arise from randomness. (The illusion that everything is random is a professional disease " morbus Boltzmann " among these physicists, just as silicosis = black lung affects mine corkers.) If nobility is connected with ownership of the land, then it cannot develop easily in a nomadic society, while sedentary societies may have ground property. The peasants then can become slaves of the nobility owning the piece of territory on which the peasants work. Thus sedentary societies with agricultural fields may develop stronger hierarchies than nomadic tribes with just a few light goods to be carried around. The Hollywood movie " Dances with Wolves " is an example how the industrialized world may imagine beautiful nomadic paradise to have been.