Aybars-log
October 28 I have found three papers on some old version of the 'racial neighborhood segregation' cellular automaton. I will read these papers and for tomorrow will try to add some probabilistic features to my Netlogo simulation.
October 29 Today, I met with Jim, and we talked about the possible extensions we can do to the automaton. I told Jim that I am going to finish adding the probabilistic features in the next few days. We also looked at the papers I was talking about and did not necessarily find any new magnificent implementation ideas about them. Still, it seems that those papers are going to be useful for the paper.
October 30 Today I finished adding probabilities to my simulator. So here are the news: About 2/3 of the time, the patch color stays the same. Of the other 1/3, what color the patch will become depends on the colors of the neighbors (the color of the patch itself not included) and there always is a 1/17 (which is about 6%) chance that it will randomly selected (1/3 chance for each color).
I also made the colors probabilistic, where now blues and greens are majorities (equally likely), where the reds are minorities (only about 1/11 of the population initially are reds). One thing that helps reds catch up is the mechanism explained above, where the probability of a red emerging is the same.
Now I am thinking that maybe we should make two different versions of this simulator, so that we can compare: 1- One or two gossips/superstitions/religions/beliefs/whatever we call it come about, and people tend to believe and tell more depending on how many times they heard each one. 2- Same thing, but this time there is also lingual fractionalization. So greens and blues can speak only their own languages, while the reds are the bilingual minorities.
October 31 Today I created a project page and placed a project summary in it. Of course, it still does not have to be the final final idea, but to me it seems that it might be.
November 1 Okay, I have made up my mind. There should be three different versions, which we compare. Which variables we are going to choose is still ambiguous, however, that should be evident soon. The three versions of the simulator that I am going to implement and compare are:
1- Racial fractionalization (the on I finished on October 29). 2- Racial-linguistic fractionalization (the one I explained on October 29). 3- Racial-linguistic-religious fractionalization. This one is the most complicated one. This one starts out as the racial-linguistic fractionalization simulator. However, after a number of ticks (when the simulator is coming closer to an equilibrium), two different religions/beliefs come up in the two major races (Greens and Blues). They cannot, however, talk to each other, as only Reds are bilingual (religion spurs out of blues to greens and vice versa, via Reds only). However, being of a different religion acts as an extra segregation factor.
November 2 I am still trying to decide, what variables we should be looking at. The definitely important variables are:
- The percent of the cells have at least one neighbor that is of a different race - The percent of the cells that are of the majority race in their neighborhood
November 3 I am done with the racial-linguistic version also. The probabilistic structure of the racial segregation model was a two-step process. Just tampering with the second process a little gave me a nice racial-linguistic segregation model.
November 4 & 5 Today, I am working on the variables to be outputted. Right now I am developing the code, so that it will output and plot some variables (starting with, but not limited to the ones on November 2) in a given time.
Right now the program uses text for output, but I think, I will make them into graphs as soon as possible.
November 6 I am thinking about what to do about the paper. Maybe, one solution is, not just talking about the project itself, but also about the evolution of the project and the small-sized programs we created before we ended up with the finished job.
November 7 Today I went to Jim's office hours. We decided that, for monday, I am going to be working on the gossip simulator from the Netlogo models library. Although we seem to be still improving the idea of what the final product will become, it seems that we will use the idea of the gossip simulator to implement the idea of "religion/belief" into the simulator. Of course, ours is going to have significant differences. For example, in the gossip simulator, there is only one gossip, whereas, we will make our simulator emerge two religions. Furthermore, ours is going to be probabilistic (so, someone who has heard the news is not certainly going to tell one's neighbors).
Then we will have 2 switches. One is deciding, whether or not there is discrimination based on color. The other one is to state whether or not there is discrimination based on religion. Similarly, we are thinking of adding other switches, such as, whether the transfer or the religion between different colors is slower/harder.
November 8 Good news. This religion thing just had its first step. Now we have two religions come out at random places in the grid. People start out as 0, depending on under the effects of which religion they stay, they go higher (up to 10, religion A) or lower (down to -10, religion B). The coloring also worked out very nicely. If the value is lower than 0, the color of the cell becomes darker (i.e. red becomes dark red), and if it is higher than 0, it becomes lighter (i.e. blue becomes bright blue). Soon we have two seperate groups of light and dark.
November 9 Now, I think we should have 3 switches. One is religion on-off switch. Basically, when we do not have that, it becomes no different than what we mostly finished on November 3 (then we just have different colored people and two languages). When we choose that to be on, we have two more switches. One is, whether we have discrimination based on color while transferring religion - so when it is active, inter-color religion transfers are harder. The second switch states whether we have discrimination based on religion, in which case, people have a slight preference to reside near people of their own religion.
So, tonight, I finished implementing the first of these switches. By the way, my computer is still having trouble adding some stuff into the graphical user interface, but I am placing them into the program as global variables, and my plan is to ameliorate it later on the ACLs.
November 10 & 11 The news are great. I did not finish implementing 2 of the 3 switches I explained above, but added some others, which I finished implementing. Now the program has some cool functionalities. The additions include:
1- A graph plot, which plots three variables: The percentage of people that are in majority in respect to color, the percentage of people that are in majority in respect to religion and the percentage of people that are in majority in respect to both. The lingual majority issue I have not placed into the graph, because Jim did not approve that yet, but we can add it if he does.
2- We implemented the prefer same religion switch (I talked about it on November 9). If they prefer same religion, and if someone new comes to a cell, that person has to be of the same religion (but does not have to believe to the same extent). If they do not prefer same religion, then a random person comes in.
3- We have the religious mood variable (the sum of the religious values of the neighbors plus that of the cell, divided by 9).
4- Now we have the "religion already there" switch. So, religion does not have to start from two points, but we can start with religion already there (everyone is assigned a random religion in the beginning. And that crates some crazy textures.
5- Now the new person who comes to a cell does not have to have the exact same religion as the people that come in. Before, if the religious value of a patch was 5, for example, the newcomer was having 5 as the religious value also, which did not make sense, now it is fixed.
November 12 I went to Jim's office hours, and showed him the developments. Now we seem to have three main issues: 1- The religion is running on top of race, unrelated to the color segregation. It is as if two different filters are shown on one screen. How will we combine these two?
2- How will we increase the validity of the project? For this, Jim gave me homework, to find some other automata and find out their parameters and find out my own parameters.
3- The graphical user interface still is insufficient. What can we do to increase the control of the user over the essential variables?
November 12-November 15 I am looking at a variety of segregation automata, but most of them are so similar.
To combine religion and color segregations, one simple solution might be, placing an extra, slight, prejudice. We can check at any given time the average level of belief in any single group. That might have an extra effect on the probability of that group's members believing in that religion at that level. We should still think how exactly we will implement that, but vaguely, this is some beginning point.
