This document discusses using agent-based modeling and simulation as a form of "practical necromancy" to predict and understand the past. It begins by outlining the historical practice of necromancy and divination. It then argues that modern simulations, like agent-based models, can serve similar purposes by creating "zombies" or simulated agents following simple rules based on our understanding of past systems and behaviors. Through emergent patterns from simulating interactions between these agents, we can test and explore hypotheses about how the past may have functioned, even if we cannot prove what exactly happened. Several examples are provided of past agent-based models the author has created related to information diffusion in the Roman world. The document argues
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March 19 version practical necromancy uva mar 22 2013
1. Practical Necromancy!
Or
How to raise the dead to predict
the past
Shawn Graham
Carleton
University
Some rights reserved by Pedro Vezini @electricarchaeo
2. The Plan
The deep history of
divination
Necromancy & Death
Simulation as modern
divination
Nuclear War & Death
Use our powers for
Some rights reserved by pasukaru76
good instead of evil
Practical Necromancy &
Agent based models
3. The Restless Dead
Zombies Bela Lugosi – White Zombie
Frankenstein’s Monster
When you raise the dead, there’s usually trouble.
Still from ‘I walked with a Brendon Thorne, Getty
zombie!’ 1943
6. Necromancy & Divination:
responses to the original
‘problem space’:
How do you keep the
world from ending?
2012 Movie – there goes
New York!
7. How do we keep the world from
ending?
Shamanism
Involves entering an altered state,
induced through physical exertion or
drugs
Allows the breeching of the barrier
between the everday & spiritual
worlds
Knowledge of the other world and
being the intermediary between the
two
9. Games & Simulations as
Purification
Etruscan Games
Roman Spectacles of Death
Grotta della Scimia Corneto, about
500 B.C
10. Magicians & Priests
The priest is passive
in letting
signs, portents to
signify what is to
come (augury)
But the magician is
active in dragging the
spirits forward to tell
the future
(necromancy)
(a bit like Humanities versus
Digital
Humanities, perhaps)
12. Games of Divination
I Ching – Book of Changes
http://www.ichingonline.net/index.php
13. Riddles, Oracles:
They describe a world
They are something to be solved
They present challenge & difficulty
They join representation with puzzle
Games, Riddles, Oracles: represent the
world, control the world, explore the world
15. Odysseus in the Underworld
Book XI – Nekuia
("rite by which ghosts were called up and questioned about the future," i.e., necromancy.)
Circe: You need to talk to Tiresias
Odysseus: He’s dead.
Circe: Yes, you need to go to the underworld.
Odysseus: d’oh.
Makes a sacrifice of meat, milk, honey, wine, and water; gives blood to the
shade of Tiresias
Also gives blood to shade of his mother, Anticlea.
And Agamemnon, and Minos, and Orion, and Tityos…. It’s busy, in the
underworld.
16. Necromancy
Is about trying to control the
future
This is a deep element to human
modes of being
Unlike divination, the element of
compulsion of other spirits and gods
marks it out as something unholy
Unholy in its means, unholy in its Prof. Hix, of Unseen
University prefers the
aims and objects term, ‘Post Mortem
Communnications’
17. Simulation is also
regarded, especially by those in
the humanities, as similarly evil
Marney & Tarbert, 2000. ‘Why Do
Simulation? Towards a Working
Epistemology for Practitioners of the Dark
Arts' in Volume 3(4)
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/3/4/4.html
(especially section 5).
18. Necromancy = Simulation
Scry the future Predict the future
Non-human actors Non-human actors
Messy / Hidden Messy / Hidden
Left to professionals Left to professionals
An act of compulsion Forcing what we know
through proper into computer
conduct of processes, algortihmns
chants, rituals, accoutr , equations
ements
20. And now, a brief detour into
Science Fiction
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Hari Seldon & Psychohistory
21. Practical Necromancy is not
cliodynamics
Cliodynamics.info
Top-down vs bottom-up
Not about simulation, but
about aggregate patterns
Even if these patterns exist,
doesn’t explain ‘why’
23. I object:
In the case of humans,
We don’t know all the variables
We don’t know how free will works
We don’t know how an individual will react
We don’t understand how individuals and society
influence each other
Prediction then becomes limited to very stringent
conditions
(ex: pedestrian flow)
24. …it’s at this point in the talk
that heart palpitations normally
occur.
This limitation is actually a strength, and is what
makes this ‘practical necromancy’
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/234075/what-is-your-
best-programmer-joke
26. Simulate how you believe some aspect of the past
worked, at the level of individuals.
Not the past but rather, a way of testing the
consequences of your story about the past
Practical Necromancy is probabilistic historiography
27. Wait, how does that work
again?
And thus can sweep the
We create simulacra, entire behavior
zombies, empty husks space, the entire realm
representing past actors of possible outcomes
given this understanding
We give them rules to be
interpreted given local ...and map what did
conditions occur (as best as we
understand it) against
the predictions of the
We watch what emerges model.
28. Next part: the practical &
grounded reasons for doing all
this.
• What they are
Agent Based Models: • How they work
the basics • Usefulness for
My own research history/archaeology
• Making our
assumptions about
how the past works
*explicit*
35. A Simple Model to Get Us
Started
Have you heard the
news?
(see Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 19.1 for details)
36. The Antonine Itineraries
as Network
A limite id est a vallo Praetorio
usque mpm clvi
A Bremenio
Vindomora viiii
Vinovia xviiii
Cataractoni xxii
Isurium xxiiii
Eburacum, leg. vi victrix, xvii
Derventione vii
Delgovicia xiii
Praetorio xxv
38. The model code:
to go
ask romans
[
pass-the-word ; if somebody here hasn’t heard the idea, tell them!
move-forward ; then follow the route of the itinerary to somewhere else
]
update-plots ; plot the percentage who have now heard the idea
if everyone-heard-it = 100%
[stop] ; if everyone has heard it, stop the simulation
set ticks ticks + 1 ; update the clock.
end
39. An Agent Based Exploration
of the Antonine
Itineraries
http://www.graeworks.net/abm/itineraries.html
40. Interpretation
Internal Dynamicsof Provincial Information Diffusion
1
" "r pr s nts the initia numbe of time s ps to ge the
t
tion
tiona of Time S ps
me s ge to 1 % of the popula
te
te
l
r
0
P opor
l
r
s a
Iberia
1 e e e
Britain
Italy
0.1 Three Gauls
1 21 41 61 81 101 121
%Who Have Heard the Message
41. So what did my zombies demonstrate?
‘prove’ is too strong a word
The patterns of interaction,
rather than the interactions
themselves , are necessary parts of
any explanation .
Network topologies matter.
(one of Meeks’ pillars of DH is network
analysis: but SNA is static. We need to reanimate them too!)
42. PatronWorld
A Rather More Complex Model
Where patterns of
interactions again are
the key
44. Begin with something
fundamental
Salutatio : the morning
greeting of a patron by
his clients
And then to process to
the forum, being
seen, and seeing in
turn, who is following
whom
48. When Digital Romans Go Bad
Oppression
Deaths
Model runs where violence emerged
49. Take Aways
Network topology matters
Model at the lowest practical level
Identify one crucial aspect and
model that
Your model encodes your beliefs
about the world: the process is the
rhetoric
50. So where I am now:
Economic Zombies
who
Generate
Networks
51. Practical Necromancy, eh?
Divination & simulation have deep roots
Computation actually lets us get rather good at
it, in some domains
Even in complex systems – especially human ones –
simulation can be useful
Create zombies, give them simple rules based on our own
mental models about the past
Thus we simulate not the past, but a historiography
Rigorous, explicit, open to critique and extension
Look me up on Figshare.com
Towards an Experiential Analysis of ShamanismLarry G. Peters and Douglass Price-Williams American Ethnologist , Vol. 7, No. 3 (Aug., 1980), pp. 397-418 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationArticle Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/stable/643675
Knossos – Minoan Crete. Plan here is from the middle minoan phase, more or less towards the end of the 2ndmillenium BC. Around the Agean, influence of this site, this place, seems to imply that not only was this a site of political/economic importance, but also of cosmological importance: that its very layout replicates the way the Minoans see the world. Also important in later dark age mythmaking, and for explaining the rise of Athens.Jeffrey Soles, pointing to the architectural play of light and shadow throughout the various levels of Knossos argues that this maze-like structure was all part of the ecstatic journey, and ties shamanism directly to the agonies of sport & game in this location. Story of Theseus & Minotaur an account that explains the way the world is the way it is.
Herodotus on Etruscan’s coming to Italy: “In the reign of Atys son of Menes there was a great scarcity of food in all Lydia. For a while the Lydians bore this with patience; but soon, when the famine continued, they looked for remedies, and various plans were suggested. It was then that they invented the games of dice, knucklebones, and ball, and all the other games of pastime, except for checkers, which the Lydians do not claim to have invented. Then, using their discovery to forget all about the famine, they would play every other day, all day, so that they would not have to eat... This was their way of life for eighteen years. Since the famine still did not end, however, but grew worse, the king at last divided the people into two groups and made them draw lots, so that one should stay and the other leave the country’.--- I think Herodotus misses the import of the games: not as a pasttime, but as a way of trying to control, predict, solve, or otherwise intercede with the divine, to resolve the famine.***Gladiatorial games – emerge from Etruscan funeral games, games that celebrate life by confronting death directly.Games become ritualized ways of cleansing Roman society of elements that were considered ‘noxii’, ie, that have transgressed social boundaries (which ultimately are founded in Roman cosmologies and cosmogeny)-’noxii’ were denied funeral rites, thus condemning them to everlasting wandering; but at the same time, these kinds of ghosts could haunt the living. Thus those who died in the games tossed into the Tiber, rather than buried, so that the city could be cleansed of them in their entirety.Gladiatorial games recreated society (not just in seating arrangments, but also in how people lived & died).The professional, married, and socially established gladiators were pitted against the noxii, the passive, condemned torture victims, in the midday games (pp. 91-95). The gladiators would make a paradoxical elite (pp. 79-90), with collegia at their disposal to ensure them a funerary ritual. Kyle takes advantage of this to destroy, following the example of others, certain myths still held in high esteem, such as the idea that beasts would have eaten the torture victims, or that legions of Christians were thrown to lions ("Compared to pagan victims, relatively few Christians actually died in arenas" [pp. 19, 186, 243]). The elaboration of the bloody spectacles and the increased refinement of their cruelty as the very image of imperial Rome in the "Holly-woodian" vision are aptly linked to political terror, the growing social rift, religious persecutions, and the threats on the frontiers of the Empire (pp. 99-101). Imperial society closes off and separates, in an increasingly impermeable and institutionalized manner, the privileged orders (honestiores) and all the others (humiliores), weakened and without protection outside the patronage of the greats. It reflects the authoritarian drift of a regime that is turning to domination. This is why the stereotype of the "bad emperor" such as Commodius (pp. 224-28), who is condemned by memory, is that he mixes up the order of things. He causes the privileged classes to suffer the same fate as the victims and plays at being a gladiator himself.
The difference between simulation & gaming
Delphi: riddles generated through ‘interpretation’ of prophetess.Riddle: ancient literary form; appears on cuneiform texts even. ‘a short lyric poem that poses a question, the answer to which lies hidden in hints’. The true riddle is not merely enigmatic; it actually poses a question (a real one, although it need not be explicit) that is to be answered by the reader or listener – the riddlee.‘I tremble at each breath of airAnd yet can heaviest burders bear. [implicit: who am I? – water]
It’s a collection of texts that, depending on dice throws, get combined and read in particular ways. (Because this is essentially a number of yes-or-no answers, the book can be easily coded onto a computer or represented mechanically. In which case, it’s not really a ‘book’ at all, but a machine for producing riddles.
“
Major difference between a priest & a magician, in antiquity?Element of control, compulsionPredict the future
-Need to have truly random digits in order to simulate the yields of atomic bombs-spurs the generation of digital computers-but in order to work out which variables affect the simulation in which way, you have to feed the simulation the same random numbers (the same probability) . So, at each point they needed a random number, they grabbed the same sequence from this book. These books of truly random numbers were funded almost entirely by the US Atomic Commission or the US Military (and you can still buy it from Amazon).Modern simulation is also divination, & has that same concern with deathModern simulation & simulation technology: first and foremost, predicting the outcomes of nuclear blasts, warSecondly, the weather.What a 10% chance of rain really means...
“Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe which combines history, sociology, etc., and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 novel Foundation.”(Thank you, Wikipedia).For ‘psychohistory’ to work:that the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently largethat the population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses
…rather like Turchin’scliodynamics. This is all top-down analysis. Practical necromancy is rather bottom up
Our simulations can only do what we program them to doSo they are only simulations of how we believe the world worksIn some cases, like weather, our beliefs and reality match quite well, and we know much about how the variables intersectBut because starting conditions strongly affect how things transpire, we forecast from multiple runs with slightly different starting conditions
Direction of simulation is misplaced.Do not try to simulate the future.
Forecast a range of possible outcomes. In this way, we test our understanding of how the past works.Thus enabling a probabilistic, Bayesian approach to historiography
For the archaeologist, for the historian, the strength of agent based modeling is that it allows us to explore the unintended consequences inherent in the stories we tell about the past.This isn’t easy.(but it can be done. And compared to actually raising the dead, it is indeed practical).
Developing a laboratory that allows for different kinds of economic conditions to be modeled, different understandings of the Roman economy to be modeled, which generate networks. Then: I look at all of these resulting networks, mapped against archaeological networks. Aiming for sufficient, not necessary. Trying to reduce the phase space I am looking for, narrowing down the options of those things that are contingent, and those which are inevitable.