[Systems Analysis on a Programmable Pocket Calculator, Hartmut Bossel, p.432-456] [JLJ - Bossel
has some great ideas here - don't be turned off by the 'pocket calculator' in the title]
p.438 The conceptual system of individual and social actors determines their behavior to
a great extent
p.446 All studies of possible future developments are contingent upon scenarios, i.e. plausible
and consistent assumptions concerning the future development of certain parameters or exogenous variables.
p.447 In the investigation of an energy system, initial simulation runs are always of a rough and
exploratory nature... In this initial search process, the emphasis should be more on a more or less complete
investigation of the policy alternatives, and less on details. However, the somewhat tedious preparation of scenarios
as required by a full computer model will tend to impede the initial search. It is therefore desirable
to have available a crude and highly aggregated model which will permit a rapid search through many policy alternatives while
still adequately describing the overall behavior of the... system.
[Modelling of the Cognitive Processes: Determining Nonroutine Behavior, Hartmut Bossel, p.457-481]
p.457 the simulation of the cognitive processes determining decision-making and behavior of societal systems
has received... little attention... The behavior of societal actors... is determined to a large degree by the conceptual
systems and procedures of perception, state analysis, and policy synthesis applied in the information processing leading to
actions... a comprehensive and accurate consequence analysis in a verbal-intuitive form is rarely possible... on
account of the number and complexity of the relationships between cognitive elements.
p.459 The nonroutine behavior of an actor is appreciably determined by the knowledge and conceptions considered
in the decision-making process.
p.460 The behavior-relevant part of the conceptual system must be adapted to reality in order to
avoid deficient behavior - possibly leading to catastrophe - resulting from missing conceptual elements which would
be required to produce the necessary conceptual relations.
p.474 As the supreme orientor... is much too general, we focus on the "basic orientors" on the next level.
Basic orientors are the major invariants to system behavior and are as such the key to understanding, description,
and simulation of system behavior.
p.474 The invariance of basic orientors... as well as the change in attention focus resulting from
changes in orientor satisfaction, provide the system with the ability to cope flexibly and adaptively with a widely and quickly
changing state of system and environment.
p.474 The basic orientors are a set of irreducible, complete, and independent dimensions resulting from
the application of the supreme orientor to the basic needs and characteristics of a system and to the global features of its
environment.
p.474 The basic orientors are a set of irreducible, complete, and independent dimensions
resulting from the application of the supreme orientor to the basic needs and characteristics of a system and to the global
features of its environment. The following set of basic orientors for human actor systems has been
derived by different methods and tentatively validated: Physical/physiological support needs... security,
freedom of action, adaptivity, efficiency of control... the set applies to all autonomous systems depending
on a dynamic environment with diffuse resources.
[Computer Implementation of Social-Psychological Hypotheses Connected to Decision-Making, Edelgard
Gruber, p.554-587]
p.577 The more complex the causal models become, the more complex must be the decision model.
p.579 As a first step, the simulated system checks the distance of the indicators from the still acceptable
lower expectation thresholds. If there are indicators below the minimum, these problems must be solved first...
If there are several indicators whose difference between real magnitude an minimum is negative, the indicator with the largest
difference is processed first... If there are no "EMERGENCY" cases, the goals are analyzed with respect to their weighted
discrepancies between the "Is" and the "Ought" states; thus within each decision cycle the
most urgent goal is determined and processed.
