Deepening the demographic mechanisms in a data-driven social simulation of moral values evolution

Abstract

The "Keep It Simple, Stupid" principle is a recommended rule for modelling complex phenomena. However, there must be a compromise between simplification and expressiveness, determined by the results produced by the model. Here we propose to gradually increase the complexity of a model, so we can improve its behaviour. This incremental "deepening" process is an attempt to approach the real phenomena, so resulting in a better model, provided that an accurate analysis reveals the right steps. As application we propose an agent-based data-driven model of the evolution of moral values in the Spanish post-modern society. We focus on improving the demographic mechanisms so that the system output follows the evolution of Spanish population. In order to do that, we raise the amount of quantitative input information of the system, improve its statistical distributions, and change the time of evolution, together with other commented changes.