Extending the Hegselmann-Krause Model I

Hegselmann and Krause have developed a simple yet powerful computational model for studying the opinion dynamics in societies of epistemically interacting truth-seeking agents. We present various extensions of this model and show their relevance to the investigation of socio-epistemic questions, with an emphasis on normative questions. Agent-based computer simulations have been successfully employed in the study of broadly social processes for over thirty years now. Researchers have investigated by these means such diverse phenomena as the spread of wealth in a population, the emergence and evolution of friendship networks, integration and segregation of different racial groups, the transmission of cultural values, and the propagation of infectious diseases.1 It is only in the past decade that agent-based simulations have come to be used for studying distinctively socio-epistemic (or socio-doxastic) questions, such as, most notably, questions concerning the roles various types of soci...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: IGPL
• Authors: Igor Douven, Alexander Riegler
• Keywords: IGPL 2010, Model, Social, Social Epistemology