Feeding the Beast: Can Computational Demographic Models Free Us from the Tyranny of Data?

Since its inception, ALife has moved from producing largenumbers of highly-idealised, theoretical models towardsgreater integration with empirically collected data. In con-trast, demography — the interdisciplinary study of humanpopulations — has been largely following the principles oflogical empiricism, with models driven mainly by data, andinsufficient attention being paid to theoretical investigation.Such an approach reduces the ability to produce micro-levelexplanations of population processes, which would be coher-ent with the phenomena observed at the macro level, withouthaving to rely on ever-increasing data demands of complexdemographic models. In this paper we argue that by bring-ing ALife-inspired, agent-based methods into demographicresearch, we can both develop a greater understanding of theprocesses underlying demographic change, and avoid a limit-ing over-dependence on potentially immense sets of data.– But you are paying a lot of money for the dragon!– And what, should we just give it to the citizens in-stead? [...] I see you know nothing about the principlesof economics! Export credit warms up the economy andincreases the global turnover.– But it also increases the dragon as such – Istopped him. – The more intensely you feed him, thebigger he gets; and the bigger he gets, the higher hisappetite. What kind of a calculation is it? He will fi-nally devour you all!Stanisław Lem, Po˙zytek ze smoka [The Use of aDragon] (1983/2008: 186)