Self-organization of complex adaptive systems as a society of rational agents

Abstract

In this paper, we aim at providing a general theoretical framework for designing complex adaptive systems as a society of rational agents. We term entities with their own interest agents. They are also rational in the sense that they only do what they want to do and what they think is in their own best interest. We formulate the dynamic interaction among those rational agents as competitive and cooperative problems. We obtain the equilibrium behavior in the long-run, and characterize the collective behavior of these rational agents. We show how complex collective behavior can emerge from the locally optimal behavior of each agent. We also describe why and how they organize themselves into a multilevel hierarchical organization with nesting structures.