Cognitive Modeling of Complex Behavior - The Lorentz Center

How Best to Model a Complex Behavior? I recently had the chance to attend a workshop devoted to reflecting on exactly that problem. It was a wonderful experience. Not just because the topic was interesting, and my fellow attendees were smart and fun people to learn from, but also because the venue fostered an environment that allowed one to exit from the day to day pre-occupations and focus in a sustained way.

The organizers intend to write an article summarizing the insights of our workshop, but the two big lessons I took away were that the success of a group collaboration depends as much on the personalities of the group as their expertise, and that if you want to open yourself to new modeling possibilities you have to recruit widely people with diverse expertise. Of course you also need time and space for brain storming, and I have never been anywhere that did this as well as the Lorentz Center in Leiden, Netherlands. If you ever get the chance to go there I encourage you to do so.