Journal on Policy & Complex Systems Vol. 2, Issue 2, Fall 2015 | Page 114

Thresholds of Behavioral Flexibility in Turbulent Environments for Individual and Group Success
search outward and decide whether to stay in the realm of Control and Prevention or to switch to , say , Environmental . Again , I would evaluate how my strategy worked and again be faced with the question of whether to stay or switch .
This dilemma then applies yet another level up , should I be focusing on extrinsic or intrinsic factors ? I could go further : Should I even be focusing directly on malaria at all ? Maybe if what I am after is saving human lives , I should be focusing on education or anti-corruption . On the other hand , is it maybe all pointless and I should just go buy a boat ?
To make matters even more complex , the landscape in which we are injecting these policies is also typically turbulent : a strategy that worked great in the last period may not be effective in the next . In this case , should we ride out the turbulence and stick with the tried-and-true strategy or adapt to changing circumstances ?
Of course , policymakers have many resources at their disposal to answer many of these questions — they know whether drugs are having an effect compared to nets , and whether it paid more to focus on the environment than on social behavior . We have , in many cases , a great deal of data to shed real empirical light on the value of these policies . However , what we never know is the counterfactual — what if we had switched ? Moreover , we do not know how much better we could be doing . And most importantly , we don ’ t know if , when the environment changes , we should change with it , how poorly things should be going before we do , and how ready we should be to change things once we hit that threshold .
Overall , this paper is about the question of when you should stay or when you should do something else . In the words of Winston Churchill , when should you “ never , never , never ... give in ” and when should you , also in the words of Winston Churchill , when things have failed “ take up the next available option ?”
More specifically , the paper attempts to address the question of whether there are principles by which we , in any environment , could identify conditions under which we should stay or go , taking into account exogenous and endogenous environmental turbulence , as well as group level outcomes . To do this , I share a simple spatial agent-based model to explore a handful of parameters surrounding the question of whether to stay or switch when a strategy stops working .
Most specifically , the model allows for the running of histories where adaptive agents can choose to maximize utility using a given strategy , or switching to another type of agent that is rewarded for different behavior altogether . The core parameters in the model map to those surrounding any such decision in our personal lives and in policy : the turbulence of the environment , the behaviors of other actors in the system , and our own tolerance for what counts as failure : how bad should things be before we change ?
This structure allows us to ask and answer questions about the relationship between environment and flexibility in terms of individual utility : For example , how turbulent should the environment be before I change strategies ? What is the
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