Some reactions regarding a discussion in another thread by @marcojanssen and @boltej between realism and simple model.
As @pierrebommel mentioned some post before, our development effort is highly driven by the KILT conception of modelization formalized in Le Page and Perrotton, 2018. With this approach we want to get out of a polarization between KISS and KIDS paradigms.
What the purpose of a model? As Banos (2010) said (sorry in French), the model/simulation is a crutch for the human mind.
Developing a model as a tool for social learning is distinct from when one uses people as a source of evidence in the form of their expert or personal opinion for a descriptive of explanatory model.
Developing models to support social learning related to environmental management aims at tackling the wickedness of problems such as those encountered in that domain, which are characterized by a high degree of scientific uncertainty and a profound lack of agreement on values (Balint et al., 2011).
Instead of trying to eliminate or reduce uncertainties by collecting more data used to make the model more sophisticated, the post-modern view of science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993) suggests that it could also be useful to try to illuminate these uncertainties (one of the purposes of modeling mentioned by Epstein in his 2008 paper), for their better recognition and acceptance by stakeholders who become then enabled to make informed collective decisions.
So for the Cormas team, having a realistic model or a simple one depends of the model purpose as @boltej said. In most of our modeling situation, models are designed regarding the needs of our partners to empower themselves in order to allow them to take a decision or to be ready to react in certain situations.
Designing simple stylized empirical models to support social interaction , according to the “KILT” (Keep It a Learning Tool) moto, corresponds to the strategy of maximising the relevance and accessibility of a model so that participants can engage with the model and be willing to help specify or improve it (Le Page and Perrotton, 2018). The “improvement”, in such a context, does not necessarily implies a sophistication.
So from my point of view, the debate is more about ‘what we need to formalize in an ABM in order to empower stakeholders’. So it recovers all stuff we can do to improve learning process.