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Nobody that loses a virtual war is going to give up and let the other side take what they want without a very violent fight.

• JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  But it worked on Star Trek!
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• teraformer 10y ago
  For this to work, every aspect of the simulation would have to match up with real world circumstances. ...which would mean no secrets. ...or weapons that, when used, obviate many degrees of secrecy, like nuclear weapons.
• tomjen3 10y ago
  Assuming the results are pretty accurate about the outcome, why not? You can either surrender now and not have any civilians killed, or suffer the following casualties and still lose. Heck it might even prevent war if the simulation says that both sides will suffer too high casualties to make it worth it.
  • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Even when a military of outrageously greater power wins, people will still fight, even if they know they are fighting to the death and couldn't make a dent in the fighting strength of the superior occupying forces. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq
    • sevenless 10y ago
      I'm not sure the Iraqi resistance against the US was in that hopeless a position. They were outgunned conventionally, but that didn't matter in a guerilla war against a foreign occupier.
      • talmand 10y ago
        For a guerilla war to be successful, the foreign occupier has to lose the will to win. Such resistance is hopeless in general terms of warfare, to be won it has to be considered as much a political war as it is a conventional one.
        • vkou 10y ago
          That may have been the case in Iraq, but that was not at all the case in WWII. The Germans by no means lost the will to win in Yugoslavia or Poland.
          • talmand 10y ago
            True, they did not lose the will to win as they were simply defeated by an organized force. I believe the Germans were involved in more than just fighting underground resistance in multiple countries. Such resistance alone did not defeat the Germans, but did assist with the final outcome.
            • vkou 10y ago
              Tito's partisans drove out their occupiers without outside assistance. Now, Germany was obviously occupied on multiple fronts. While I can't contest that if a nation of 330 million were to devote its full human and industrial capacity for the purpose of destroying all resistance in a nation of 33 million, it would succeed... I wouldn't call the richest country in the world failing to convert to a war economy to overcome an enemy ten times smaller then they are to be 'lack of will to win.'
              • talmand 10y ago
                Yes, drove them out but did not defeat them in context of the war. The richest nation in the world should not have to convert to a war economy to defeat an enemy ten times smaller. If it could not; then it didn't want to be there in the first place, it didn't want to do what was necessary to win, or their internal politics is screwed up. Possibly more than one of those.
  • PeterisP 10y ago
    The outcome of such simulations isn't repeatable by definition since it's path-dependent on various decisions and risky outcomes, and of course even the information coming out of the simulation affects the decisions and thus outcomes of future runs of the simulation. That's even with perfect information, which already is an unrealistic assumption. At best, a very accurate simulation could tell you "in the case of war, here is the expected distribution of outcomes, here are the probabilities of various levels of "winning", here are the estimated levels of civilian casualties. And quite a few political leaders in such situations have or would have chosen to take e.g. a 5% chance of victory instead of surrender, or simply as a deterring tactic - yes, we know that we will surely lose, but in the process you'll lose many men as well, so we'll bet that the result is not that important to you and you won't pay this price.
    • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      And there's no telling whether the enemy will do something batshit crazy that you could have never predicted. If Herodotus is to believed, a Persian siege against Babylon was met with the Babylonians strangling all the women except for a few to make bread as to stretch fighting resources as long as possible. During the Sono-Soviet border conflict of the late 1960s, Mao threatened to overwhelm the Russian border with millions of Chinese as a part of his "man over weapons" strategy. Even with nuclear weapons, the Soviets were terrified of the sheer number of people that China could throw at them. How do you predict that? How do you put a number to it?
  • nononosisisi 10y ago
    Already have this scenario. Nuclear powers are unwilling to go to war since we already know the outcome.
  • nononosisisi 10y ago
    Already have this scenario. Nuclear powers are unwilling to go to war since we already know the outcome.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• teraformer 10y ago
  For this to work, every aspect of the simulation would have to match up with real world circumstances. ...which would mean no secrets. ...or weapons that, when used, obviate many degrees of secrecy, like nuclear weapons.