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Does anybody use this? I certainly hope not. Most of the research papers have been related to refactoring TCL code, rather than on any correspondence between

by powera 10y ago

Does anybody use this? I certainly hope not. Most of the research papers have been related to refactoring TCL code, rather than on any correspondence between the models and reality. You don't need a computer model to tell you that people don't like when you bomb their neighborhoods, kill their friends, and threaten their access to food and water. You definitely don't need a model to suggest that maybe if there are also some riots, people will like the outcome.

ben_w 10y ago
Apparently we do need a computer model to say that, because terrorism is a thing, and so is "shock and awe".
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  People don't do things like that because they lack understanding of the consequences, they do so because they don't care about the consequences if their other objectives are met. The weakness of scientism is its its agnosticism; the scientific method can test hypotheses but has nothing to say about the selection of premises. If you (as a hypothetical dictator) think it's perfectly OK to inflict suffering on people you deem inferior, science can be applied to tell you how to make their lives as miserable as possible. Philosophy has fallen into a social ditch in that it seems mainly to talk about itself and doesn't have the predictive power of science, but I think it's irrational to expect intellectual tools to provide you with answers to ethical questions.
  - ben_w 10y ago
    Your text does not appear to respond to mine. Terrorist: "If we attack them, perhaps they will leave us alone/leave our holy land/give us independence!" Terror victims: "$#*%! Get them! Shoot them all! Nukes are too good for them!" -Rince, repeat-
matt4077 10y ago
I don't quite understand the criticism... Yes, this is not (yet) a model that predicts the future. But when has "we're not there yet" ever been a good reason to stop? Societies are comparable to the weather, in that they are dynamic systems highly susceptible to instability when simulated (-> chaos theory). That's why it took from the 60s until the mid-90s before weather prognosis consistently started to beat "it's going to be like today". Societies are even more difficult, because the individual units of simulation are already quite chaotic: while the result of increased pressure on a fixed amount of air has been measured to whatever precision you could want, and has always followed a rather simple formula, doing the same with human behaviour is still far in the future. But that doesn't mean such models are useless. Just think of the fight over the results of raising the minimum wage. Some people should initially lose their job. Others have more money. How are they spending that money? Does that spending create jobs? What's the effect on inflation? etc... Having an agent-based model forces you to describe every assumption you're making, free of ambiguity. Maybe if we ask economists to build something like that, they'll at least grow an appreciation for what they don't yet know.
- powera 10y ago
  Certain models are inherently useless. If you use a Taylor series to model a sine curve, you can get arbitrarily good results over an arbitrarily large range, yet the model will always fail catastrophically when the modeler wants to figure out the value that will give sin(x) = 2. This seems like a system designed for the analyst who wants to make sin(x) = 2, and will blame the participants when reality doesn't match the model.
im3w1l 10y ago
You could use it to figure out exactly how much you can torment them without them rising up.

by powera 10y ago

ben_w 10y ago

Apparently we do need a computer model to say that, because terrorism is a thing, and so is "shock and awe".

anigbrowl 10y ago
People don't do things like that because they lack understanding of the consequences, they do so because they don't care about the consequences if their other objectives are met. The weakness of scientism is its its agnosticism; the scientific method can test hypotheses but has nothing to say about the selection of premises. If you (as a hypothetical dictator) think it's perfectly OK to inflict suffering on people you deem inferior, science can be applied to tell you how to make their lives as miserable as possible. Philosophy has fallen into a social ditch in that it seems mainly to talk about itself and doesn't have the predictive power of science, but I think it's irrational to expect intellectual tools to provide you with answers to ethical questions.
- ben_w 10y ago
  Your text does not appear to respond to mine. Terrorist: "If we attack them, perhaps they will leave us alone/leave our holy land/give us independence!" Terror victims: "$#*%! Get them! Shoot them all! Nukes are too good for them!" -Rince, repeat-

matt4077 10y ago

I don't quite understand the criticism... Yes, this is not (yet) a model that predicts the future. But when has "we're not there yet" ever been a good reason to stop? Societies are comparable to the weather, in that they are dynamic systems highly susceptible to instability when simulated (-> chaos theory). That's why it took from the 60s until the mid-90s before weather prognosis consistently started to beat "it's going to be like today". Societies are even more difficult, because the individual units of simulation are already quite chaotic: while the result of increased pressure on a fixed amount of air has been measured to whatever precision you could want, and has always followed a rather simple formula, doing the same with human behaviour is still far in the future. But that doesn't mean such models are useless. Just think of the fight over the results of raising the minimum wage. Some people should initially lose their job. Others have more money. How are they spending that money? Does that spending create jobs? What's the effect on inflation? etc... Having an agent-based model forces you to describe every assumption you're making, free of ambiguity. Maybe if we ask economists to build something like that, they'll at least grow an appreciation for what they don't yet know.

powera 10y ago
Certain models are inherently useless. If you use a Taylor series to model a sine curve, you can get arbitrarily good results over an arbitrarily large range, yet the model will always fail catastrophically when the modeler wants to figure out the value that will give sin(x) = 2. This seems like a system designed for the analyst who wants to make sin(x) = 2, and will blame the participants when reality doesn't match the model.

im3w1l 10y ago

You could use it to figure out exactly how much you can torment them without them rising up.