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Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator
Fantastic Lad writes "The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long 'you' can go without food or water, or how 'you' will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. 'Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence."
When he made Harsh Realm?
What do you know I wrote a novel
I can see it now:
the only winning move is not to play
how about a good game of chess?
and then move the supercomputers back to the star gate at NORAD
Fry: So, there's an infinite number of parallel universes?
Professor: No, just the two.
Fry: Oh, well, I'm sure that's enough.
Running from a fight isn't always the right thing to do. And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, look at how many people died from not standing up to Hitler early enough. Hint: it's not measured in thousands, but TENS of MILLIONS.
Face facts: right now, in Iraq the US is fighting a war against the agents of Iran.
And the rhetoric coming out of Iran is straight out of Mein Kampf. Except this time around the ubermensch are Islamic, and the subhumans who deserve to die are infidels, "crusaders", and - once again - the Jews. Imagine that.
Only this time, the megalomaniac will have nukes, and since he's not just a power-hungry despot but a religious fanatic, he won't be afraid to use them. How many UN resolutions do you think it will take to stop Iran's nuclear program?
So yeah, let's run a simulation where Iran's rulers get their way in the Middle East. How many nukes do you think it'll take them to "wipe Israel off the map"? Hey, that's what they OPENLY SAY they're going to do.
How do we know we're not the one's being simulated?
Sounds nifty. Do you think it can tell me if it's gonna rain this weekend?
For over 50 years, nobody has been able to solve the most fundamental problem in computer science: Garbage In, Garbage Out. And recent history has shown that our intelligence services currently have severe issues with Garbage In.
Half the world was telling him that.
He didn't pay any attention to millions of people. Why the fuck would he care what one computer predicts?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I have an AI background so I have some sort of an understanding of this and as far as i'm concerned, with the current computing power available it's simply impossible to "simulate the world" to any degree of accuracy. There are too many unknown variables.
Currently some of the most powerful super computers are devoted to predicting JUST the weather yet they still can't get it particularly accurate, especially if you try and predict the weather greater than 7 days in advance. If we can't predict the weather, what makes us think we can predict the world??? Especially years in advance. It's a ridiculous notion.
Another good example is the chinese board game "Go". The best computer players are only as good as good amateur human players. This is due to the high branching factor of the game. The area of the board is very large (more than five times the size of a chess board) and the number of legal moves rarely go below 50 (compare chess, where the average number of moves is 37). Throughout most of the game the number of legal moves stay at around 150-250 per turn (from Wikipedia).
My point is, the world is a bloody complex system and for current technology, essentially impossible. Take into account: The random vagaries of the human mind, the climate, the weather, the earths complex geology, natural disasters, evolution (new bacterium evolves - wipes out humanity), the animal kingdom (random malarial mosquito bites world leader), genetics (two people have sex, produce next Hitler).
I could go one but I think my point is made..
Shi'as believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi will reappear when the world has fallen into chaos and civil war emerges between the human race for no reason. (Twelfth Imam) Ahmadinejad is part of an unorthodox group that believes muslims can hasten his coming by deliberately sinking the world into chaos (as opposed to "no reason"). (A nuanced discussion is here.) The publicly announced intention of Iran is to sink the world into chaos so as to usher in a new age.
Mutually Assured Destruction does not deter such a leader, because mutual destruction is in fact his goal. The job of our government *should* be to confine the destruction to Iran as much as possible. It seems tempting to try and replace Ahmadinejad, but we always seem to screw up and make things worse with such attempts. (See Iraq.)
I hereby declare Ortega's Law of /., a Corollary to Godwin's law.
As an online discussion begins on slashdot, the probability of blaming Bush for something approaches one.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Chance of desired outcome: 21.7%
Correct infrmation does not matter when the boss has an agenda. The CIA gave Bush a report that predicted failure in Iraq and it's consequences. The computer can do the same, but it won't do any good. The neo-cons had a plan and activated it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
perhaps the current scenario is exactly what the computer thought would work/ or will work? Who knows how long they have been using it... perhaps it even predicted all the responses to this post already?
agreed (on the first sentence, I really know nothing about the rest)
The old way of doing this was to have a bunch of military analysts, stick them in a room for a while and see the result. This new way may or may not be more accurate, but it will be more complicated, probably quicker, and won't tell you what you want to hear (lie).
kinda poking a hole in this summary, we already know how long a human can survive without water or food. Chances are that this will instead tell us how long a population will go with limited water, and how that population will react to it (violence, benevolence, ect)
Be nice to have an accurate prediction. It would bolster mankind's confidence in mind over matter.
Chaos theory suggests that increasing precision by a decimal point would lead to totally different results, yet the computer isn't considering anything close to accurate.
So throwing chaos into chaos - well, the prediction is chaos.
What may be nice is the investment in computing technology will spin off lots of nice gadgets for us. Just to let the simulate people know, the fact that people are aware they are being simulated and thus should be thinking of randomizing rather than patterning their activities ought to boost hardware requirements by several orders of magnitude.
Perhaps simulation is really moot. People have well known objectives, such as chasing the American dream. Individuals are hard to predict, and it is individuals that cause mayhem when least expected.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Of course, on that basis it will depend on how far back in history you want to go. Rather than cling to the help that you provided to Europe during WW2, why not consider how many native Americans might still be alive if you hadn't taken the actions that you did a few hundred years ago.
It is easy to pick one time in history when events would certainly be on your side, and I'm not contesting that there are not many such times - America has made many valuable contributions to the world - but your 'belief' that your nation is threatened and therefore it demands your intervention in other countries is not viewed by much of the world as being one of your best moves.
The current threat to US citizens is far greater from car accidents or even natural disasters than it is from terrorism. But the billions that are spent in measures to 'protect' the USA (immigration controls, military intervention, beginning the downward slide by losing sight on one's ideals) could be spent far more wisely and to greater effect without pissing off a huge part of the world. I know that the world is far from perfect but what makes you think that you have the right to dictate how it should be, or even that you are the only one to know how a perfect world should be designed?
Unfortunately, this is not simply an American thing. Many other countries, for whatever reason, seem to wish to emulate the USA and follow the same path. I'm not America-bashing; my own birthplace was, until a few days ago, happily going the same way. Perhaps there is a change in the air, perhaps not.... But a few terrorist bombs in London will not result in us attacking another country in the near future. We have witnessed first hand terrorism in the UK for many years, long before it threatened the USA. In fact, a large number of your country men seemed to think that it was a good idea to help fund it. Were they also right in what they did, or can you concede that Americans can also make bad decisions like everyone else on this planet?
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Yeah. Because the only thing stopping us winning in Iraq is media with its wellknown liberal bias, and "Defeatocrats". Right. It couldn't possibly be a people not liking being invaded, or less than a quarter of the recommended troop levels being there, could it? We all know our Republican overlords are infallible, right?
Any sanctions that deliberately restrict vitals such as fresh water are criminal in the extreme. Inflicting death upon the population in the hope of achieving political change is commonly called terrorism. Here's what Madelaine Albright had to say on the issue.
CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
An unbelievable statement to make. If only they had direct and clear evidence like that against Milosevic, his trial would have been over in a week. Of course this kind of terrorism/collective punishment goes on all the time, although not on the genocidal scale of the Iraq sanctions. A similar practice has been going on recently with suspension of aid to the Palestinians (and also taxes owed to them). We're not talking about preventing them from buying widescreen TVs and DVD Players, this is essential aid like food and water. They know full well that withholding hundreds of millions of dollars (and more recently restricting aid vehicles entering Gaza) will hurt the population severely.
Unfortunately the French, Germans and Russians were more than happy to sell Saddam what HE wanted under the table.
Considering the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people, I'm very glad people were bypassing the sanctions, even if their motives were greed. Maybe someone even managed to sell some vital water-treatment supplies and save a few people. Just picture the whole thing from the point of view of an ordinary Iraqi. For years the US, UK et al, is supporting the dictator who is oppressing you and killing your friends and family. They even encourage and support his war on Iran which is killing so many of the people you know. Then they decide they don't like him anymore and impose sanctions which result in the deaths of some 500,000 children, possibly including some of your own. I can't imagine the rage that so many Iraqis must feel towards the west.
Anyone who believes that this can produce remotely useful results has a lot to learn about computer modeling.
The behaviours of actual individuals are subsumed into the larger crowds, although 'warlord' style individuals may be represented from a political perspective. The emphasis is on trends, not predictions of actual individual actions. A good analogy for this is Psychohistory in Asimov's early Foundation novels - and the current sims fall a long way short of the predictive power available to Hari Seldon.
The assumptions you put into a simulation are the results that come out.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB