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Living Earth Simulator Aims To Simulate Everything
H3xx writes "An international group of scientists is aiming to create a simulator — nicknamed The Living Earth Simulator — that will collect data from billions of sources and use it to replicate everything happening on Earth, from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on highways. The project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world. Perhaps this is Asimov's concept of Psychohistory come to fruition."
Somehow I doubt that all the computing machines in the word combined have the necessary processing power to computationally simulate *everything* that happens on the planet, even when if we try to limit the variables. So I'll just go ahead and assume the science team will compromise on a flawed model which produces equally flawed results.
And isn't the point of modelling to look at a small part of the whole, to abstract the bits you're interested in?
No. The point of a model is to create a simplified version of something that is to compilcated to understand.
Modelling and concentrating on only a small part is a valid approach to that, but using simplifications (even the ones known as inaccurrate) is another one. (i.e. Atoms as pool balls, earth as an exact sphere, even internet as tubes.) You only need to know which simplifications you made, so you know on which scale your results out of that model are valid.
bickerdyke
Clearly this is an attempt to invoke Laplace's Demon.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
simulating everything?
That thought crossed my mind too and reminded me of this town containing a scale model of itself.
I am not a crackpot.