Slashdot Mirror
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.
or would it be Third Life? Maybe it'll name itself.
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
They could save themselves a lot of work and just get Dwarf Fortress...
I hope they've put some deep thought into this....
Program Intellivision!
Name it Matrix.
simulating everything?
Yes. You only think you posted that. You are really part of the simulation.
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.
Any sufficiently accurate simulation is indistinguishable from reality. Corollary: Any simulation distinguishable from reality is insufficiently accurate. Phil P
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I suppose I worded it badly, but in essence, what is the meaning of "a simplified version" of "everything"? There isn't a specific aspect of "everything" that seems natural to simplify, given the scope of the project. "Atoms as pool balls" makes sense for certain contexts. There doesn't seem to be a context for this simulator.
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.
Every model is flawed according to that definition.
They'll try to simplify the earth, and model it... and hopefully it can predict future events with a certain degree of certainty.
I agree that the word "everything" is too strong... but it's just sad and silly that the entire Slashdot forum attacks these guys because they said this.
There is some value in this exercise. Just like you can model an ant colony, you can probably model the world. We're all awfully predictable anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche,_New_York
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The simulation is a European project, part of the FuturICT-programme, a part of the European Union research framework programme.
It intends to unify hundreds of the best scientists in Europe in a 10 year 1 billion EUR program to explore social life on earth and everything it relates to. The FuturICT flagship will produce historic breakthroughs and provide powerful new ways to manage challenges that make the modern world so difficult to predict, including the financial crisis.
The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator is a previously unseen multidisciplinary international scientific endeavour with focus on techno-socio-economic-environmental systems. The three main achievements of the FuturICT flagship will be the establishment of
- a Living Earth Simulator (global-scale simulation of techno-socio-economic systems),
- Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, scarcity of resources, emerging risks and conflicts, epidemics, etc.), and
- an Innovation Accelerator (identifying innovations early on, evaluating them across disciplines and supporting co-creation projects between different scientific disciplines, business, and governance).
But, it'll simulate everything, then it will also simulate itself, running the simulation, and so on. Looks like a recursive simulation :)
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
The big problem with this is that most of the world's and humanity's interesting systems are chaotic. You may get lucky and find an attractor or two.
In any case, simulation can show you plausible futures, but they'll have no predictive value. The outputs will be little more than cybernetic speculative fiction.
On the other hand, there's no explaining chaos to a politician, or to a scientist who believes that more data and higher resolution are all that's needed to clear up the confusion; the grant money will keep flowing.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
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.