Okay, I'll say it, at the risk of being "that guy" ... this seems a tad ambitious. I'm concerned about hubris. Think about the claimed scope of this project in light of the fact that the weatherman can't accurately predict the weather three weeks out, nor financial analysts stock prices even tomorrow? (in the accompanying pic you can see Prussian Major Otto Edler von Graeve showing off his dowsing skills)
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.BBC News - Earth project aims to 'simulate everything': "It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived. An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth - from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on Milton Keynes' roads. Nicknamed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), 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. 'Many problems we have today - including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading - are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work,' says Dr Helbing, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who chairs the FuturICT project which aims to create the simulator."
– F.A. Hayek
2 comments:
I write simulation software for clinical trials. It's a lot of work, and plenty of subtle ways to go wrong. But clinical trials are extremely simple to simulate compared to biological or sociological systems.
I could be accused of not thinking out of the box, but wouldn't it take decades just to agree on what the variables are? It almost seems arrogant.
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