OK, so let's take half the defense budget and spend it on Bucky's 'livingry' rather than weaponry. How much you need? It certainly couldn't be more of a waste than spending it threaten fanatic community groups to obtain nuclear weapons...
I'd still have some major doubts about the adequacy of present modeling assumptions. No one seems to have recognized that growth systems are locally invented compounding instabilities to themselves yet, or that natural system networks are mostly linked opportunistically rather than deterministically, or that the variables of our relationship statements generally refer to things that keep changing definition with little notice. I don't think it's an easy problem. Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels > Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 7:12 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 38, Issue 3 > > > Phil Henshaw wrote: > > I think modeling is out of reach, but story telling may not be. > > Telling the stories of how complex events can be read or > misread would > > be a real service. > There will be policy makers and I think it is safe to say > they'll find > it easier to convince people of their policies if there are some > dramatic stories involved (e.g. 9/11, WMDs). I expect a careful and > restrained story of the kind you describe above will be > overwhelmed in > general by story tellers at think tanks like the Project for the New > American Century who don't hesitate to provide `leadership' (Perle, > Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld). > > On a technical note, I don't buy that social simulations would be > computationally prohibitive, given the will. The fastest general > purpose supercomputer at Livermore is $100e6 U.S. (BlueGene/L) having > 130k processors. Suppose a simulation ran for a day, that's > still 130k > simulations a day. That's a lot of sensitivity analysis one > could do. > It might take 10 teams of modelers to keep such a machine busy. For > national security, what's a $100 million here or there? > > The 2006 budget for Advanced Simulation and Computing Initiative > computing was $661 million and $6.3 billion overall for stockpile > stewardship. Yet I keep hearing that `non-state actors' the > new threat.. > > How do you model brains full of made up nonsense?? > Detectives, trial lawyers, and spies tease out models from deceptive > people and suboptimal evidence. No shame in formalizing > these models, > if only to make it clear what is far from being known. And > to deal with > a culture that only wants compliance and to stay `on message' > all I can > suggest is to 1) stomach it, and 2) slowly bend the message in some > other direction. > > Marcus > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
