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<p>glen -</p>
<p>Excellent and concise summary of this thread following your main
point about policy modeling... I'm sure an LLM couldn't begin to
be as on-point and succinct! I feel remiss in not analyzing
existing threads as carefully as you must have before I stick my
fat foot in my fat mouth:<br>
</p>
<p>All -<br>
</p>
<p>As many here are at least part-time modelers or familiar with the
terms of art, and some make their living as simulators
(simulants?) as you (glen) do, I think upon reflection we all know
that models (and therefore simulations) are much more useful for
identifying and refining "the question" than "giving answers"...
yet I think many of us (and the unwashed public moreso) forget
that and look to models and the simulations built upon them to
give us actionable answers without being willing to refine the
questions carefully. <br>
</p>
<p><rant></p>
<blockquote>
<p>My latest colloquial working definition of "consciousness" has
been something like "the structures and processes which have
evolved to elaborate possibility spaces wherefore to facilitate
the exploration of probability spaces". Our actions and
decisions seem to live in probability spaces, but we ideate in
possibility space. We take actions which we believe will yield
certain consequences, understanding there is a probabilistic
element to that cause-effect, but to the extent we have implicit
and explicit models of the various relations, we are doing so
with some modicum of rationality. Our scientific theories and
engineering principles (including economic, political policies)
exist to outline the probability estimates within possibility
spaces: <i>If you want A in the context of Zed then you
must/should/could do Wye in the context of Beta and Gamma
which will yield results with a mean of eM and a Standard
Deviation of sD. </i>or somesuch.<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>My 8 year stint at LANL with the "Decision Support" division of
several hundred people building models and tools (mostly for the
US Gov) left me disillusioned as virtually all our clients "just
wanted simple answers" and most of my peers at least pretended
they were providing such. A good reason to leave when I did
(2008). </p>
<p>I suppose I should grant that I'm talking about "scientific"
models more than "engineering" ones where the established
practices help to constrain the questions to "answerable" ones
for the most part. Though it is those very "established
practices" which codify the "lesser evils" (or more to the
point, "as yet unrecognized evils") in a way that supports
action and progress.<br>
</p>
<p>I am really fascinated by the progress made in the intervening
15 years (of which many here are likely much more in touch with)
on applying M&S to Policy.<br>
</p>
<p>The magnitude of risk around existential threats (e.g. climate)
might suggest applying a strong bias to avoid global cataclysm,
yet the direct implications of that bias against "current
practice" and "economic/policy momentum" has us applying an
equally strong bias the other direction. <i>Burn baby burn,
drill baby drill, war baby war, produce (and waste) and
produce</i>! is the theme of our collective mantra (western
industrial Kapital) as we check the value of our 401k plans or
the GDP of our nation or that of our "friends". <br>
</p>
<p>My sympathies are with Merle's pessimism in the sense of
unintended consequences. </p>
<p>The myriad first-order responses *by* the technophilic,
Kapital-driven powers-that-be are naturally going to
superficially (seem to) respond to the most urgent symptoms
while (likely) exploiting yet another level of (slightly
obscured) bit of commons only to become "next
year's/decade's/generation's" problem. The internal combustion
engine resolved the overwhelming horse-manure problem in big
cities, only to yield a serious urban smog and acid rain
problem. Lead pipes and lead paint and leaded gasoline brought
myriad benefits to society and individuals only to yield
yet-another-more subtle problem that we are still struggling
with.<br>
</p>
<p>Musk's (now famous) 2020 quote in a (now deleted) tweet: "We
will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!" referencing US
involvement in the Bolivian coup related to Lithium mining is an
excellent example of how our rush to sweep fossil fuel
exploitation/abuse further out of our view in favor of simply
*not noticing* the abuses and exploitations our "solution" to
the problem represents.</p>
<p><virtue-signal-laden-rant> </p>
<blockquote>
<p> I love me some good Solar/Wind/Hydro/Tidal/Geo power on the
principal that all but Tidal/Geo are "just" exploitation of
the 1000W/m^2 of power the giant fusion reactor in the sky
streams down on us (while tidal interference slows the moon
faster and geo cools the earth core faster). We stick our PV
panels in one flux or water wheel or a windmill blade in
another flux and viola! human/animal/fossil-fuel power no
longer is needed to empty our polders, power our
crypto-currency mine-farms, grind our grain or drill out
rifle-barrels (reference to the<a
href="https://www.husqvarna.com/us/discover/history/">
origin of Husqvarna in Sweden</a>)... </p>
<p>But already ( a decade or so into the widespread deployment
of the current wave) we are trying to figure out what to do
with the megatons/cubic-cubits of high-tech waste (PV panels,
wind-turbine blades) that are ageing out of their engineering
specs in the light of contemporary economic markets where it
is more profitable to replace the old with new and let the old
pile up somewhere. <br>
</p>
<p>I love my EV (PHEV Volt) and am proud to be squeezing the
third 100k out of it with careful attention to detail, but I'm
pretty sure that the Coal burned from the Navajo Rez, spewing
particulate laden smoke over the Colorado Plateau, to push
electrons through wires a few hundred miles to me is no
better, possibly worse than the frick-a-frack disaster going
on in SE NM/W TX to keep the domestic fossil-fuel industry
booming... and even if I keep this beast rolling another 10
years which might have gone to scrap at 166k miles when I
bought it (failing traction battery) and only pour a little
gasoline through the ICE and turn a few sets of
fossil-fuel-derived tires into tire-dust (to settle in the
lungs of my grandchildren and the aquifers they drink from),
I will only have mildly mitigated the worst-case scenario
(where I bought a brand new hummer, ICE or EV and tore up
every ecosystem I could get my fat tires on) by a small
factor. Yay me. Sweeping lobal socio-economic-political
change seems to be the only scale relevant to the current
scale of the problems we have queued up on ourselves, but not
<i>acting local as I think global</i> seems to be as
crazy-making as not acting at all. There is a huge
attraction to not thinking at all for the same reason.<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p><virtue-signal-laden-rant></p>
<p>I think I'll go rewatch the entire MadMax movie series now...
maybe throw in Costner's WaterWorld (aka Dances with JetSkis)?<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p></rant><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/30/24 7:56 AM, glen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0e1a04ec-4225-47b8-a8f6-c77a965c9624@gmail.com">
<br>
I'm confident many of y'all have seen this. But each of the
snippets below, from Roger & Merle's nihilistic takes to Leigh
and Cody's optimistic takes, bounce around policy modeling. What
can one estimate in the face of overwhelming uncertainty? And
given one's high uncertainty estimates, what is there to *do*
about it at an institutional scale?
<br>
<br>
cf the theme of the Humans, Societies and Artificial Agents at
ANNSIM<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://annsim.org"><https://annsim.org></a> this year:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Taylor Anderson, George Mason University,
USA and Petra Ahrweiler, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany
<br>
<br>
Agent-based models (ABMs), cellular automata, and
microsimulations model systems through the lens of complex
systems theory. More specifically, such approaches simulate
populations of possibly heterogeneous individuals as they
utilize either simple behavioral rules or learning models to
govern their interactions with each other and their environment,
and from which system-level properties emerge. Such modeling and
simulation approaches have supported a wide range of
applications related to human societies (e.g., traffic and urban
planning, economics, natural hazards, national security,
epidemiology) and research tasks (e.g., exploring what-if
scenarios, predictive models, data generation, hypothesis
testing, policy formation and generation).
<br>
Despite the multitude of advancements in the last few decades,
there remain longstanding challenges that limit the usefulness
of such models in the policy cycle. Such challenges include but
are not limited to: capturing realistic individual and
collective social behaviors; basic issues in model development
(calibration, scalability, model reusability, difficulties in
generalizing findings); and making transparent the strengths and
limitations of models. This track focuses generally on
advancements in modeling and simulation approaches in
application to human societies that seek to overcome these
challenges, with a special interest in policy modeling and the
inclusion of models in the policy cycle.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
On 10/23/11 10:10, Roger Critchlow wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">No one knows where the slime mold will
choose to extend its pseudopodia, or which of the pseudopodia
will thrive or wither, or what the novel beneficial or
lamentable consequences will be. Some of us worry about the
suffering caused by the gold-goo-excrement, others worry about
not killing the beast that makes the gold-goo, many just fight
for the largest share they can get, and most of us could care
less until the bucket of gold-goo-excrement lands in our
neighborhood or the gold-goo pseudopod feeding our investments
dries up.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
On 1/28/24 16:55, Frank Wimberly wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">One of my father-in-law's best friends was
a man named Eli Shapiro who was the Alfred P Sloan Professor of
Economics at MIT. My FIL asked him some question about stock
investing. Shapiro said, "Chuck, nobody knows anything."
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
On 1/29/24 08:29, Steve Smith wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I think this is one of the reasons that an
open-ended "growth economy" is so popular, it make everyone
willing to take on the mantle, a /_"tide whisperer"_/,
pretending their shamanic actions/words are lifting those boats?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels">https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
On 1/29/24 19:35, Michael Orshan wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">so removing fossil fuels from power plants
is the key. [snip] Still there are many political and resource
bottlenecks.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
On 1/29/24 22:36, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Sorry, Jochen, just about everything you
recommend will make things worse. I also wrote about the
failure of the climate models almost ten years ago. You nailed
one of the biggest problems, though: even really smart guys
don't know shit about global warming.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
On 1/30/24 00:59, Jochen Fromm wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">The basic facts seem to be simple. 8
billion people burning fossil fuels are causing global warming.
Is there a point I have overlooked? What can we do to stop
global warming?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</blockquote>
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