[FRIAM] Policy Modeling

[glen]

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?

cf the theme of the Humans, Societies and Artificial Agents at ANNSIM<https://annsim.org> this year:
> Taylor Anderson, George Mason University, USA and Petra Ahrweiler, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany
> 
> 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).
> 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.


On 10/23/11 10:10, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> 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.

On 1/28/24 16:55, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> 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."

On 1/29/24 08:29, Steve Smith wrote:
> 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?

On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:
> At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
> https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels

On 1/29/24 19:35, Michael Orshan wrote:
> so removing fossil fuels from power plants is the key. [snip] Still there are many political and resource bottlenecks.

On 1/29/24 22:36, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> 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.

On 1/30/24 00:59, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> 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?

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ