"Edward Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Nevertheless, I do feel that the questions I have raised about the
>simulation that Douglas Wilson is proposing are valid: Is there really
>something to be simulated? If so, what? Will the proposed simulation lead
>to a better understanding of economic phenomena? And, do we not already
>have a considerable understanding of the global impacts of megaphenomena
>such as population growth and energy resource depletion? I will try to
>address these issues.
I think I can provide a lot of good reasons, though unfortunately I
don't currently have time to expound them in detail. But to be brief,
if you have a robust model, you can use it as a test of all sorts of
things. Once you've determined that your model is somewhat trustworthy
- money and goods flow around the world, people get paid, etc.
(and you have some measure of the degree, which you can state in your
results) - you have an experimental field to excercise projections.
When some orthodox economist says "everyone knows you can't introduce
[this or that] reform because it will cause the economy to derail
completely, and all hell will break loose. No, you must follow our
sage pronouncements and keep playing the game according to our rules"
then you can say "OK, let's just see if that's really true", and
introduce the reform in the simulation. Then you can respond to
the economist's criticism with "our reknowned reliable simulation
engine clearly demonstrates that this reform will have only these
consequences... Clearly your criticisms are based on prejudice
rather than sound analysis". Now imagine the sorts of reform schemes
that could be envisioned and excercised in the model, with early
results informing the architecture of further trials. Seems to
me a good simulation would not be valuable, it would be priceless.
-Pete Vincent
