Like William C. Norris, Jay Forrester was just another farm kid from Nebraska. He was instrumental in creating the electronic computer (1951 Whirlwind project). Why then did he almost immediately abandon computer engineering?
To pursue what I agree is the most important application of computation: Macrosocial Dynamical Systems <https://github.com/jabowery/HumesGuillotine>. This <https://youtu.be/k_GtTqt3QAA>interview shortly before his death <https://youtu.be/k_GtTqt3QAA> reflects what I, too, have experienced: People think "AGI" or "ASI" or whatever, is the most important application of computers nowadays. I suppose there is a sense of "important" that may apply. For example, an asteroid "the size of Texas" hitting Earth at 20km/sec could be considered important. However, it might be just as important to understand the system dynamics of multibody gravitational interaction so one could direct a small impulse at apogee to make its effect less destructive. The data selection process must include those with the greatest influence on macrosocial narratives; challenge them to produce the data upon which they base their narratives. This is because centalization of social policy is bringing us to the brink of a rhyme with Gutenberg Press -> Decentralization of Religious Agency -> 30 Years War in which the Internet -> Populism ->... is the current state of the rhyme. This will be somewhat like attempting to bring the Jesuits together with the Calvinists and Lutherans to debate theology, but the fact that nowadays everyone dons the robes of the white lab coat gives hope that they may at least be embarrassed into an honest dialogue. Once that dataset is agreed upon -- and we can afford to make it extremely inclusive so long as we don't let people claim that they jusst HAVE to include torrents of real time data so they can declare the whole project to be impractical -- you need devote only about 1% of the computation and money already going into the Texas-sized asteroid -- to make its incremental lossless compression a prize competition that is impervious to conflicts of interest, such as leakage of evaluation data or endless palavering that will influence no one to do anything about the asteroid until it is too late. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T5b58bcc51c493d41-Mcaab652417203653f5819cea Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
