Thus spake Douglas Roberts circa 09/25/2009 07:57 AM: > But the question was genuine: what possible gain (in your opinion, of > course) will come out of this? Where's the added value? What's the benefit > about attempting to talk about emergence in the context of unraveling a > sweater?
I don't think there is any value of us expressing our own opinions, here. But I do think there is value in us trying to simulate what _others_ might say. In fact, I think it would have been _very_ easy to predict Douglas Roberts' response. ;-) I vacillate between thinking it's good to be easily simulable vs. bad to be easily simulable. Those who value consistency would obviously _like_ others to be able to simulate them. But those who value creativity would probably not like to be easily simulable. So, I'd be interested to know if others could simulate me to an extent which was validatable. (Not validatable against my own perception of myself, of course, but against others' "data" about me.) I think there's plenty of practical value to being able to simulate what others would say in response to a given question, if for no other reason than it would help us design better models that we could then sell to executives in, say, pharmaceutical companies. [grin] -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ 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
