Ten days ago, on Tuesday about noon, I found myself weeping while looking at the music list for Grey's Anatomy.
Clearly, this is not something that can be explained :-) Any stories I could tell you, or myself, about "why" it happened are likely to be verbal nonsense about something that has no real explanation in words. It's emotional in its essence. Despite the impossibility of explanation, the experience has had an important effect on me. Something important has become unblocked. A bit of snarkiness may be the occasional result. I no longer play go, a game I have enjoyed and suffered with for over 30 years. It's kinda like giving up golf :-) Or hitting myself on the head with a hammer. It feels so good to stop. As another result, I see that I have been blocked regarding actually doing something about what I have always seen as the world's headlong rush to disaster. The Donella Meadows post was a first attempt. I think it would be fairly easy to reproduce the world3 model in Python. Indeed, the various boxes in the model would be simple subclasses of a few base classes. Running the model would take about 20 lines of code. There is no need for a special-purpose modeling language. Since the model was first developed, computers have become 10,000 times faster. We have python, ipython, mathplotlib and other tools. And Leo. The essence of the situation is not so much improving the model, but having people confront what the model is telling us. It might be called a visualization exercise, like the Norwegian statistician on Ted Talks who creates pictures of the evolution of statistics. Something like this, illustrating the scope and of the world3 model, would be very cool. The present economic meltdown creates a huge new opportunity--an opportunity to confront naive notions of stability. People, especially economists, do not, actually, know what they are doing. Making the rich richer does not, actually, make society better off. Sustainability and unlimited growth are not, actually, compatible. In this context, computer models may have an important part to play. Edward --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
