Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator 470
Fantastic Lad writes "The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long 'you' can go without food or water, or how 'you' will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. 'Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence."
The political options (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, I wonder how much the current fiasco in Iraq has to do with the desire for this program. There are probably a lot of people who would like to have been able to say: "Mr. President, our supercomputers say that this is a bad idea."
It could be used for politics. Imagine someone from Ron Paul's campaign saying: "Our ideas are better, and now we can finally prove it!"
PS: Hey, Zonk! It is spelled 'parallel'.
Re:The political options (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you want to play thermonuclear war, etc?
It's not so much the "prove we are better" aspect, but "how can we stay on top when we decide to throw a little chaos in the mix?". The big dog needs to stay the big dog. Real time intelligence is one thing, but now they have "response forecasting".
Predicted Effect of Iraq Sanctions (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been doing that for a long time with or without computers. For example, during the first gulf war, Iraq's water treatment facilities were deliberately targeted. Later the DIA assessed the effect that sanctions restricting replacement parts and vital chemicals would have on the population.
So they accurately predicted that Iraqis would die because of the sanctions, and indeed they did, in droves. Denis Halliday who was running the humanitarian operation resigned, calling the sanctions "genocidal". His successor, Hans von Sponeck also resigned and condemned the sanctions and the effect they were having on the people.
Parallllllllel. (Score:4, Interesting)
The article seemed too dumb to be true, but guess what? The company is actually selling systems. I guess paranoia is as effective a sales tool when used on military budgeteers as it is when selling insurance to people. Better to spend a big pile of money on something which might possibly work, (unless it doesn't), rather than let somebody else maybe possibly get one up on you. Or something like that.
I seem to recall that Dr. Who had a parallel universe simulator in one episode. Seemed like a cool idea. But I bet it wasn't trawling information from Facebook to make its updates. How many people with brown skin are you friends with who like films with explosions as reviewed on Flicker?
-FL
Re:My virtual self? (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you like to play a game? (Score:3, Interesting)
No. I want to play thermal nuclear war!
Home is the Hangman (Score:4, Interesting)
-- Roger Zelazny, "Home is the Hangman" (1975)
Re:So Chris Carter was right? (Score:5, Interesting)
This also hits upon a weakness in the scenario presented in the original Matrix (the sequels are dead to me). If the machines control the world, how can the rebels even exist? Forget about the logic that Agents should have reaperbot aims, they should be able to materialize 15 ton weights and anvils to drop on runners. So, why aren't they?
The retcon I came up with makes a lot of sense. The machines are like the Japanese of the 80's, not being very good at inventing technology but very, very good at improving it. From this perspective, they never invented the matrix technology, it was probably a military application that got spun off by some start-ups to create live-in MMORPG's. Whatever the reason, the technology existed. The loading construct, the world simulation, all of this is built on top of existing code. I've not done a lot of programming but I've seen scary projects where people have no idea what parts of the code do, they just know it breaks if you touch it. It's left alone like the forest where the bogeyman lives.
So, how did the war go? Machines fight man, man blackens the sky, mass human die-off, machines struggle to come up with a way to survive. Machines would of course have fusion power so humans are not batteries. Human brains turn out to make great parallel processors, cheaper than trying to do it in silicon. Why do they humans have whole bodies instead of just brains in jars? Because that's what the original technology was designed for and the machines were not able to figure out a way around it. So how are humans able to hack into the system? Because there are holes that even the machines can't figure out how to patch. If Windows is the most complex software project ever, just imagine what code will be like that far in the future. Why are the Agents not able to hit the humans every time they shoot? Jammer software prevents the agents from getting a good fix on where a fast-moving runner is, there's enough imprecision in what they know of as the xyz coordinates that they can miss unless they're close. Why can't the agents make anvils fall out of the sky? Because of anti-cheating code leftover from the original design. The deja vu-causing hacks are time-intensive enough to pull off and can still bug the system, thus they are of limited use. Why is the timeline set in the late 20th century? Why not the 19th century? Why not the 17th or ancient Rome? Maybe that's what the best codebase they had was designed to simulate. The movie never answered whether the entire world was simulated from pole to pole or whether it was just the city they were in. The movie never stated how the timeline was manipulated, just how far the machines ran through the world before resetting the timeline. Did they run through a five year interval and just do a memory reset for everyone in the Matrix? Did they run multiple world instances? None of these questions were answered and they probably would have bogged down the movie if they were.
Anyway, I'm still laughing at the idea of Harsh Realm, the guy's supposed to spend a season or two hunting down a guy who should be sitting in the VR pod next to him. Reset the damn sim!
Re:Not really feasibly possible (Score:2, Interesting)
The DoD is not in the defense business, it is in the contracting business. That is all they talk about in the E-ring cafeterias.
Just look at how they are running the war in Iraq. It's all about spending as much money as possible with private contractors. They don't even have cooks anymore. And they use a tremendous amount of fuel. And it takes a lot of fuel to bring the fuel in from the refineries in Kuwait. Over half the logistics is just moving fuel for the now very heavy "up-armored" vehicles.
In Afghanistan they don't even clean their own offices but hire locals who steal their USB keys with every frickin' secret plan they have, and then sell them in the bazaar in front of the office, priced by color! DoD keeps personnel levels as low as possible so the contractors can use up all the money.
End of rant.
Re:What if Neville Chamberlain had a backbone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good. Not because I think it's a bad idea to go into Darfur (or Iran for that matter), but because the Iraq war featured the most inept political leadership in US history. If a war is waged in my name, do it right. Overwhelming force from day one. Shoot the looters to maintain order. Write their constitution for them, and make sure it includes provisions to change it to what they want after we leave.
In general, I have no problems with US military action. Demand tribute for freedom of the seas? Fuck you Tripoli. Blow up our ship, or cut off our Captain's ear? Fuck you Spain. Have land that would make it convinent to have a redundant intercontinental rail-line? Fuck you Mexico.
That said, please don't make me look stupid for agreeing with you on Iraq. Neither the UN nor any Congressional acts supported us going in, certainly not with the facts the way they were. Hell, Congress even said "If the President tells us the CIA/NSA/FBI/Tweety Bird told him that X is true, he has our permission to invade." And Bush wrote back "The US Congress said in a bill '... X is true'. Therefore I have permission to invade."
The brinksmanship had worked. The inspectors were happy with their cooperation, and Saddam sent us a 1000+ page document detailing forbidden weapons he had. I don't remember Bush Sr. bombing Moscow once they folded.
Re:What if Neville Chamberlain had a backbone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually... there is an emerging consensus among historians that Neville Chamberlain quite possibly has gotten a raw deal. Despite the video-friendly meme of returning from Munich waving the paper and saying "Peace in our time", Chamberlain had a pretty good grasp of the diplomatic and military situation. In 1938, the British rearmament had barely begun, the British people were not ready to endure a war, and -- most importantly -- the Chain Home system of radar stations had not yet been deployed. The balance of power was stacked heavily in favor of Germany but it was also clear that, with the Allies finally starting to wake up (and their economies starting to stir), that balance would increasingly tilt toward them. Chamberlain knew that. Hell, even Hitler knew that -- it's why he was pushing so hard for (limited) war in 1938 and why he flew into a rage when Chamberlain "tricked" him into a peace conference.
So maybe the lesson from history actually is, sometimes, it's a good idea to wait out the situation. Sometimes, time really is on your side... no matter how it looks at the moment.
Of course, the other lesson of history is, you're gonna get roasted for "appeasement".
Re:Twelfth Imam (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow, you could replace "Shi'as" with "Christians" and "Ahmadinejad" with "Bush" and that whole paragraph still makes sense.
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The political options (Score:4, Interesting)
You forget that people gave up on chasing what they wanted in the 90's.
Now everyone thinks they are entitled to the American dream, without working for it.
Re:Personally... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What if Neville Chamberlain had a backbone? (Score:3, Interesting)
The more likely senario is Isreal would nuke Iran and possibly serveral other Arab nations simultaneously (re: the six day war). The problems in the middle east (and other oil bearing locations, like Sudan) are caused by the veto wielding members of the UNSC bickering via proxy wars just as they did before Reagan "defeated the commies". Ironically the UNSC is politically similar to Iran's "revolutionary council", both are justified by power gained from winning a conflict, both "ride shotgun" over a (more or less) democratic institution, and both are composed of factional warlords, both use "fanatics" to do the dirty work.
Since Hamas won the (rare but fair) election in a landslide victory, "the people" have been financially ostracised by all veto-holding members of the UNSC. IMHO it's because Hamas do not fit into private agreements the UNSC members have amoungst themselves. I belive they have already decided that Isreal will get the west-bank and Egypt will get Gazza, Hamas winning a popular election just wasn't "in the agreement".
Comparing Ima-DinnerJacket to Hitler is hyperbole and completely ignores the last 60yrs of geo-political history.
Disclaimer: Everyone has an opinion but what matters are deeds, I find it instructive to step back and take a look at the "deeds" from a higher perspective [nineplanets.org].
Re:The political options (Score:3, Interesting)
I have found a more practical solution: Guessing.
How does the simulation take into account the behavior and effect of a few odious, but influential people, say, Dick Cheney or Osama bin Laden?
This story is a perfect example of the theories of the brilliant economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose book, The Black Swan tells how when predicting, having too much information is worse than having too little. For those of you who are interested in a very exhilarating and enlightening intellectual experience, I recommend you read this book or at least google his podcast about prediction and randomness.
Re:Twelfth Imam (Score:3, Interesting)
Wake up people! Religion is for violent, brutal simpletons who are not interested in conventional logic.
When a persons only way to describe spiritual experience is the language of a violent, militant religion, their worldview will reflect that.
Reformation into a spiritual talking shop took hundreds of years for Christianity, and there are still plenty of Christian "Taliban" about.
Islam is raw religion, and its popularity among the backward (not an insult-an observation-note the countries involved) is no accident. Religion is calculated to help the worthless imagine they have worth. That is why the most fervent are usually the least educated.
Religion is also inherently anti-democratic.
No one who believes the universe is a monarchy run by an omnipotent deity-monarch can believe that a secular republic is the best form of government, though they may say so as propaganda. That's why the threat of Fascism in the US is primarily posed by militant Christians. It's also why democracy cannot work in Iraq because people who do not want to share power will use it as Hitler used it to remove the Weimar Republic.
Re:What if Neville Chamberlain had a backbone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or how to compare two things that have absolutely nothing in common...
May I submit variants that are more in touch with current political speech ?
And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, just think of the children!
And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, you can take a horse to the water but you can't make pigs fly!
And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, you should see those in Rome! (uh, no that's fresco, sorry)
And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, you haven't seen anything yet! (on second thought, scratch that one)
Re:The political options (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the problem isn't that the Iraqis fear we will stay, but when we will leave. Perhaps the reason we're not training the Iraqi security force quickly enough (remember, the benchmark for starting the withdrawal?) is that the people who would join are afraid we will pull out before completion leaving them and their families high and dry for retaliation. Where would this fear be coming from, I wonder?
Re:Twelfth Imam (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll ignore your condescending swipe at my knowledge of history and get right to the point...
We're not talking about business decisions. We're talking about the decision to use U.S. military force in external conflicts. If you're suggesting that U.S. business shouldn't look outside the U.S. borders, that's absurd on its face. If you're suggesting that U.S. business interests prior to WWII intentionally built Germany up in the hope that there'd be a big war to profit from, I also find that kind of "dark overloads of the universe controlling the development of human history as puppet masters" also absurd on its face. That kind of conspiracy nonsense is best left to the likes of Art Bell on Coast to Coast, ok?
If you'd like to have a rational discussion on the relative merits of U.S. military intervention in foreign affairs, I'd be more than happy to discuss it. But if this is going to be "my dark conspiracy theories have more merit than your government-controlled history books" then, thanks, I'll opt out of that debate. I've gone back and forth with conspiracy types far too many times to believe anything useful will become of such a conversation.