Posted on 06/30/2007 6:19:41 AM PDT by HangnJudge
The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.
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.
SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," the paper reads, so that military leaders can "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners"
SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.
SEAS can display regional results for public opinion polls, distribution of retail outlets in urban areas, and the level of unorganization of local economies, which may point to potential areas of civil unrest
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.com ...
Makes you all fuzzy inside
This is kinda cool, but it’s a waste of money.
If they wanted to study the “other side of the dividing line between reality and alternative reality”, they could simply examine the State Department.
A wise old engineer from Project Safeguard once told me, “Simulation is like masturbation; the more you do it, the more you think it’s the real thing.”
This is also true with respect to the global warming crowd and their intellectual self-abuse.
Or the Senate would make an excellent "ant farm."
Sorry, it’s no doubt impossible to model the 7th century muslim “thought” process.
Unless the key model parameters are “kill, maim, destroy, behead, blow up and terrorize”.
Are they going to call the project “HARSH REALM”?
To a large degree you’re right about simulations. However, unlike the global alarmists, DoD is going to do “continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”. This is going to be an interesting project, but I suspect they’re going to find that they are many orders of magnitude from achieving real-time results.
Exactly. It can’t do any harm, as long as they don’t actually trust it for more than giving them another source of input.
The information they get can’t be much worse than what is provided them by the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee. One of the lessons the military quickly learned in Iraq was that they needed their own intelligence gathering, because the CIA was worse than useless—it was actually hoping that we would lose.
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