RE: Simulating Individual Behavior

[Scott Christley]

Fascinating!

Now that its the weekend; I have the time to step out of my role of
striving to make GNUstep a reality; I wish I had such a discussion group
when I was in graduate school...anyways let me pose some questions. 

first a metaphysical one:

I am tending to notice a separation between two modelling paradigms: the 
ABMers (I was an IBMer once! ;-) and the ODEers.  Are there true 
differences between these two paradigms or is it only a perception?  
Meaning is not a Swarm program a symbolic (mathematical) description of a 
model, just not as concise as a differential equation?

Steve Emsley was talking about military simulation...

Has anybody read the recent Wired article about the Marine's use of DOOM 
for battle simultion?  Any comments about the merits of using VR in 
simulations besides the obvious:  scenario iteration (as in responding to 
a terrorist threat)?  Does anybody(or know of anybody) have interest in 
seeing Swarm expand in VR areas (versus 3D visualization)?

Continuing with military simulation; is such simulation geared at 
controlling and predicting our own country's troups?  Or is it more 
related to training(as in DOOM above) to prepare our troups for possible 
unknowns?  From my understanding of VR use in the military its towards 
the later, but concentration on the former seems to be more of the 
theoretical nature.  And the iteration I didn't mention where simulation 
is to geared towards acting out the opposing force.

Imagine this scenario:  You have some terrorists who have taken over a 
building and are holding a bunch of hostages.  You have a small number of 
marines who are going to attempt to overtake them.  It would seem to me 
that being able to simulate the most realistic terrorist is going to be 
both the hardest and most beneficial part of the simulation.  Its 
simulations like this where individual actions have a huge impact upon 
the outcome.

Did I actually read someone mention Planck's constant?!! :-)  I'm 
currently reading a biography of Einstein by Albrecht Folsing (good 
book!); it got me thinking about how as humans we attempt to find the 
"parameters" so that we can "model" ourselves after other humans that we 
idolize.  It makes me wonder if the search for the fundamental laws of 
the universe have progressed from physics to the higher level sciences of 
biology, sociology, history.

excuse my musings
Scott


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