Largest Supercomputers to Simulate Life on Earth, Including Economies and Whole Societies

Science Daily ^ | 5/28/2010 | ScienceDaily

[Dallas59]

cientists are planning to use the largest supercomputers to simulate life on Earth, including the financial system, economies and whole societies. The project is called "Living Earth Simulator" and part of a huge EU research initiative named FuturIcT.

Supercomputers are already being used to explore complex social and economic problems that science can understand in no other way. For example, ETH Zurich's professor for transport engineering Kay Axhausen is simulating the travel activities of all 7.5 Million inhabitants of Switzerland to forecast and mitigate traffic congestion.
Other researchers at the ETH -- all working within its Competence Center for Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems (CCSS) -- are mining huge amounts of financial data to detect dangerous bubbles in stock and housing markets, potential bankruptcy cascades in networks of companies, or similar vulnerabilities in other complex networks such as communication networks or the Internet.

[umgud]

Will they input politically correct data?

[dfwgator]

Yep, they will finally “prove” that socialism works.

[TruthConquers]

I find the arrogance of scientists amazing.

Complex societies are ... complex.

Besides, they tend to be full of political correctness, (Civilization game anyone), and they WILL get it wrong. And don’t forget the climate models. They don’t have those right, either, do they.

[ILS21R]

[BwanaNdege]

G.I.G.O.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

[Oceander]

Yeah, that worked really well for the risk-management divisions at the banks, didn't it?

[dirtymac]

And it will prove globull warming is true, that communism is the best economic model, and that the elite must rule the world. It's just common sense and this super computer will prove it. And, oh, by the way, it will produce a valid birth certificate for Obuma proving natural born citizenship.

[dfwgator]

The answer will be “42.”

[LiberConservative]

GIGO

[tbw2]

If the climate models were so wrong, what is to prevent the economic models from being even more so?

[dr_who]

Bullshit Assumptions Bullshit Conclusions

[Madame Dufarge]

Actual humans found behaving contrary to forecast "scientific" outcomes will, of course, be eliminated.

For the greater good.

[Lurker]

So they’re playing The Sims?

[LibLieSlayer]

Sim City 2010.

[Gideon7]

Yep, they will finally “prove” that socialism works.

Sid Meyer's game Civilization lets you pick Communism as a viable choice of government. Based on all those successful real-world examples obviously. /s

[StormEye]

I wonder if they will attempt to model such complex societies as Zimbabwe, Castro’s Cuba, Chad, Afghanistan or even Detroit, Michigan? Nah, that wouldn’t be politically correct!

[dangus]

42.

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[mountainlion]

Maybe they will prove that computers caused global warming.