{"id":1901,"date":"2002-04-11T16:03:59","date_gmt":"2002-04-11T21:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=1901"},"modified":"2002-04-11T16:03:59","modified_gmt":"2002-04-11T21:03:59","slug":"paging_hari_sel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/11\/paging_hari_sel.html","title":{"rendered":"Paging Hari Seldon &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By using computers to create artificial societies and business, sociologists are coming models that do some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/issues\/2002\/04\/rauch.htm\">startlingly realistic things<\/a> &#8212; even though it&#8217;s not always obvious why they do ahead of time.<\/p>\n<p>And there are implications from this that a bunch of contrary, independent human beings, doing the same, may still end up following aggregate patterns of behavior that are both predictable in type and apparently unrelated to individual intent.  Some of the lessons may be usable to chart how societies and civilizations rise &#8230; how they fall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block\">I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m alone in finding this artificial genocide eerie. The outcome, of course, is chilling; but what is at least as spooky is that such complicated\u2014to say nothing of familiar\u2014social patterns can be produced by mindless packets of data following a few almost ridiculously simple rules. If I showed you these illustrations and told you they represented genocide, you might well assume you were seeing a schematic diagram of an actual event. Moreover, the model is designed without any element of imitation or communication, so mass hysteria or organized effort is literally impossible. No agent is knowingly copying his peers or following the crowd; none is consciously organizing a self-protective enclave. All the agents are separately and individually reacting &#8220;rationally&#8221;\u2014according to rules, in any case\u2014to local conditions that the agents themselves are rapidly altering. <\/p>\n<p>Seriously, seriously cool stuff.<\/p>\n<p><small>(Via <a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/article.pl?sid=02\/04\/11\/0030236\">SlashDot<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By using computers to create artificial societies and business, sociologists are coming models that do some startlingly realistic things &#8212; even though it&#8217;s not always obvious why they do ahead&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6495,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/25\/more_mixed_mess.html","url_meta":{"origin":1901,"position":0},"title":"More mixed messages","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 25-Aug-04 10:59am","format":false,"excerpt":"Couple agree to have a kid, woman gets pregnant by artificial insemination, couple breaks up, woman sues for child support ... ... and the court rules the \"informal agreement\" isn't...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics &amp; Law&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics &amp; Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31448,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/21\/secret-societies-and-secret-codes.html","url_meta":{"origin":1901,"position":1},"title":"Secret Societies and Secret Codes","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-Nov-12 6:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"A cool story of cryptography and revealed rituals. Embedded Link They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside | Danger Room | Wired.com For nearly 250 years, this book concealed the arcane rituals of an ancient order. But cracking the code only deepened the mystery. Google+: View\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":899,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/03\/sims.html","url_meta":{"origin":1901,"position":2},"title":"Sims","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 3-Nov-01 8:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Sims vs. Al Quaeda An interesting LA Times article about the effort to create computer simulations of everything from small unit battlefield tactics to large societies. Where's Hari Seldon...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Science &amp; Nature&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Science &amp; Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13265,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/04\/good_earth.html","url_meta":{"origin":1901,"position":3},"title":"Good Earth","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Feb-09 12:29pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I love the Good Earth \"Original\" tea, its \"sweet & spicy\" tea\/herb blend. I have four or five boxes here, and just cycled from one to the other. And ......","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/04\/good_earth.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28288,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/14\/theres-gold-in-them-thar-artificial-hills.html","url_meta":{"origin":1901,"position":4},"title":"There&#39;s Gold in Them Thar Artificial Hills!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-Jun-12 7:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Or, actually aluminum.Makes a lot of sense, of course, but it still feels ... vaguely post-apocalyptic.Reshared post from +Gideon RosenblattAluminum Expert says it\u2019s time to start mining New JerseySince the dawn of the industrial revolution the world\u2019s ore deposits have depleted to dangerously low levels and the industrial thirst for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10906,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/22\/the_nearly_real_thing.html","url_meta":{"origin":1901,"position":5},"title":"The Nearly-Real Thing","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-May-07 3:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been a huge fan\u00a0of\u00a0Coke Zero\u00a0for some time now.\u00a0\u00a0 It's a diet Coke -- but unlike Diet Coke (which is New Coke with artificial sweeteners, which, since New Coke...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Food &amp; Drink&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Food &amp; Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/vanilla-coke-zero.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}