Bill's gate

CSGnet Archive CSG1997
1

[From Bill Powers (971016.2016 MDT)]

I've seen seen your "example" now. Sorry, but it's not of any interest to
me. It's an animation, not a simulation or a working model. Your
presentation is mostly a description of what you hope this system would do,
not what it would actually do if connected to the steering wheel of a car.
You don't even have a representation of the car's properties in the model,
and the behavior of the car is far from realistic. It lurches back and
forth between the edges of the road, and it does that only because you
animated the display that way. It doesn't look to me as though you know
very much about modeling.

From Mervyn van Kuyen (971021 17:30 CET)

Sorry for creating so much confusion with my animated GIF picture. No, a
GIF is not a working model, I hope you didn't waste too much of your time
before you found out it was just an illustration of the concept, not even
the result of an actual simulation...

You are right about the description being merely hopes, but let's call
them educated hopes: they arize from thousands of hours of simulation. So,
if you 'hope' that they are wrong, tell me why, don't tell me my knowledge
about modeling is just no good. Models are simplifications of reality that
still demonstrate crucial properties of a system, and in my opinion the
precise behavior of the car is definitely not the thing that's keeping you
from understanding my ideas: your lack of interest is not a result
but a cause.

Regards,

Mervyn

2

[From Bill Powers (971021.1528 MDT)]

Mervyn (971021) --

You are right about the description being merely hopes, but let's call
them educated hopes: they arize from thousands of hours of simulation. So,
if you 'hope' that they are wrong, tell me why, don't tell me my knowledge
about modeling is just no good. Models are simplifications of reality that
still demonstrate crucial properties of a system, and in my opinion the
precise behavior of the car is definitely not the thing that's keeping you
from understanding my ideas: your lack of interest is not a result
but a cause.

I'm interested in models that simulate the behavior of real organisms, from
bacteria to bugs to people. Show me a model that can do that, and I'll be
very interested. Your "simplification of reality" is too simple, and too
unconnected to any real phenomenon. Or at least you haven't said what
phenomenon it's supposed to imitate. You may have thouands of hours of
effort put into studying the properties of your model, but without at least
an equal amount of time spent studying the observable world outside the
computer, the net result is only a game played in an imaginary universe. I
don't object to your doing that, but please don't tell me you have a model
of a real organism.

Best,

Bill P.