
Cloudy With a Chance of War - lingben
http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-war
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grey-area
Well that was fascinating, and not at all what I expected from the title. The
article is about the English physicist and mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson:

 _Richardson decided to do a “hindcast,” so his results could be compared with
real weather on a target date in the past. He chose the weather over Central
Europe on May 20, 1910—a date for which Bjerknes had already published a trove
of data about temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and wind speed._

 _Richardson created a map of the atmosphere over the region, split into 25
equal-sized cells with sides of about 125 miles. Every block was further
divided into five layers with about the same mass of air in each layer.
(Because atmospheric density decreases with altitude, these layers were
divided at heights of 2, 4, 7, and 12 kilometers above the ground.)_

~~~
lurcio
Richardson was an early interest and influence to me. For those so inclined
and with a taste for a little more on Richardsons work and related areas I
heartily recommend:

TH Körner "Pleasures of Counting" and Manfred Schroeder "Fractals, Chaos &
Power Laws"

Wonderful mental fodder for kids and non-mathematical adults

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bostik
I have to wonder - did Richardson's work influence Isaac Asimov at any point?
The concept of diffusion applied to sociology sounds quite a lot like the
basis of Foundation. Hell, the very idea that you could mathematically predict
how nations in aggregate behave _does_ sound like basis for psychohistory.

Asimov was a chemist, so he would have known diffusion by heart.

~~~
tjradcliffe
The diffusion of ideas is difficult to track and rarely do ideas have unique
sources. So Asimov may have been influenced by Richardson as well as others,
or come to similar conclusions on his own. John von Neuman believed that
automated computation would allow something like Asimov's psychohistory, and
there were other people thinking along similar lines.

In the modern world (shameless plug) my own novel deals with the problem of
war from the point of view of computational biology (although, like
Richardson, I am a physicist): [http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-
Radcliffe-ebook/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-
ebook/dp/B00KBH5O8K/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1406867026&sr=8-1&keywords=darwin%27s+theorem)

One of the internal debates I had while writing it was whether to reference
Asimov, but eventually decided not to, as the route by which I'd arrived at
the ideas in the book had nothing to do with reading Foundation at the age of
13 many years ago (at least not so far as I could tell.)

~~~
bostik
If I have understood correctly, the original Foundation (first 4+1 short
stories) were themselves inspired by a mammoth tome, _The Rise and Fall of
Roman Empire_.

I would love to know where the idea of mathematically calculable sociological
movements came from. (History playing itself out in cycles was certainly not a
new idea.) I _do_ know that the stories have inspired a number of economists,
and the modern age, big-data driven behavioural modeling does have a certain
familiar vibe to it...

~~~
igravious
I would love to know also. I believe (gut, hunch, intuition) that it's an idea
who's time has come of age. All we need are the right models, the right models
are the hard part when it comes to society because you have to model the
Earth's resources and geography and whatnot (society's environment) as well as
take into consideration that the individual actors in society are autonomous
sentient beings.

I'd like to know who besides Azimov talked about this in the past.

I think it would be fascinating to be able to predict the chance of political
or economic instability or what have you.

A lot of people are resistant to this idea because they feel humans are either
too special or too complex to model in aggregate, or at least their (our I
mean, giving my robot self away there) interactions are.

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thaumasiotes
From the article:

> A pilot flying through eddies too small to bump his plane around will not
> notice them—the effect of all the tiny eddies is averaged out into a general
> sense that the ride is smooth. On the other hand, neither will he notice an
> enormous eddy that enfolds the entire plane, any more than a fish would
> notice the water in which it swims.

I'm pretty sure that an airplane pilot would notice a wind blowing him off
course. And I see that idea "fish can't notice water because they're in it"
around all the time, but it's never made any sense to me. We move through and
breathe the air just like fish do the water. Far from lacking the concept of
air entirely, "air" was one of the classical elements. People notice when they
get caught in strong winds. They even notice soft winds. What are we supposed
to understand from this bizarre metaphorical assertion?

~~~
ianstallings
Well an example would be if the aircraft is sinking but the pilot is
experiencing the sensations of gaining altitude because he feels the lift in
the seat, he sees the angle of the wing against the horizon, and he hears the
aircraft making the distinct noise it makes while climbing. But the
instruments may tell him that he is not in fact climbing from the earth, he is
descending, and he just feels like he's climbing because in the column of air
he dwells, he _is_ climbing. But that column of air itself is falling.

This disconnect between senses and reality is the whole reason even pilots
that only fly visually require instruments. On a horizontal plane it's much
easier for a person to determine if they're off course using visual reference
points. For altitude it's much harder to determine using just your senses.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Stipulating everything you say about the experiences of pilots, it doesn't
address the experience of fish at all. Imagine yourself, exposed to the
atmosphere. If you're in a powerful current, you'll notice instantly, as
you're covered in sensors embedded in your skin. Pilots can't actually feel
the exterior of their plane... but fish can certainly feel their skin. And
pilots make up for not physically _being_ their plane precisely by paying
attention to sensors that let them know they're being pushed. When they are
being pushed... they notice. Planes don't just set out for LA and land in
Vancouver because of unexpected wind from the south.

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arethuza
I remember this from Sagan's _Cosmos_ \- it's definitely in the book,
presumably in the chapter "Who Speaks for Earth?".

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willyt
It would be incredibly interesting to see a forecast for Europe just now. I
wonder if the data he collected is available somewhere?

~~~
zbyte64
Sadly, we're overdue for a big one.

~~~
classicsnoot
I disagree with the assertion that it is cultural or societal, but i
completely agree with the math.

If ANYthing actually happens in Europe, how could there not be a scramble in
the Pacific? So many competing interests, so much war tech laying about.

Capitalism uses the large business cartels of the world to maintain a 'net
peace' but the system is cracking because of isolationism.

~~~
Shivetya
watch for signs where it becomes more profitable to take other people's stuff
or prevent them from having it than to fixing your own backyard.

If anything capitalism may be stalling full blown world wars now, it simply
costs to much to do them and its far more profitable to not. However limited
wars and police actions are far more likely to keep the threat to all that
money being made minimal

~~~
classicsnoot
That time is upon us. I agree that Capitalist Organization [G20,WTO,etc] has
prevented at least one major conflict, but it would appear to have done that
by fomenting and/or suppressing the conflicts of smaller groups. The weapons
get sold, but the stockpiles stay evenish.

This is falling apart. Moscow was backed into a corner, and the bet a lot the
US, NATO, and EU would do nothing substantial in the face of naked force. They
won that hand. This makes every player at the table more gutsy or more scared.

Incipient Muslim region-states blossom across the globe, every single one of
them in an area where rampant capitalism was used, and abused, to
modernize[sic] the region.

Smaller European nations reforge alliances and mutual defense pacts.
'Scientific' reports of any given nations 'weakness' in terms of humanpower,
weapons, etc. start to crop up in media forms. Soon enough the christians will
jump in, and with them comes the child soldiery tolerance.

I digress from fantasy, but more to the point: the next war may look more like
a massive construction project that kills a bunch of people on the edges.

all my opinions; would love to discuss if you think im way off.

I cant help but think of 1900-1914.

