

MONIAC, a hydraulic computer that modeled the economy - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-rube-goldberg-machine-that-mastered-keynesian-economics

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dj-wonk
Fun. This looks like a systems dynamics model. Many useful models use
differential equations, and there are many substrates to provide that kind of
computation (springs, hydraulics, analog electronics, digital electronics).

And now a slight tangent about "computational substrates". The same applies to
quantum computing -- there are many ways to make a qubit.

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elteto
What I like about mechanical computers is that since our universe can be
described mathematically you are then harnessing the "computational power" of
reality to model some dynamical system. In absence of digital computers I find
that to be a very clever alternative.

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haddr
This always reminds me of the shortest path problem. For solving it with
computers we need some special algorithms and data representations, while
alternatively, we could create some sort of rope net, and just pull two
interesting nodes to stretch the net and to see which path is the shortest...
with "O(1)" computational complexity :)

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elteto
Haha never thought about it this way, but definitely very interesting :)

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digi_owl
What is saddening is that the one group of people that should take interest in
it, economists, show very little such. Instead they "honor" the creator by
using another, more questionable, creation of his, the Phillips curve.

And to call Phillips an economist with an engineering bent is highly
inaccurate. He was educated as an engineer, but later on picked up a interest
in economics.

And what seems to be a repeating pattern with engineers getting involved with
economics, their worst work in the field is what ends up enduring in economic
theory (the mentioned curve only really holds up under very specific
circumstances)...

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agumonkey
You linked another (related) article, discussed (not much) here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806713).

The hydrolic computation reminds me strongly of analog mechanical computers
used by the Navy :
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=navy+analog+com...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=navy+analog+computers)

