Can a $1.5bn supercomputer save humanity?

Originally posted by omarsharif

Can a $1.5bn supercomputer save humanity?

First thing I thought of when I read your title to this thread (the real title is Living Earth Simulator Hopes to Unlock Secrets of the Past, Present, Future ) was that the article was implying that this computer would somehow prevent asteroids from hitting our planet, prevent gamma rays from affecting Earth from a super nova, find a way to protect our planet from coronal mass ejections from our sun, and other cataclysmic disasters that might/would "wipe out" humanity.

So, my answer to the title of the thread would be NO.

[edit on 5/5/2010 by Keyhole]

reply to post by boondock-saint


Sounds more like "Terminator" to me.

Think they will call it Skynet?

Seriously, don't give it launch codes

Call it: "Colossus"... and give it the launch codes! The only way to save humanity, is to control humanity.

Don't tell me... I bet they're calling it "SKYNET"

Any H. Beam Piper fans here? Piper wrote a book in the 50's called Cosmic Computer. 500 years from now, a supercomputer is built to help win a civil war and it then goes on to predict the next 1,000 years of Human Civilization. Unfortunately, the prediction is for a collapse of that Civilization. A very entertaining story if you like sci fi.

As for this actual project, I'm astonished that the politicians who authorized this boondoggle, don't understand the first law of computing. GIGO
It stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. Supecomputers are fast but they're not smart. They only calculate what the programmers tell them to. The programming is limited to human comprehension and understanding of the processes involved. Human events are the product of millions of decisions made each day by us. Even if a computer somehow knew what those decisions were, how would it be able to calculate the impact of those decisions(and tomorrow's and the day after's, etc.) not just in the immediate future but also in the long term because some decisions have no immediate impact but do have long term impacts. Human Civilization is best described by chaos theory which says that some systems are so complicated that they can never be predicted precisely, such as the weather. Science has been trying to predict the weather for 100 years and my local 3 day forecast is still wrong more than half the time.

So in my humble opinion, this project is either a whilte elephant designed to creat jobs for programmers and bureaucrats or it's a trojan horse using bogus output to bamboozle the rest of us into doing what the Powers That Be want us to do.

sounds like this story
www.multivax.com...

Give it a read, it's good stuff. Asimov wrote it. Good story.

Originally posted by Beancounter72
As for this actual project, I'm astonished that the politicians who authorized this boondoggle, don't understand the first law of computing. GIGO
It stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. Supecomputers are fast but they're not smart. They only calculate what the programmers tell them to. The programming is limited to human comprehension and understanding of the processes involved. Human events are the product of millions of decisions made each day by us. Even if a computer somehow knew what those decisions were, how would it be able to calculate the impact of those decisions(and tomorrow's and the day after's, etc.) not just in the immediate future but also in the long term because some decisions have no immediate impact but do have long term impacts.

Professor Dr Helbing has a very large body of work. I could swear I've seen him interviewed on TV taking about traffic but I can't find the interview.

This is a example of the kind of modelling they use now. You can see how this might relate to say, the truther movement.



Chair of sociology

Here is some more examples of how their modelling works. And a few speeches and documents by Helbing.

He seems to have some very noble aspirations and this program could certainly be used for good. But as has been stated it could also be used to trade on a global level.

I'd really like to see what sort of hardware this thing will have. I think PS3 cell CPU's will be obsolete for sure by the time this machine is build.

Or perhaps some information on who else is working on it and where it will actually be. It's been said in some of these news article that it's being funded by the EU. But I wonder who exactly. And where this study will be done.

ETH Zurich might be where they will do this research but I can't find anything on their site about this project yet. So perhaps not.



[edit on 5-5-2010 by belial259]

I wonder what my frame rates would be on this new "toaster" Battle field 1942 desert combat would be all new monster!!!

Originally posted by muzzleflash
1.5 billion $ could save humanity.

If we spent it on food, improving production, safety etc.

So dropping it all on a single computer that will be obsolete in 5years is a HUGE waste, imo.

BTW As a kid I was a HUGE Sim Earth fan! One of my favorite games from way back in the day!

[edit on 5-5-2010 by muzzleflash]

It is definitely a waste of money, but 1.5 Billion is a drop in the bucket for improving food, production, safety, etc....

"Can a $1.5bn supercomputer save humanity?"

Without reading any comments in this thread, I'm just going to state the obvious...

ONLY HUMANITY CAN SAVE HUMANITY. Leave it to the morons in charge to believe that a computer is our destiny. Simulations... How about people try going back to actually doing things instead of not even trying?

What a joke society has become when we have become so self-absorbed in our lives that we need a supercomputer to save us

You would think that if this super computer could save humanity and predict this and do that maybe all the computer compnies could just build it for the greater good and donate it. To bad that'll never happen.

What is this supercomputer supposed to save humanity from?

1. Overpopulation?
We have wars for that.

2. Dwindling resources? (see above)

3. Carbon footprint? (see # 1.)

If there are more issues I am sure they can be traced to # 1 eventually.

As for the Ultimate Answer we already know it: 42.

(edit to add)

For those who don't know why the Ultimate Answer is 42, check out Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series


[edit on 6-5-2010 by tungus]