Showing posts with label game-theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game-theory. Show all posts

Tuesday, 29 November 2016

Environment WorldGame (1991)

The following was a report I'd published online shortly after attending the Ottawa Carleton Pugwash WorldGame event in 1991 -- I attended this with my oldest son, Linton, who was 7 years old at the time (who says kids can't do thinktank exercises!) The report was formatted crudely through an online LaTeX converter just so I could throw this out there for anyone who may be interested.

Environment WorldGame


<articleinfo>
<title>Environment WorldGame™ </title>
<authorgroup>Carleton University/Pugwash</authorgroup>
March 16, 1991

</articleinfo>


News of this WorldGame came nonchalantly over electronic news:
>From mag@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Wed Mar 6 15:51:58 1991
	From: mag@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Gifford)
	Newsgroups: ott.general
	Subject: The Environmental World Game
	Summary: Student Simulation Game at Baker Hall, Carleton U
	Keywords: Pugwash, simulation, world, Student, Baker Hall
	Date: 6 Mar 91 05:03:08 GMT
	Distribution: Ottawa
	Organization: Sandelman Software, Debugging Department, Ottawa

	Hi

	The Canadian Student Pugwash is sponsoring an event at
	Baker Hall, Carleton U, within a National Conference. This
	part of the conference is free and open to students here in
	Ottawa.

	A 3 to 4 hour simulation with 100 to 300 people, played on
	a 40x70 foot world map. Participants will engage in actions
	that help them learn about the environment. Its problems,
	options, and interconnections from a global and local
	perspective. Durring the game, players are given the power and
	opportunity to solve the world's problems as well as create the
	kind of world that they want to live in. Because participants
	learn about the environment from an active and empowered
	perspective, the game serves as a testing ground for later
	action by individuals and groups.

	As a participatory event, the Environmental World Game has
	been designed to put players in charge of the world. The event
	is not an academic exercise, but rather about changing the
	world.

	1:30 to 5:00 Saturday, March 16th
	Baker Hall, Carleton University.
	For more info either reply to this letter, respond
	to my email address, or call
	Mike Gifford @ 563 - 0176
	or Canadian Student Pugwash @ 234 - 3622
	--
	Mike Gifford -- 2nd year Integrated Science Studies..
	** -- I am normal.. And everyone else is wierd..
	/ -- Mike_Gifford@xxxxxxxxx/mag@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
	\_/ -- attending Carleton University, in Ottawa..

  

With the new moon overhead in Pisces, Linton and I made our may from our drop-off point, through the maze of campus tunnels to a canvas-walled room in the Carlton Unicenter where we filed in with about a hundred others. At the door, we were issued with a stats chart for North America, 1970, the two of us representing three fifths the total population, 6% of the world total.

Friday, 9 January 2009

"It will never happen"


Nassim Taleb is only interested in one topic: chance. Particularly extreme and rare events, the "Black Swans", the point where improbable chance falls at the intersection of philosophy/epistemology, philosophy/ethics, mathematics, social science/finance, and cognitive science.
Accept no pundit market-trend forecasts of gloom until you hear out Nassim Taleb and his argument of how our daily lives are dominated by ripples from game-changing disruptions no one expected, those glitchevents that Buckminster Fuller called "Unforeseen Leaps in capabilities", what Sun Ra called "the Greater Unknown".