Abstract for SwarmFest'00

[glen e. p. ropella]

Hey!
Here's an abstract for a talk I'm going to try to give at
SwarmFest'00.  I'm asking everybody to bear with me on this
one.  [grin]  I'm not going to pretend to be talking about anything
defensible as scientific or engineering.  It's more of a fuzzy
"statement of the situation as I see it."  I don't feel so bad
giving a talk like this at a users' group meeting.  Plus, it's
going to be part of a justification for a potential new development
vision for the SDG.

glen
p.s. Apologies to Douglas Adams.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Life, The Universe, and Everything: Computation and Simulation

Glen E. Ropella
The Swarm Corporation
address@hidden

Abstract

As computational resources become more ubiquitous, we must develop
the ability to delegate responsibility to automata.  The current state
of computational design prohibits this delegation because we just
can't develop the trust that is a necessary prerequisite for such
delegation.  Therefore, we need to examine "trust" in the context of
our computational artifacts.  Trust is built on expectations.
Expectations are built by abduction from an often dynamic set of
observables.  Simulation, particularly the kind used by agent-based
modelers, provides a powerful context in which to experiment with the
process by which expectations and trust are built.  And if we can
develop this "estimation theory" beyond mathematical modeling, we
should be able to advance the state-of-the-art not only in simulation
and modeling, but in parallel systems analysis and design, as well.


--
glen e. p. ropella =><= The front line is everywhere. Hail Eris!
Home: http://forager.swarm.com/~gepr              (505) 424-0448
Work: http://www.swarm.com                        (505) 995-0818


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