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WOULD-BE WORLDS by John L. Casti

WOULD-BE WORLDS

How Simulation is Changing the Frontiers of Science

by John L. Casti

Pub Date: Oct. 18th, 1996
ISBN: 0-471-12308-0
Publisher: Wiley

Computer simulation has arrived big time, in everything from movie effects to election forecasts; here's an expert's overview. Beginning with an attempt to predict the outcome of a Super Bowl, Casti (Searching for Certainty, 1991) chose a popular but fairly sophisticated computer game program to play a series of simulated games between the 1995 opponents, the 49ers and Chargers. He uses his results (which suggest either that the actual game was a fluke or that the program is flawed) to make several basic points about computer simulations and models. They can be predictive or explanatory; perfect fidelity to the real world is not the sole virtue; and they are often most useful in analysis of complex phenomena that in the real world are either dangerous to meddle with (such as the flight patterns over a busy airport) or very rare (the collision of a meteor with Earth). He then gets down to specifics, describing programs to analyze language, to generate artificial ``life,'' or to forecast the weather. A long and fascinating chapter is devoted to limitations and paradoxes that limit our ability to turn every problem into an easily computable simulation. We get close-up looks at a system modeling the traffic patterns at rush hour in Albuquerque; at neural nets, which attempt to simulate the structure of the human brain; and at ``Sugarscape,'' which extracts basic economic principles from a pure supply-and-demand environment. Casti's subject sometimes leads him into esoteric territory, but he tries to keep it down-to-earth with examples from real life. At the same time, he is not afraid to plunge into such deep waters as GĂ®del's Incompleteness Theorem. There is the occasional mathematical formula, but readers without advanced math should be able to follow the argument—especially because of the excellent use of illustrations and diagrams. A very solid and useful discussion of the theory and practice of computer modeling in the physical and social sciences.