problems. It's a by-product of the study. We needed a fast, dependable
procedure to approximate the effects of disparate social phenomena on other
social phenomena. We got it. It's in a primitive phase, but it works.
HOW ARE PEACE GAMES PLAYED? ARE THEY LIKE RAND'S WAR GAMES?
You don't "play" peace games, like chess or Monopoly, any more than you play
war games with toy soldiers. You use computers. It's a programming system. A
computer "language," like Fortran, or Algol, or Jovial.... Its advantage is its
superior capacity to interrelate data with no apparent common points of
reference.... A simple analogy is likely to be misleading. But I can give you
some examples. For instance, supposing I asked you to figure out what effect a
moon landing by U.S. astronauts would have on an election in, say, Sweden. Or
what effect a change in the draft law--a specific change--would have on the
value of real estate in downtown Manhattan? Or a certain change in college
entrance requirements in the United States on the British shipping industry?
You would probably say, first, that there would be no effect to speak of, and
second, that there would be no way of telling. But you'd be wrong on both
counts. In each case there would be an effect, and the peace games method
could tell you what it would be, quantitatively. I didn't take these examples out
of the air. We used them in working out the method....Essentially, it's an
elaborate high-speed trial-and-error system for determining working algorithms.
Like most sophisticated types of computer problem-solving...
A lot of the "games" of this kind you read about are just glorified and
conversational exercises. They really are games, and nothing more. I just saw
one reported in the Canadian Computer Society Bulletin, called a "Vietnam
Peace Game." They use simulation techniques, but the programming hypotheses
are speculative....
The idea of a problem-solving system like this is not original with us. ARPA
(the Advanced Research Projects Agency, of the Department of Defense DoD.)
has been working on something like it. So has General Electric, in California.
There are others..... We were successful not because we know more than they
do about programming, which we don't, but because we leaned how to
formulate the problems accurately. It goes back to the old saw. You can always
find the answer if you know the right question.....
SUPPOSING YOU HADN'T DEVELOPED THIS METHOD. WOULD YOU HAVE COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSIONS IN THE REPORT?
procedure to approximate the effects of disparate social phenomena on other
social phenomena. We got it. It's in a primitive phase, but it works.
HOW ARE PEACE GAMES PLAYED? ARE THEY LIKE RAND'S WAR GAMES?
You don't "play" peace games, like chess or Monopoly, any more than you play
war games with toy soldiers. You use computers. It's a programming system. A
computer "language," like Fortran, or Algol, or Jovial.... Its advantage is its
superior capacity to interrelate data with no apparent common points of
reference.... A simple analogy is likely to be misleading. But I can give you
some examples. For instance, supposing I asked you to figure out what effect a
moon landing by U.S. astronauts would have on an election in, say, Sweden. Or
what effect a change in the draft law--a specific change--would have on the
value of real estate in downtown Manhattan? Or a certain change in college
entrance requirements in the United States on the British shipping industry?
You would probably say, first, that there would be no effect to speak of, and
second, that there would be no way of telling. But you'd be wrong on both
counts. In each case there would be an effect, and the peace games method
could tell you what it would be, quantitatively. I didn't take these examples out
of the air. We used them in working out the method....Essentially, it's an
elaborate high-speed trial-and-error system for determining working algorithms.
Like most sophisticated types of computer problem-solving...
A lot of the "games" of this kind you read about are just glorified and
conversational exercises. They really are games, and nothing more. I just saw
one reported in the Canadian Computer Society Bulletin, called a "Vietnam
Peace Game." They use simulation techniques, but the programming hypotheses
are speculative....
The idea of a problem-solving system like this is not original with us. ARPA
(the Advanced Research Projects Agency, of the Department of Defense DoD.)
has been working on something like it. So has General Electric, in California.
There are others..... We were successful not because we know more than they
do about programming, which we don't, but because we leaned how to
formulate the problems accurately. It goes back to the old saw. You can always
find the answer if you know the right question.....
SUPPOSING YOU HADN'T DEVELOPED THIS METHOD. WOULD YOU HAVE COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSIONS IN THE REPORT?
