zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — A Russian tanker-toy saga ]
.

Another contribution to the maxcro / micro, war / games displays in my mental cabinet of wonders:

I’m sorry, this was about the only screen-grab I could manage that showed both the toy tank and its war-fighting seniors. In the children’s story, the toy tank gets left at the tank museum overnight, and is shocked and awed by the realities of which it is but a simulacrum — the OT 76, T 72, and most particularly the T-14 Armata super-tank.

The equation war : war games :: T-14 : toy tank eiher understates the significnce of the T-14 or exaggerates that of the toy — but equations between simulacrum and reality lie at the heart of such philosophical excursions as Baudrillard‘s Simulacra and Simulations, with its phony epigraph, a simulacrum of a quote from Ecclesiastes:

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none.

In the case of this children’s book, we can postulate another equation: Russia : propaganda :: factory : advertising.

But see for yourself, some of the details are hilarious:

"Countries where there are wars buy tanks from our factory". A Russian tank factory has published this book for children. A video review. pic.twitter.com/JtkLC7HZJP

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) April 16, 2017

[ by Charles Cameron — once again, one thing reminds me of another ]
.

OTOH, in reality:

Nearly 100,000 people spending their Saturday night crossing the Atlantic.

? https://t.co/N6HvztbMgU pic.twitter.com/kpP56lOMro

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) March 5, 2017

OTOH, in simulation:

**

The simple excellence of rulesets in agent-based modeling is wonderfully demonstrated by the way the eye can “recognize” the movements on a flock of birds or a school of fish in Craig Reynolds‘ boids — rulesets notably simpler than the explanations for flocking behavior previously suggested by biologists.

Metacognitive question: what’s the cognitive means by which we humans can “see” that the boid simulation is a sufficiently accurate representation of birds flocking and fishes schooling to account for them? — and ditto for birds flocking and fishes schooling, how do we “see” them as naturally equivalent? — and ditto for those birds flocking and fishes schooling and our earlier biological accounts of their behaviors? —

With a hypothesis, we can test by finding predictable or disconfirmative instances beyond those on which the hypothesis is suggested.. but when the similarity is visually perceived?

[ by Charles Cameron — what’s true of hex maps is true of all mental models ]
.

There’s a certain let-your-hair-down quality to play.

It appears that one Tausendsassa Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser said or perhaps wrote, muttered, whispered, shouted, or simply thought out loud, “the straight line is a godless line” — at any rate, someone noticed and recorded the phrase, and now it’s scattered across the net and difficult to track to its source.

**

But we do love order, don’t we?

And so the rivers on our hexagonal maps all too easily follow the hexagons..

when they’d more realistically cross over them, following their own courses:

and note how easily even our efforts to bring natural variety to our hexagonal mappings conform more to hexagons than to variety.

**

Zennist Thich Nhat Hanh in Listening Deeply for Peace writes:

A traditional Vietnamese Zen garden is very different from a Japanese Zen garden. Our Zen gardens, called hon non bo, are wild and exuberant, more playful than the formal Japanese gardens with their restrained patterns. Vietnamese Zen gardens are seriously unserious. For us, the whole world is contained in this peaceful place. All activities of life unfold in true peace in the garden: in one part, children will be playing, and in another part, some elderly men will be having a chess game; couples are walking; families are having picnics; animals are free to wander around. Beautiful trees are growing next to abundant grasses and flowers. There is water, and there are rock formations. All ecologies are represented in this one microecology without discrimination. It is a miniature, peaceful world. It is a beautiful living metaphor for what a new global ethic could bring.

**

Here is the wrestling of a tree with such angels as gravity, sun, wind and rain:

Here is the wild calligraphy of the Rio Mamoré across the forests of the Amazon basin:

[ by Charles Cameron — with a Magnus Ranstorp squib in its tail ]
.

The issue is complexity, and how you represent it. The case in point is Syria.

Here’s a diagram that suggests complexity as a sort of crazy weaving, all straight lines and colors:

This *simple* chart shows all states of hostility currently being played out on #Syria’s territory#IntractableWar pic.twitter.com/1inprNB6U0

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) February 13, 2016

Daveed’s diagram has a network feel to it, with actord as nodes and the tensions between them as edges:

A pretty good graphic on the Syrian conflict (though quibblers gonna quibble). It illustrates ISIS's weak strategy: https://t.co/j1ccZpvGjT

— Gartenstein-Ross (@DaveedGR) August 26, 2016

Karl Sharro’s tackling the wider context, but his illustration at least gives the sense of a ball of twine after a cat has carefully re-arranged it:

Following recent event, updated diagram of geopolitical relationships in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/3QmDxZtnSn

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) March 26, 2015

Juan Cole simply provides a screenshot from Google Maps —

— the headline America’s Syria SNAFU: Pentagon’s Militias fight Turkey & CIA’s Militias — which is effectively friendly fire framed as paradox — and some paras beneath it using words to describe the tangle:

The Turkish incursion into Syria at Jarabulus was advertised as an attack on a Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) stronghold and smuggling station in conjunction with (fundamentalist) remnants of the Free Syrian Army.

But the southern outskirts of Jarabulus had already fallen to the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which are majority Kurdish but have a significant Arab component. The Arab, non-Kurdish SDF brigades such as the Seljuk brigade, the Army of Revolutionaries, and Northern Sun Brigade had fought to liberate the northern Syrian city of Manbij, due south of Jarabulus from Daesh. They have an outpost in the village of Amarna just a few miles south of Jarabulus, where they call themselves the Jarabulus Military Council.

The Turkish army, having secured Jarabulus itself with the help of fundamentalist militias, moved down to Amarna, where they met fierce resistance from the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are allied with the Kurds. The Turkish air force bombarded the SDF positions in Amarna and the militias responded by destroying two tanks and killing one Turkish soldier. Fighting continues there.

To be honest, I’m not sure which of those means of modeling a complex system leaves us best able to understand the situation on the ground.

**

Maybe this one’s the best:

Sir Mark Allen once told me to fully understand Syrian conflict is like playing 3D chess under water with all pieces moving simultaneously.

— Magnus Ranstorp (@MagnusRanstorp) September 9, 2016

[ by Charles Cameron — reality imitates parody, a subset of life imitates art ]
.

The Denald Trump account posted this fake trumpery as satire:

Wow! Just arrived in Scotland. Everyone is screaming "LEAVE! LEAVE! LEAVE!" Must be excitement over #Brexit. Happy to be here!

— DonaId J. Trump (@realDenaldTrump) June 24, 2016

This tweet was quickly followed by an all-too-similar one from the real Donald:

Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2016

— the only problem here being that the Scots voted to stay..

**

And now the coup de grace — Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau‘s eye catches the match between parody and reality in these two quotes — and tweets them in juxtaposition, DoubleTweet-style:

The parody account, and a few hours later, the real thing.

Definitely living in a simulation. pic.twitter.com/9aafLcIiiG

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) June 24, 2016

— with the added bonus of a playful sideswipe at the Bostrom / Musk simulation idea..

**

It seems there really were Scots shouting at Trump to leave — he’s not well-liked over there — so was he the one who was being ultimately playful and ironic — deliberately misunderstanding them for the purpose of his tweet?