Flight paths in simulation and reality

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

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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:

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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?