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Comment by garmaine | Hacker News Reader

Simulation... of what?

"General purpose simulation" doesn't really make sense to me as a concept, unless maybe there is some other meaning of the word simulation that is meant here?

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I saw a talk from one of the founders just earlier this week at a meetup; it's essentially an engine that lets you model agent-based simulations and then multiple frontends that let you design them. He did several demos of their web-based UI, which could model simple things like Conway's Game of Life as well as much more complex things, like a 3D-representation of a thunderstorm in a rain forest. It was really cool!

Like Netlogo and GAMA?

From reading the link, it looks more like https://gym.openai.com/

There is a Machine Learning component that is not in NetLogo

That doesn’t actually answer the question, although the examples inch forward towards an unknown answer. Agent-based simulations of... what, exactly?

Assuming you can code an agent representing the actor or component of what you are simulating, it sounds like “what” gets defined by you, the user.

This ^^ Our starter models are pretty diverse and span real-world problems like optimizing controlled burns w/r/t wildfire containment, and improving Stack Overflow community dynamics (sorry... not a problem!)

In addition we have several dozen classic ABM toy models such as Boids, Schelling segregation, and Conway's GoL. These individually showcase different components of the system.

Sounds like it is mostly business operations and organizational planning concerns. From the solutions page...

Here are a few problems the community is working on:

Cloud infrastructure orchestration

Sales team remuneration

Mergers and acquisitions

Price sensitivity and revenue

Warehouse operations

Fleet efficiency

Supply chain risk

Macroeconomic policy

Call center operations

Store design/layout

Critical national infrastructure

Evacuation planning

Political risk

Marketing campaign efficiency

Public health

I'm guessing it's similar to this, at least in purpose: https://github.com/NotSoOld/OpenGPSS/blob/master/README.md

"Examples of such systems: shops (one can move among shelves with food, then stay in queue, then process at the cashbox), computer systems (transacts are electric signals or information messages), public transport (people move from stop to stop)"

Agreed. This is one of the most bizarrely impenetrable landing pages I've ever seen. The "solutions" page is a wide-ranging list of vague topics, not solutions. Even the "demo simulations" link at the bottom provides no information without signing up.

All the atoms in the universe!

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