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WeatherNext 2: Our most advanced weather forecasting model

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291 points meetpateltech | 1 comments | 17 Nov 25 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.194s | source
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lampiaio ◴[17 Nov 25 21:27 UTC] No.45958532[source]▶
Reminds me of a funny WWII story:

Kenneth Arrow and his statisticians found that their long-range forecasts were no better than numbers pulled out of a hat. The forecasters agreed and asked their superiors to be relieved of this duty. The reply was: "The Commanding General is well aware that the forecasts are no good. However he needs them for planning purposes."

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empath75 ◴[17 Nov 25 22:14 UTC] No.45958976[source]▶
There is a fairly compelling argument that divination in the ancient world was not a useless waste of time, as is commonly assumed, but that having either a process or a person that can make essentially random choices for them allowed people to make hard, consequential decisions where they might otherwise be paralyzed, especially when the penalty for not acting was worse than making a mistake.
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1. Bjartr ◴[18 Nov 25 00:47 UTC] No.45960161[source]▶
IIRC, the value of randomness went even further than that. I think it was in the allocation of land for rice paddies. I-ching was used to decide if any given farmer's land was to be used that year or something like that. The benefit wasn't divination selecting better land, but by way of random selection, gave an impersonal excuse to leave fields unplanted some years, which is beneficial in the long term to overall yield.