Dear Terry,
Reading your post again, I notice an interesting issue. The election scenario only partly fits your description of a category 5 problem:
“5. Very difficult type C - problems that have many different aspects and are intrinsically IMPOSSIBLE to predict the behaviour of outcomes and identify solutions by using thinking and expertise of multiple people, but POSSIBLE to predict the behaviour of outcomes using mathematical (or in some cases analogical) modelling methods.”
There are two aspects to my point. First, this is not intrinsically impossible. A roomful of fast, accurate computationists or a supremely swift Turing machine could do the modeling. It’s the size, scale, and amount of the data that makes this tough. Second, this models a human social system, not a socio-technical system.
This would be practically impossible without today’s computers capable of crunching big data on 66,000 runs a night. But it is not intrinsically impossible. These problems do not involve complex multiple feedback loops. Rather they involve reasonably tractable issues that require strategists and analysts to slice and dice demographic problems in different and highly intelligent ways.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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