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Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

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Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#101

Post by bbor »

cshimmin wrote: post #37
joshdavham wrote: post #10

> Silurian builds foundation models to simulate the Earth, starting with the weather. What else do you hope to simulate, if this becomes successful?

Do earthquakes next! Signed, A California Resident

Seems hard… weather is a structure in the Piagetian sense, with lots of individual elements influencing each other via static forces. Earthquakes are-AFAIU as a non-expert Californian-more about physical rock structures within the crust that we have only a vague idea of. Although hey, hopefully I’m wrong; maybe there’s a kind of pre-earthquake tremor for some kinds of quake that a big enough transformer could identify…

Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#102

Post by bbor »

rybosome wrote: post #28
kristopolous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so what exactly are you launching that I can see here?

I suggest you read the post. Reading is typically how information is transmitted. EDIT: the post I am responding to was altered to sound much less confrontational. It was originally: > So what exactly are you “launching” and why does it require venture capital?

Props. HN really needs an [edited] icon… throw it on the long list!

Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#103

Post by kristjansson »

kristopolous wrote: post #71
LewisJEllis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interface in question is the second link in the post. To get to the interface without any of the other relevant context, you would have to: - skip reading the post (which explains all of this) - skip the first link in the post (which explains all of this) - go straight to the second link in the post, to the interface - skip the "about" link in the interface (which explains all of this)

Obviously nobody did that. The post has been edited.

FWIW: I read this post contemporaneous with your first comments, and saw exactly the content that's there now.

Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#106

Post by kristjansson »

1wd wrote: post #55

Does anyone predict economy/population/... by simulating individual people based on real census information? Monte carlo simulation of major events (births, death, ...) based on known statistics based on age, economic background, location, education, profession, etc.? It seems there are not that many people that this would be computationally infeasible, and states and companies have plenty of data to feed into such s…

You might find early agent-based models (e.g. the Sante Fe Institute's Artificial Stock Market[0]) interesting.

IMO the short answer is that such models can be made to generate realistic trajectories, but calibrating the model the specific trajectory of reality we inhabit requires knowledge of the current state of the world bordering on omniscience.

[0]: https://www.santafe.edu/research/results/working-papers/asse...

Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#107

Post by kyawzazaw »

andruby wrote: post #96
CSMastermind wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual killer thing would be flooding. Insurance has invested billions into trying to simulate risk here and models are still relatively weak.

If anyone wants to get into flooding, I recently met the people of geosmart.space They’re selling height maps of South-Africa, primary for flooding prediction for insurance companies. Smart & friendly bunch.

do they do Southeast Asia? typhoon yagi has wrecked our homes

Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#108

Post by dubcanada »

thechao wrote: post #94
raprosse wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% aggree. Flooding is the single costliest natural disaster. But it's non-trivial to scale these new techniques into the field. A major factor is the scale of interest. FEMA's FIRMaps are typically at a 10m resolution not 11km.

Low-income neighborhoods are good signal indicator for flooding high risk zones. There's a demographic angle, too.

Are you suggesting that flood prevention only happens in higher income neighbourhoods? Flood prevention tends to lie on the county engineers. Not so much private individuals to dictate. Doesn't matter how much money you have, you can't just dig up a road to put in proper flood prevention measures like drainage and grade.

Re: Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth

#110

Post by yorwba »

photochemsyn wrote: post #60
ijustlovemath wrote: post #3

> Astonishingly, this approach, done correctly, produces better forecasts than traditional simulations of the physics of our atmosphere. It seems like this is another instance of The Bitter Lesson, no?

That's a highly controversial claim that would need a whole host of published peer-reviewed research papers to support it. Physics-based simulations (initial state input, then evolve according to physics applied to grids) have improved but not really because of smaller grids, but rather by running several dozen different models and then providing the average (and the degree of convergence) as the forecast. Notably fo…

Given 50 states and independent weather in each state, on average one state would experience each "once every 500 years" extreme weather event every decade. Of course in reality weather is not independent across political borders, but there are also many more locations where flood levels can be measured than just one per state. So depending on the details "once every 500 years" may not be as rare as it sounds, even without deviation from historical patterns.
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