Simulation Exercise Quotes

But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can't tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you've just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you've let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you? People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time. Before the crash, bankers believed in supposedly intelligent algorithms that could calculate credit risks before making bad loans. We ask teachers to teach to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm. We have repeatedly demonstrated our species' bottomless ability to lower our standards to make information technology look good. Every instance of intelligence in a machine is ambiguous. The same ambiguity that motivated dubious academic AI projects in the past has been repackaged as mass culture today. Did that search engine really know what you want, or are you playing along, lowering your standards to make it seem clever? While it's to be expected that the human perspective will be changed by encounters with profound new technologies, the exercise of treating machine intelligence as real requires people to reduce their mooring to reality.

Something as superfluous as "play" is also an essential feature of our consciousness. If you ask children why they like to play, they will say, "Because it's fun." But that invites the next question: What is fun? Actually, when children play, they are often trying to reenact complex human interactions in simplified form. Human society is extremely sophisticated, much too involved for the developing brains of young children, so children run simplified simulations of adult society, playing games such as doctor, cops and robber, and school. Each game is a model that allows children to experiment with a small segment of adult behavior and then run simulations into the future. (Similarly, when adults engage in play, such as a game of poker, the brain constantly creates a model of what cards the various players possess, and then projects that model into the future, using previous data about people's personality, ability to bluff, etc. The key to games like chess, cards, and gambling is the ability to simulate the future. Animals, which live largely in the present, are not as good at games as humans are, especially if they involve planning. Infant mammals do engage in a form of play, but this is more for exercise, testing one another, practicing future battles, and establishing the coming social pecking order rather than simulating the future.)

We used these rifles in field exercises to simulate a lot of deadlier and nastier aimed weapons, too.

The politics that enter the university are those that come from history, a retro politics, emptied of substance and legalized in their superficial exercise.

In my eyes, PE was a twice-weekly period of anarchy during which the school’s most aggressive pupils were formally permitted to dominate and torment those they considered physically inferior. Perhaps if the whole thing had been pitched as an exercise in interactive drama intended to simulate how it might feel to live in a fascist state run by thick schoolboys – an episodic, improvised adaptation of Lord of the Flies in uniform sportswear – I’d have appreciated it more.

I think at the moment we die, we are the sum of all the good and bad we've done, all the courage and cowardice we've exercised. And so, for example, if we die with a desire to be reborn, I think it means a great deal to God. If you will, it's like reaching into a litter to select a pup, and there's one who catches our eye because he wants us. He is the one we choose to take home. Using that crude analogy, I would say it's important to be ready. After all, that is the one situation we can't simulate, can't preempt.

Starbucks Training. I had just read a book about habits and one of the most interesting sections in the book was about a guy who worked for Starbucks as a barista. He had a fly-off-the-handle kind of personality and part of his training at Starbucks was to go through exercises simulating how he would react to difficult customers. He anticipated both external and internal problems before they happened and was ready with a response for each one, so when those things happened, it wasn’t the first time he’d thought of how to deal with them.

Research has borne out the fact that we strive for higher self-esteem in the face of mortality. After thinking about their death, Israeli soldiers whose self-esteem was strongly tied to their driving ability drove faster on a simulator. Elsewhere, those who based their self-worth on physical strength generated a stronger handgrip after they thought about death; those who based their self-worth on physical fitness reported increased intentions to exercise; and those who based their self-worth on beauty reported greater concern about their appearance.

What, then, distinguishes science from other exercises of reason? It certainly isn’t “the scientific method,” a term that is taught to schoolchildren but that never passes the lips of a scientist. Scientists use whichever methods help them understand the world: drudgelike tabulation of data, experimental derring-do, flights of theoretical fancy, elegant mathematical modeling, kludgy computer simulation, sweeping verbal narrative.18 All the methods are pressed into the service of two ideals, and it is these ideals that advocates of science want to export to the rest of intellectual life.

Usually, when people hear the term Yoga, many of them associate it with various physical exercises where they need to twist, turn and stretch their body in complex ways that are known as Asanas, but this is only one type of Yoga, called “Hatha-Yoga”. In reality, Yoga is an umbrella term for various physical and mental exercises that lead to the overall well-being of a person. By origin, Yoga has mainly five forms: 1. Raja Yoga - The realization of divinity through intense meditation 2. Karma Yoga – The realization of divine bliss through your own daily activities and duties 3. Hatha Yoga – The realization of divine well-being through various physical exercises 4. Jyana Yoga – The realization of inexplicable bliss in the pursuit of knowledge 5. Bhakti Yoga – The realization of ecstasy through love and devotion for your Personal God The purpose of all Yogas is to set your consciousness lose into the vast domain of the unknown, where your brain circuits simulate various fascinating mental states that are usually unimaginable and unattainable in your everyday consciousness. But the whole yoga thing has nothing to do with God or something of that sort. It is all about various states of the human mind.

The Japanese sense the presence of a divinity in every industrial object. For us, that sacred presence has been reduced to a tiny ironic glimmer, a nuance of play and distantiation. Though this is, none the less, a spiritual form, behind which lurks the evil genius of technology which sees to it itself that the mystery of the world is well-guarded. The Evil Spirit keeps watch beneath artefacts and, of all our artificial productions, one might say what Canetti says of animals: that behind each of them there is a hidden someone thumbing his nose at us. Irony is the only spiritual form in the modern world, which has annihilated all others. It alone is the guardian of the mystery, but it is no longer ours to exercise. For it is no longer a function of the subject; it is an objective function, that of the artificial, object world which surrounds us, in which the absence and transparency of the subject is reflected. The critical function of the subject has given way to the ironic function of the object. Once they have passed through the medium or through the image, through the spectrum of the sign and the commodity, objects, by their very existence, perform an artificial and ironic function. No longer any need for a critical consciousness to hold up the mirror of its double to the world: our modern world swallowed its double when it lost its shadow, and the irony of that incorporated double shines out at every moment in every fragment of our signs, of our objects, of our models. No longer any need to confront objects with the absurdity of their functions, in a poetic unreality, as the Surrealists did: things move to shed an ironic light on themselves all on their own; they discard their meanings effortlessly. This is all part of their visible, all too visible sequencing, which of itself creates a parody effect.

It’s a perspective on story that may also shed light on why you and I and everyone else spend a couple of hours each day concocting tales that we rarely remember and more rarely share. By day I mean night, and the tales are those we produce during REM sleep. Well over a century since Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, there is still no consensus on why we dream. I read Freud’s book for a junior-year high school class called Hygiene (yes, that’s really what it was called), a somewhat bizarre requirement taught by the school’s gym teachers and sports coaches that focused on first aid and common standards of cleanliness. Lacking material to fill an entire semester, the class was padded by mandatory student presentations on topics deemed loosely relevant. I chose sleep and dreams and probably took it all too seriously, reading Freud and spending after-school hours combing through research literature. The wow moment for me, and for the class too, was the work of Michel Jouvet, who in the late 1950s explored the dream world of cats.32 By impairing part of the cat brain (the locus coeruleus, if you like that sort of thing), Jouvet removed a neural block that ordinarily prevents dream thoughts from stimulating bodily action, resulting in sleeping cats who crouched and arched and hissed and pawed, presumably reacting to imaginary predators and prey. If you didn’t know the animals were asleep, you might think they were practicing a feline kata. More recently, studies on rats using more refined neurological probes have shown that their brain patterns when dreaming so closely match those recorded when awake and learning a new maze that researchers can track the progress of the dreaming rat mind as it retraces its earlier steps.33 When cats and rats dream it surely seems they’re rehearsing behaviors relevant to survival. Our common ancestor with cats and rodents lived some seventy or eighty million years ago, so extrapolating a speculative conclusion across species separated by tens of thousands of millennia comes with ample warning labels. But one can imagine that our language-infused minds may produce dreams for a similar purpose: to provide cognitive and emotional workouts that enhance knowledge and exercise intuition—nocturnal sessions on the flight simulator of story. Perhaps that is why in a typical life span we each spend a solid seven years with eyes closed, body mostly paralyzed, consuming our self-authored tales.34 Intrinsically, though, storytelling is not a solitary medium. Storytelling is our most powerful means for inhabiting other minds. And as a deeply social species, the ability to momentarily move into the mind of another may have been essential to our survival and our dominance. This offers a related design rationale for coding story into the human behavioral repertoire—for identifying, that is, the adaptive utility of our storytelling instinct.

When I worked in community education programs, one of my jobs was to help family and community members better understand the experience of mental illness. We’d begin each session with an opening exercise that was intended to simulate the experience of schizophrenia. It begins by asking participants to work on a simple task like a jigsaw puzzle or easy crossword. While they are doing the task, the leader turns on several different radios placed around the room—each one tuned to a different station. There is a confusion of sounds and music. One of the leaders also changes the lighting, randomly turning lights on and off so that the room is alternately dimmed and brightened.

A political/relational model of disability, on the other hand, makes room for more activist responses, seeing “disability” as a potential site for collective reimagining. Under this kind of framework, “disability awareness” simulations can be reframed to focus less on the individual experience of disability—or imagined experience of disability—and more on the political experience of disablement. For example, rather than placing nondisabled students in wheelchairs, the Santa Barbara-based organization People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR) places them in bathrooms, armed with measuring tapes and clipboards, to track the failures and omissions of the built environment. As my fellow restroom revolutionaries explain in our manifesto, “This switch in focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change in ways that ‘awareness exercises’ may not.” In creating and disseminating a “restroom checklist,” PISSAR imagines a future of disability activism, one with disability rights activists demanding accessible spaces; contrast that approach with the simulation exercises, in which “awareness” is the future goal, rather than structural or systemic change.

When my son comes home today, he will play with the computer. Then he will go and do his homework, where he will use books for his reading, writing, and math exercises. My daughter, who is still in preschool, will simulate this process in reverse, playing with her notebooks, while the computer is still very much work for her. My hope is that these two categories, work and play, will remain as interwoven throughout their lives as the instruments that they use to engage in them, the book and the computer. I hope they are afforded the advantages of both, and that they pass on those advantages to others. My real hope, though, is that when it comes time to learn how these two very different instruments work (and play), I can send them to just one camp.

Simulated scenarios can effectively emulate real-life financial situations in a controlled environment. By engaging in these exercises, young adults can practice making informed decisions without facing the real-world risks.

Which of these chickens do humans most resemble: the ones roaming in ovals - a school yard, a campus, a neighborhood? Or the genetically modified monsters - wobbling inside our boxes, clutching our pieces of plastic and metal, mincing and crimping in our shoes, snapping at each other in tight spaces, poking our various machines that swivel or light up or open in simulation of activity, "amusement," "exercise," "work," "love"?

Everyone is now so eager to see the government "reveal" this long-awaited information that no one questions the reality of the basic facts and the political motivations that could inspire a manipulation of those facts. Trying to outsmart the CIA and the Pentagon has become such a national pastime that lawsuits against federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act have begun to accumulate. All that has been shown so far is that these agencies were involved – often covertly – in many aspects of the UFO problem. I suspect that they are still involved. Discovering the secret of the UFO propulsion mechanism could be such a military breakthrough that any research project connected with it would enjoy the highest level of classification. But these UFO enthusiasts who are so anxious to expose the government have not reflected that they may be playing into the hands of a more sophisticated coverup of the real situation. Because of their eagerness to believe any indication that the authorities already possess the proof of UFO reality, many enthusiasts provide an ideal conduit for anyone wishing to spread the extraterrestrial gospel. The purpose of such an exercise need not be complex or strategically important. It could be something as mundane as a political diversion, or a test of the reliability of information channels under simulated crisis conditions, or a decoy for paramilitary operations. None of these rumors is likely to lead us any closer to a solution that can only be obtained by careful, intelligent, and perhaps tedious scientific research. The truth is that the UFOs may not be spacecraft at all. And the government may simply be hiding the fact that, in spite of the billions of dollars spent on air defense, it has no more clues to the nature of the phenomenon today than it did in the forties when it began its investigations.

Early the following year, Arizona steamed from its home port at San Pedro to Hawaii to participate in Army-Navy Grand Joint Exercise No. 4. It was a mouthful of a name for a round of war games that simulated an attack on Oahu from “enemy” aircraft carriers lurking to the north. Near sunrise on February 7, 1932, the first strike of carrier planes caught Army Air Corps bases by surprise. A second wave achieved similar results after slow-to-respond Army pilots landed for refueling and breakfast. In the after-action critique, the Army protested that the Navy’s attack at daybreak on a Sunday morning, while technically permitted under the rules, was a dirty trick.8 A few weeks later, on March 2, Arizona entered Pearl Harbor for the first time. Pearl Harbor in the early 1930s was minuscule compared to the massive installation it would become just one decade later. Despite wide inner lochs—bays of water spreading out from the main channel—its entrance was historically shallow. Nineteenth-century visitors had anchored off Honolulu a few miles to the east instead. In 1887, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua granted the United States the exclusive right to establish a coaling and repair station in Pearl Harbor and improve the entrance as it saw fit. No facilities were built, but the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. When the American Navy built its first installations within months of annexation, they were at Honolulu, not Pearl Harbor, because of the difficult channel access. Finally, in 1908, Congress authorized dredging the channel entrance and constructing a dry dock, as well as adding accompanying shops and supply buildings. Naval Station Pearl Harbor was officially dedicated in August 1919. The Army and Navy jointly acquired Ford Island in the harbor’s center for shared airfield facilities that same year.9

readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences.” The brain regions that are activated often “mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.” Deep reading, says the study’s lead researcher, Nicole Speer, “is by no means a passive exercise.”35 The reader becomes the book.

The ends of the screen continued to exceed the fields of meaning and create others that immediately, and almost through the impetus of their unfolding, cut huge and savage zigzags. Astronomy. The ability of parrots and blackbirds to speak. The diesel engine. The Assyrians. Coffee. Clouds. Screens, screens, and more screens. They were proliferating everywhere, and he had to pay close attention to make sure that no sector failed to be sorted. Fortunately, Dr. Aira had no time to notice the stress he was experiencing. Attention was key, and perhaps no man had ever brought as much of it to bear as he did for that hour. If the circumstances had been less serious, if he had been able to adopt a more frivolous perspective, he could have said that the entire procedure was an incomparable creator of attention, the most exhaustive ever conceived to exercise this noble mental faculty. And it did not require an extraordinary person; a common man could do it (and Dr. Aira would have been quite satisfied to become a common man), for the Cure created all the attention it demanded. It wasn’t like those video games, which are always trying to trick it or avoid it or get one step ahead of it; to continue with this simile, it should be said that the operator of the Cure was his own video game, his own screen, and his own decoys, and that far from defying attention, they nurtured it. Despite all this, the effort was superhuman, and it was yet to be seen if Dr. Aira could hold out till the end.

Climate tugs at the individual threads of conflict too; personal irritability, interpersonal conflict, domestive violence. Heat frays everything. It increases violent crime rates, swearing on social media, and the liklihood that a major league pitcher, coming to the mound after his team mate has been hit by a pitch will hit an opposing batter in retaliation. The hotter it gets, the longer drivers will honk their horns in frustration. And even in simulations police officers are more likely to fire on intruders when the exercises are conducted in hotter weather. By 2099, one speculative paper tabulated, climate change in the United States would bring about an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 rapes, 3.5 million assaults, and 3.76 million robberies, burglaries and acts of larceny.

Dark Winter, Atlantic Storm, and Global Mercury were only three of over a dozen Germ Games staged by military, medical, and intelligence planners leading up to COVID-19. Each of these Kafkaesque exercises became uncanny predictors of a dystopian age that pandemic planners dubbed the “New Normal.” The consistent feature is an affinity among their simulation designers for militarizing medicine and introducing centralized autocratic governance.

simulations, exercises, and drills

I’d actually say that trashy simulated concern in the media helps perpetuate the myth that therapy is somehow self-indulgent. I suppose by nature it is a little, but so are all attempts toward better health, like brushing your teeth twice a day or getting a little exercise now and again.

The simulation, dubbed Crimson Contagion, was a joint exercise conducted from January to August 2019 that aimed to test the capacity of the federal government and twelve states to respond to a severe pandemic flu originating in China. In the scenario they drilled, tourists returning from China spread a respiratory virus in the US, beginning in Chicago. In less than two months, the virus had infected 110 million Americans, killing more than half a million. The report issued at the conclusion of the exercise was ominous.56 Federal agencies fought over who was in charge. There were shortages of protective gear like N95 respirators and ventilators. States went their own way on mitigation, with some states refusing a CDC directive to close schools as a way to limit spread.

The whole procedure of inducing a relaxed state consists in the following. Without hurrying quickly scan your body with your inner eye and release any contraction. Focus your attention on the entire surface of your body in one go. Imagine that your skin is a membrane that suddenly and rapidly warms through from the inside out. Focus your attention on the surface of your body. Imagine this stage in any way you like: your skin is warming up, covered in a tingling sensation or electrical discharge. The important thing is to feel your skin. Now imagine that energy is sparkling all over the surface of your body like iridescence on a soap bubble. In this moment you are a part of the Universe and are in perfect balance with it. There is no need to try and simulate any special sensation. Everyone experiences these things differently. There is no need to try at all in fact. Do the exercise as if in passing but decisively nonetheless. The integral feeling you experience when you feel the entire surface of your body overflowing with energy is equivalent to a state of relaxation, balance and oneness with the world. After you have practiced the exercise a few times you will begin to achieve this state instantly and soon, inducing a relaxed state will be as easy as folding your arms.

This presentation was truly a testament to the epic magnitude of getting into Thomas Treadwell’s class. This exercise was pointedly not some theoretical simulation dreamed up by an academic with no real-world experience. We were presenting our ideas to real venture capitalists and angel investors.

For executives, simulator-style training is occasionally available in crisis leadership courses, where trainees are invited to take their turn at the helm in a crisis response exercise. But absent a crisis, most executive teams operate without any special training to help them interpret the myriad signals available or recognize important conditions quickly and pick the best response to different scenarios. In the absence of such training, many executive teams muddle through, having learned most of what they know through their own experience on the way up through the managerial ranks rather than through formal training. As one chief noted, the closest equivalent to executive-level simulator training is when one department has the opportunity to learn from the misery of another. A collegial network of police executives, ready to share both their successes and failures, is a valuable asset to the profession (see box 2-1).

Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious than singed trousers; the word backdraught clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator’s mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely artificial, ‘just part of the show’ as Trevor puts it) his hand brings the match between his legs and – foom! a sound like the fabric of the universe being ripped in two, counterpointed by its opposite, a collective intake of breath, as from Trevor’s bottom proceeds a magnificent plume of flame – jetting out it’s got to be nearly three feet, they tell each other afterwards, a cold and beautiful purple-blue enchantment that for an instant bathes the locker room in unearthly light. No one knows quite what Trevor Hickey’s diet is, or his exercise regime; if you ask him about it, he will simply say that he has a gift, and having witnessed it, you would be hard-pressed to argue, although why God should have given him this gift in particular is less easy to say. But then, strange talents abound in the fourteen-year-old confraternity. As well as Trevor Hickey, ‘The Duke of Diablos’, you have people like Rory ‘Pins’ Moran, who on one occasion had fifty-eight pins piercing the epidermis of his left hand; GP O’Sullivan, able to simulate the noises of cans opening, mobile phones bleeping, pneumatic doors, etc., at least as well as the guy in Police Academy; Henry Lafayette, who is double-jointed and famously escaped from a box of jockstraps after being locked inside it by Lionel. These boys’ abilities are regarded quite as highly by their peers as the more conventional athletic and sporting kinds, as is any claim to physical freakishness, such as waggling ears (Mitchell Gogan), unusually high mucous production (Hector ‘Hectoplasm’ O’Looney), notable ugliness (Damien Lawlor) and inexplicably slimy, greenish hair (Vince Bailey). Fame in the second year is a surprisingly broad church; among the two-hundred-plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncrasy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated. As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to the shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence; now – overnight, almost – it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of them, consider mastery of Diablos to be a feather in your cap – even when you explain to them how dangerous it is, even when you offer to teach them how to do it themselves, an offer you have never extended to any of your classmates, who would actually pay big money for this expertise, or you could even call it lore – wait, come back!

Additionally, many, if not most, of these assaults did not involve room entries. These statistics show that the opportunity for feedback about room entries for individual officers is extremely limited. Of course, feedback could be obtained through realistic force-on-force training exercises in which officers and role-player suspects engage in simulated gun battles, but many agencies do not engage in this type of training and the lessons learned may be inaccurate, as discussed later.

(2) Free play, force-on-force field exercises. These can range from team-versus-team exercises using paintball guns in nothing larger than a room-clearing exercise or small wooded lot, or large platoon or company-sized exercises in the field. Free play force-on-force exercises are the most complex and usually the most resource driven aspect of the POI. Free play force-on-force exercises can be conducted by actual freethinking opponents, such as one student unit portraying U.S. forces, while the other plays the role of the insurgent forces. Or the exercise can be conducted also using opposing sides, but executed using computer simulation without leaving a building. Force-on-force, free play exercises should also occur at different levels of a leader’s development, and the exercises will lends themselves well to higher levels of student education.

With practice, you will learn to understand yourself better and increasingly learn what conviction feels like. As you search for it, you will get better at gearing your efforts to work in a way that will help you get to that feeling. Leaders don’t look for excuses for why they can’t act like an owner. Instead, they embrace the challenge of ownership and encourage their teams to do the same. It helps if, as subordinates, they were regularly encouraged and empowered by their bosses to put themselves in the shoes of decision makers. “Superb professionals define their jobs broadly,” one of my former bosses regularly said to me. “They are always thinking several levels up.” This may explain why many business schools, including Harvard, teach using the case method. This approach certainly can be used to teach analytical techniques, but, for me, it is primarily an exercise in learning to get to conviction. After you’ve studied all the facts of the case on your own, and after you’ve debated those facts in study groups before class and again in class, what do you believe? What would you do if you were in the shoes of the protagonist? The case method attempts to simulate what leaders go through every day. Decision makers are confronted with a blizzard of facts: usually incomplete, often contradictory, and certainly confusing. With help from colleagues, they have to sort things out. Through the case method, students learn to put themselves in the shoes of the decision maker, imagine what that might feel like, and then work to figure out what they believe. This mind-set is invaluable in the workplace. It forces you to use your broad range of skills. It guides you as to what additional analysis and work needs to be done to figure out a particular business challenge. Leaders don’t need to always have conviction, but they do need to learn to search for it. This process never ends. It is a way of thinking. Every day, as you are confronted with new and unexpected challenges, you need to search for conviction. You need to ask yourself: What do I believe? What would I do if I were a decision maker? Aspiring leaders need to resist the temptation to make excuses, such as I don’t have enough power, or it’s not my job, or nobody in the company cares what I think, or there just isn’t time. They must let those excuses go and put themselves mentally in the shoes of the decision maker. From that vantage point, they will start to get a better idea how it feels to bear the weight of ownership.

Building on the Pentagon’s anthrax simulation (1999) and the intelligence agency’s “Dark Winter” (2001), Atlantic Storm (2003, 2005), Global Mercury (2003), Schwartz’s “Lockstep” Scenario Document (2010), and MARS (2017), the Gates-funded SPARS scenario war-gamed a bioterrorist attack that precipitated a global coronavirus epidemic lasting from 2025 to 2028, culminating in coercive mass vaccination of the global population. And, as Gates had promised, the preparations were analogous to “preparing for war.”191 Under the code name “SPARS Pandemic,” Gates presided over a sinister summer school for globalists, spooks, and technocrats in Baltimore. The panelists role-played strategies for co-opting the world’s most influential political institutions, subverting democratic governance, and positioning themselves as unelected rulers of the emerging authoritarian regime. They practiced techniques for ruthlessly controlling dissent, expression, and movement, and degrading civil rights, autonomy, and sovereignty. The Gates simulation focused on deploying the usual psyops retinue of propaganda, surveillance, censorship, isolation, and political and social control to manage the pandemic. The official eighty-nine-page summary is a miracle of fortune-telling—an uncannily precise month-by-month prediction of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic as it actually unfolded.192 Looked at another way, when it erupted five years later, the 2020 COVID-19 contagion faithfully followed the SPARS blueprint. Practically the only thing Gates and his planners got wrong was the year. Gates’s simulation instructs public health officials and other collaborators in the global vaccine cartel exactly what to expect and how to behave during the upcoming plague. Reading through the eighty-nine pages, it’s difficult not to interpret this stunningly prescient document as a planning, signaling, and training exercise for replacing democracy with a new regimen of militarized global medical tyranny. The scenario directs participants to deploy fear-driven propaganda narratives to induce mass psychosis and to direct the public toward unquestioning obedience to the emerging social and economic order. According to the scenario narrative, a so-called “SPARS” coronavirus ignites in the United States in January 2025 (the COVID-19 pandemic began in January 2020). As the WHO declares a global emergency, the federal government contracts a fictional firm that resembles Moderna. Consistent with Gates’s seeming preference for diabolical cognomens, the firm is dubbed “CynBio” (Sin-Bio) to develop an innovative vaccine using new “plug-and-play” technology. In the scenario, and now in real life, Federal health officials invoke the PREP Act to provide vaccine makers liability protection.

In June 2001, the U.S. government conducted a simulated epidemic as an exercise: Operation Dark Winter. It tested the resilience of the American health and hospital system in the case of a national epidemic. Results showed that the whole system will quickly collapse.

The fact is that a wide array of projects—events, products, books, home renovations, you name it—can be simulated, tested, and iterated even by amateurs at home. Lack of technology isn’t the real barrier to adopting this approach; the barrier is thinking of planning as a static, abstract, bureaucratic exercise. Once you make the conceptual shift to planning as an active, iterative process of trying, learning, and trying again, all sorts of ways to “play” with ideas, as Gehry and Pixar do, will suggest themselves.

Test-drive employees Interviews are only worth so much. Some people sound like pros but don’t work like pros. You need to evaluate the work they can do now, not the work they say they did in the past. The best way to do that is to actually see them work. Hire them for a miniproject, even if it’s for just twenty or forty hours. You’ll see how they make decisions. You’ll see if you get along. You’ll see what kind of questions they ask. You’ll get to judge them by their actions instead of just their words. You can even make up a fake project. In a factory in South Carolina, BMW built a simulated assembly line where job candidates get ninety minutes to perform a variety of work-related tasks.* Cessna, the airplane manufacturer, has a role-playing exercise for prospective managers that simulates the day of an executive. Candidates work through memos, deal with (phony) irate customers, and handle other problems. Cessna has hired more than a hundred people using this simulation.† These companies have realized that when you get into a real work environment, the truth comes out. It’s one thing to look at a portfolio, read a resumé, or conduct an interview. It’s another to actually work with someone.

She points to two devices in the center of the dark space. The contraptions are silver and remind me of the suits knights wore in past centuries. The armor hangs suspended between two metal wires. “They are concentraction machines.” I slide my body into the machine. Dry gel hugs my feet, my legs, my torso and arms and neck, till only my head is free. The machine is built to resist my movements, yet it responds even to the tiniest stimuli. The idea of building muscle is to exercise it, which is nothing more than using the muscle intensely enough to create microscopic tears in the tissue fiber. This is the pain one feels in the days after an intense workout—torn tissue—not lactic acid. When the muscle repairs the tears, it builds on itself. This is the process the concentraction machine is built to facilitate. It is the devil’s own invention. Harmony slides the device’s faceplate over my eyes. My body is still in the gym, but I see myself moving across the rugged landscape of Mars. I’m running, pumping my legs against the concentraction machine’s resistance, which increases according to Harmony’s mood or the location of the simulation. Sometimes I venture to the jungles of Earth, where I race panthers through the underbrush, or I take to the pocked surface of Luna before it was populated. But always I return home to Mars to run across its red soil and jump over its violent ravines. Harmony sometimes accompanies me in the other machine so I have someone to race.

Exercising free will requires an open-ended ability for individuals to learn, to create new goals further and further removed from the ultimate imperatives of survival, to plan over longer timeframes, to simulate the outcomes of possible actions and internally evaluate them before acting, to decouple cognition from action, and ultimately to inspect their own reasons and subject them to metacognitive scrutiny.

Experimenting with Multi-Agent Conversations To truly grasp how AI agents interact, we suggest a simple experiment. This exercise demonstrates how two AI agents might communicate, negotiate, or even challenge each other—uncovering emergent dialogue behaviors. To conduct this experiment, open two instances of an AI chat, such as ChatGPT or Claude (for example, open two browser windows, each displaying a chatbot). Running these two AI chat instances side by side allows you to simulate a structured conversation between agents with different roles and goals. To start, assign Agent A as a financial advisor trying to convince Agent B, a skeptical client, to adopt a savings plan. Since the AIs can’t directly communicate, you’ll act as the messenger, relaying responses back and forth (copying and pasting them). As the conversation unfolds, watch how the agents engage—negotiating, counter-arguing, or even persuading. Does Agent A use logic, reassurance, or persuasion tactics? Does Agent B remain doubtful or eventually concede?

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you’ll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you’re on the plane, if you’re westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you’re on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new “dark” time.

concerned an exercise machine called the Alpine Ski, a magnificently designed device that simulates downhill skiing, giving the user not only the aerobic benefits you get from something like the NordicTrack, but at the same time, a serious muscular workout. The Alpine Ski’s inventor, Herb Schell, was my client. A former personal trainer in Hollywood, he had made a bundle with this invention. Then suddenly, about a year ago, cheaply produced ads began to run on late-night television for something called the Scandinavian Skier, unmistakably a knockoff of Herb’s invention. It was a lot less expensive, too: whereas the real Alpine Ski sells for upward of six hundred dollars (and Alpine Ski Gold for over a thousand), the Scandinavian Skier was going for $129.99. Herb Schell was already seated in my office, along with the president and chief executive officer of E-Z Fit, the company that was manufacturing Scandinavian Skier, Arthur Sommer; and his attorney, a high-powered lawyer named Stephen Lyons, whom I’d heard of but never met. On some level I found it ironic that both Herb Schell and Arthur Sommer were paunchy and visibly in lousy shape. Herb had confided to me over lunch shortly after we met that, now that he was no longer a personal trainer, he’d grown tired of working out all the time; he much preferred liposuction.

concerned an exercise machine called the Alpine Ski, a magnificently designed device that simulates downhill skiing, giving the user not only the aerobic benefits you get from something like the NordicTrack, but at the same time, a serious muscular workout. The Alpine Ski’s inventor, Herb Schell, was my client. A former personal trainer in Hollywood, he had made a bundle with this invention. Then suddenly, about a year ago, cheaply produced ads began to run on late-night television for something called the Scandinavian Skier, unmistakably a knockoff of Herb’s invention. It was a lot less expensive, too: whereas the real Alpine Ski sells for upward of six hundred dollars (and Alpine Ski Gold for over a thousand), the Scandinavian Skier was going for $129.99.

Interactivity is an exercise or activity that allows the learner to become more involved with the content by discovering information and checking knowledge through assessments, simulations, and games as opposed to simply reading text on the computer screen.

The only work we had to do was come up with a business idea, support it in a detailed formal business plan, then present it to real investors. This presentation was truly a testament to the epic magnitude of getting into Thomas Treadwell’s class. This exercise was pointedly not some theoretical simulation dreamed up by an academic with no real-world experience. We were presenting our ideas to real venture capitalists and angel investors.

In one fascinating study, conducted at Washington University’s Dynamic Cognition Laboratory and published in the journal Psychological Science in 2009, researchers used brain scans to examine what happens inside people’s heads as they read fiction. They found that “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences.” The brain regions that are activated often “mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.” Deep reading, says the study’s lead researcher, Nicole Speer, “is by no means a passive exercise.”35 The reader becomes the book.

MUET Coaching Preparation 2025: Tips to Ace the Exam The Malaysian University English Test (MUET) is a vital step for students planning higher education in Malaysia. With MUET 2025 approaching, students need a structured approach to preparation. MUET coaching preparation 2025 offers the guidance, strategies, and practice needed to excel in all sections of the exam. Why MUET Coaching Preparation is Important MUET tests listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. While self-study is possible, coaching provides additional advantages: Organized study plans tailored to each student’s needs. Expert strategies to handle challenging questions. Mock tests to simulate actual exam conditions. Personalized feedback to improve writing and speaking. Motivation and accountability to maintain consistent practice. These benefits help students maximize their performance and achieve higher band scores. Key Features of MUET Coaching Preparation 2025 Coaching programs for MUET focus on exam readiness and skill enhancement: Listening practice through lectures, conversations, and discussions. Reading exercises to improve comprehension and critical thinking. Writing workshops to enhance essay structure, grammar, and vocabulary. Speaking practice with interactive sessions, presentations, and peer feedback. Regular assessments to track progress and refine strategies. With this comprehensive approach, students are fully prepared for all MUET components. Benefits Beyond Exam Scores Engaging in MUET coaching preparation 2025 provides advantages beyond just scoring well: Improved academic writing skills for university assignments. Enhanced listening comprehension for lectures and discussions. Greater confidence in verbal communication and presentations. Stronger analytical and critical thinking skills. These benefits make coaching preparation a long-term investment in academic and professional growth. How to Get Started Early preparation is key. Alongside coaching, students can leverage reliable online resources. A recommended starting point is this detailed MUET 2025 guide , which provides exam patterns, preparation strategies, and tips to achieve top band scores. Conclusion Success in MUET requires consistent practice, strategy, and confidence. With MUET coaching preparation 2025, students can enhance their skills, improve exam performance, and achieve academic goals. Check out this comprehensive MUET 2025 preparation guide and start preparing for success today.

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There are three glucose measurements that are usually considered. Two-hour glucose. This is meant to simulate the body’s response to a meal: 75 mg of straight glucose is administered intravenously, and the glucose level measured after 2 hours. Fasting glucose. This is blood glucose concentration after a 12 to 14-hour fast. Average glucose, also known as Hemoglobin A1C, or simply A1C, is a surrogate measurement, meaning that the percentage of blood hemoglobin that is “glycated” (has a sugar molecule attached to it) is measured. This is normally given as a percentage of total hemoglobin. Often an equivalent blood glucose concentration is presented. A 5% A1C means an average glucose level of 97 mg/dl, 6% means 126 mg/dl. Here are the levels that usually define AODM. Healthy Level “Normal” Upper Limit AODM Lower Limit Two-hour Glucose 120 mg/dl 140 mg/dl 200 mg/dl Fasting Glucose <80 mg/dl 110 mg/dl 125 mg/dl Average Glucose (A1C percentage) <100 mg/dl (5.1%) 125 mg/dl (5.9%) 140 mg/dl (6.5%) However, people with AODM can have glucose levels significantly higher. Above 250 is considered dangerous.