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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9028846" data-attributes="member: 82106">Its a depiction. It may be 'naturalistic' in that it depicts activities which people with knowledge of bears might expect of an actual bear. It doesn't 'simulate' anything at all. And yes, simulations include a model (a mathematical/logical description of how the state of a system evolves over time) and an initial state (which the model takes as input to produce states at times t+1, t+2, etc.). What you have instead is a STORY depicting the actions of a fictional bear. These are entirely different things. Calling a story a simulation, and attributing to it attributes of simulation is a category error. Demonstration of category error consists of proving that the attributes claimed of the thing cannot possibly be attributed to it because they are inapplicable. I would probably merely point out that the bear in the river story is unconstrained, ANYTHING can happen, and there is no constraint, no limits, on what that is. A dragon could reach up from out of the river and swallow the bear. A pixie could land on the bear's back and magically give it wings so they fly off together. The bear could drown. The bear could eat a good meal of fish. The bear could catch nothing. The bear could be a high level druid using shapechange. I could go on, literally forever, inventing &quot;and then...&quot; There is no criteria whatsoever you can use that appertain to simulations with which to evaluate those things. Instead the proper evaluation would be of a literary and dramatic nature, did I tell a good story? Do you see how I've shown the nature of the category error here? I'd note that this applies to ALL of these, what I would call Dramatist, stories equally. All of them are fundamentally unconstrained. None of them are simulations.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9028846, member: 82106"] Its a depiction. It may be 'naturalistic' in that it depicts activities which people with knowledge of bears might expect of an actual bear. It doesn't 'simulate' anything at all. And yes, simulations include a model (a mathematical/logical description of how the state of a system evolves over time) and an initial state (which the model takes as input to produce states at times t+1, t+2, etc.). What you have instead is a STORY depicting the actions of a fictional bear. These are entirely different things. Calling a story a simulation, and attributing to it attributes of simulation is a category error. Demonstration of category error consists of proving that the attributes claimed of the thing cannot possibly be attributed to it because they are inapplicable. I would probably merely point out that the bear in the river story is unconstrained, ANYTHING can happen, and there is no constraint, no limits, on what that is. A dragon could reach up from out of the river and swallow the bear. A pixie could land on the bear's back and magically give it wings so they fly off together. The bear could drown. The bear could eat a good meal of fish. The bear could catch nothing. The bear could be a high level druid using shapechange. I could go on, literally forever, inventing "and then..." There is no criteria whatsoever you can use that appertain to simulations with which to evaluate those things. Instead the proper evaluation would be of a literary and dramatic nature, did I tell a good story? Do you see how I've shown the nature of the category error here? I'd note that this applies to ALL of these, what I would call Dramatist, stories equally. All of them are fundamentally unconstrained. None of them are simulations. [/QUOTE]

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