REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
One-sentence brief
Confusing these categories can turn a useful thought experiment into false certainty or make a vivid counterfactual look like an official warning.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
SIMULATION LITERACY
Scenarios Are Not Forecasts
A practical distinction among exploratory scenarios, probabilistic forecasts, observations, and policy decisions.
LEVEL 1
ORIENTATION
Why this matters
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Three key points
- Scenarios are conditional: “if these assumptions hold.”
- Forecasts require calibration, probability, horizon, and later evaluation.
- Observed facts and policy choices must remain traceable outside the model narrative.
LEVEL 2
WORKING BRIEF
Evidence, context, and limits
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Scenario
A scenario is a structured counterfactual. It explores what may follow if stated conditions, relationships, and interventions are assumed. It can expose dependencies and failure modes without claiming that the branch will occur.
- State the assumptions in the same view as the result.
- Label branch identity and divergence point.
- Do not assign probability unless a forecasting method supports it.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Forecast
A forecast estimates what is expected within a defined horizon. It should specify a target, base rate, probability or interval, model version, issue time, and evaluation rule.
- Evaluate forecasts against later outcomes.
- Publish calibration and error, not only successful examples.
- Separate probability from confidence in the evidence.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Observation
An observation is a measurement or source report. It can be incomplete, delayed, biased, or erroneous, but it should not be rewritten merely because a model expected something else.
- Retain raw-source lineage.
- Mark revisions and late reports.
- Do not backfill observations from simulated states.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Decision
A decision is an accountable choice made under evidence, law, values, resources, and risk. A model may inform the decision but should not conceal who chose, which alternatives were considered, or which harms were accepted.
- Name decision authority and date.
- Record dissent and rejected alternatives.
- Allow review and correction.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
A simple communication test
Before publication, ask whether a reader could identify what was measured, what was assumed, what was simulated, what was forecast, and what was decided. If those states blur, the presentation needs revision.
- Use explicit labels.
- Avoid future-tense certainty for scenarios.
- Keep explanatory narrative subordinate to state labels.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Correction and supersession
A scenario may remain historically useful after its assumptions change, while a forecast should be scored and a factual record should be corrected. Supersession should preserve the earlier state without presenting it as current.
- Do not erase failed forecasts.
- Link corrected data to derivative outputs.
- Keep archived branches visibly non-current.
LEVEL 3
COMPLETE DOSSIER
Limitations, game links, and review context
DISPUTED / MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS
Known limitations and gaps
- This is a non-operational educational transformation: it does not build or implement a game, executable simulator, forecasting service, emergency tool, or decision system.
- This page is an educational transformation of supplied research leads; it does not authenticate every citation, equation, product claim, or institutional attribution in those files.
- A scenario, model run, or map is not an observation, forecast, legal finding, public-health instruction, emergency warning, or proof of future behavior.
- No source code, nuclear-effects formula, casualty calculation, target-selection method, cyber-intrusion procedure, exploit chain, or instruction for bypassing safeguards is published.
- Geography, nationality, ethnicity, religion, language, migration, disability, health, poverty, or political identity are not inherent danger, compliance, intelligence, competence, or worth variables.
- Specialist scientific, public-health, accessibility, legal, regional, ethics, security, and lived-experience review remains pending; the page stays open to correction.
GAME MECHANIC
RogueIntelligence.org connections
- Evidence and uncertainty methodUse provenance, confidence, alternatives, and correction before interpreting a model.
- Synthetic-cohort fairness gatesSee a bounded repository example where a failed baseline remains visible and human approval stays separate.
- International comparison methodApply equal analytical method without making one country or data environment the default.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Glossary cross-reference
Terms are defined for this site’s evidence method, not as universal legal or clinical definitions.
LEVEL 4
RESEARCH EDITION
Sources, methods, and stable links
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE
Linked reports
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Building Epidemiological ModelsProtected research reference; no public report route in this release.
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AI Takeover Simulation MapProtected research reference; no public report route in this release.
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IARPA SimEarth Game Architecture part 2Protected research reference; no public report route in this release.
REAL-WORLD VERIFIED
Method and corrections
This page follows the public method for provenance, confidence, source independence, alternative accounts, limitations, review state, and visible correction.
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