A book in progress · draft in public · 2026
Simulating futures to build the one we want. The story of teaching computers the law, building a simulated country to run it on, and grading the predictions against reality — and of the fork that decides who the machinery serves.
In 1957, Guy Orcutt proposed simulating society household by household, decades before machines could run the idea. This book is about what happened when it finally got its machinery — encoded law, a simulated country, forecasts graded by reality — and the case it builds is one sentence long: history should have auditors, not an author.
The discipline the book runs on
A simulation is admissible only where its verification chain terminates in ground truth — a rule checked against the statute, a population checked against the census, a forecast graded when the official number lands.
Chapter 3 states it; chapters 9–13 build the machinery that enforces it — merge-blocking source checks, oracle races against the models governments already trust, and a public scoreboard that waits for reality.
A draft, graded like its subject
The book argues that claims should carry their verification state, so this draft carries its own. These figures are computed from the manuscript at every build; the pending marks are visible in the text where they sit.
occasional updates as the draft hardens · no spam