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PhilGoetz comments on Chief Probability Officer - Less Wrong
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It strikes me as a lot more reasonable to say that every large firm should have a department of simulation, dedicated to using computer simulation instead of spreadsheets to make forecasts of all types.
I assume you mean, "simulation as opposed to simple numerical projection."
But I'm not sure this is really addressing the problems with risk management in large firms. My impression is that we don't really know what to simulate or what the tail risks are. Adding computers doesn't solve that problem.
As an aside: I suspect that Excel or other spreadsheet is a very reasonable programming framework for doing simulations in a business context. Business analysts can do some pretty impressive spreadsheet tricks...
Being that this has been my job for the last year, you're in my experience mostly right. The biggest problem up to now is in risk modeling, not in the application of the models, both in evaluating single risks and (especially) in doing risks aggregation. Many of the existing models for some common risks are also analytically solvable, and don't even need simulations to be performed.
For how much I like the OP's idea, I don't think that we are realistically at the level where such a proposal would give the best improvement to the current situation.
What's the difference between a computer simulation and a spreadsheet?
The spreadsheet is usually the result of the simulation.
Note also that the original purpose of the spreadsheet is complex math, which can include simulation. I thought that was the sense of spreadsheet you were using, rather than 'table of data generated by something else'.