The Mechanics of Flux-Based Computer Gaming™
In my last post I wrote that looking at military formations from different angles can mean understanding complex systems of ideas in different ways, but what exactly does that mean? In a Flux-Based Computer Game™, soldiers represent decisions, and civilians represent consequences of decisions. The game begins in the remote past, with tribes of hunter-gathers foraging for food. In this simple situation, there are various decisions that must be made, but the crucial one is whether to share food with other tribes or divide the available food among tribes. If we have one soldier representing the decision to share food with other tribes and another soldier representing the decision to divide food among tribes, then each of these two soldiers will have two civilian employees representing the positive and negative consequences of each possible decision. The positive consequence of sharing food with the other tribe is peace between tribes, but the negative consequence is parasitism if one tribe expends more effort at hunting than the other tribe. The positive consequence of dividing food among tribes is fairness, but the negative consequence is war among tribes. After every turn in which the player follows a share strategy, the civilian employee representing parasitism will accumulate a waste heap, and the civilian employee representing peace will clean up the gun discharge from the other civilian. After every turn in which the player follows a divide strategy, the civilian representing war will accumulate gun discharge, and the civilian representing fairness will clean up the waste heap from the other civilian. If either the waste heap or the gun discharge heap grow too large, the player will die from pollution.
Now consider an observer at position #1. From that viewpoint, the residence of the civilian representing war will be hidden by an obstruction, so that player will not see the negative consequences of dividing food and so will be more likely to follow that strategy. On the other hand, an observer at position #2 will not be able to see the residence of the civilian representing parasitism, so a player playing from that viewpoint will be more likely to follow the strategy of sharing food. When the players learn to see things from the other's viewpoint, they will understand each other better.