Sudden Origins and SimCity

I try to encourage unusual encounters in my life. I think it's a very important way to stay sharp and mentally and provide your brain with raw materials for creative thinking. Our brains tend to be lazy, especially as we get older. We get used to thinking abot something in a particular way, or we get so used to seeing things that we stop noticing that they're there at all. This is the foundation of my terrible habit of reading several books at once and jumping back and forth between them depending on what book is closest or what mood I'm in. This allows the greatest number of thoughts to rub up against one another and spark new hybrid or cross-pollenized ideas... straight forward revelations about larger issues.

So for the last hour, while eating lunch, I spent 30 minutes reading the introduction to Sudden Origins by Jeffrey H. Schwartz (a book I am just feeling out this week,) and 30 minutes playing SimCity 4 (A popular city planning simulator that architects seem to really enjoy for it's realism. As I was heading out the door, a series of thoughts accurred to me based on both activities.

Schwartz's introduction details the history of evolution as an idea from Darwin to present, identifying the roles of genetics, environment, natural selection, etc. in the process. Two things struck me in the introduction:

1. Natural Selection has no role in evolution except to refine the population of individuals.

2. Because genetic mutations are more likely to ocurr in the recessive gene, a new trait may spread through the population undetected and emerge suddenly once a significant percentage of the population is carrying it.

My take on this as a designer is that one needs a profound degree of patience to acheive a goal with this mechanism. A small but powerful change in a population's makeup can eventually achieve dramatic change in a population's form given enough time. More immediate mechanisms like natural selection do not acheive large-scale results on their own. Thus ideas like ethnic cleansing are flawed in terms of large scale changes to the population no matter how largely-scaled the efforts.

How does this relate to SimCity? you may wonder. After running this simulator for a few years, it has become clear to me that there are two ways to acheive the glorious cities a designer can dream up:

1. Work patiently at a small scale for a long time with a clear plan.

2. Work at a large scale with an incredibly large amount of money for a short time.

The simulator starts you with a piece of land and $100,000 to invest in zoning, utilities, services, roads, etc. If you play by the rules, option #1 is your only choice. If you can cheat and acquire a huge balance on your books, you can go for option #2. Option #2 needs a ton of money because grand changes will lose money for a long time before maturing and having a shot at making money for your city. Option #1 requires great forethought and patience to get to the same place, while not wasting a ton of money. So cities can evolve the same way as a species. Changes have to be introduced small and allowed to spread through the city eventually leading to an explosion of change. For example, focussing on educating the populace has little effect for years then suddenly high-tech industries pop up in your city replacing dirty factories. The down side to this for an idealistic designer is that the results you envision will take a long time to manifest. More importantly, when they do manifest, they may not work the way you expected them to. I've dumped millions of simoleons into a city's design only to have the result collapse into depression and decay. The patient method doesn't run that risk if you are smart throughout the evolution.

So, the realization? Well, I've always been fascinated with the idea of social-Darwinism (natural selection in the human population.) The idea that the hard working, self educating, innovative people in a society will prosper and those who refuse will be devoured. Admittedly, this is a heartless concept. But, I'm not sure we can attribute a heart to evolution anyway. Of course I'm also an idealist and I envision a world that is vastly different from the one we live in now. It's tempting to invest a ton of money and energy in a sweeping reform plan that will rapidly achieve a vision. But will it stick or will there be a backlash against it? Will it ever pay for itself or will it always cost more than it achieves?

It seems to me that, as tempting as grand utopian, idealistic scheme may be, it is rarely the best way to get to a better place. There's a lot of talk about memes these days (the cultural equivalent to genes.) If social or cultural evolution follows the same mechanics as genetic evolution then novelty must be spread via the recessive meme until it can spontaneously manifest in overt forms. Meanwhile natural selection refines the exiting traits. There's no glory for the designer, because the change must be hidden below the surface for so long to eliminate authorship and ensure universal acceptance. Revolutions are circular by defintition. What goes up must come down and vice versa. When you propagate a revolution you become what you oppose. The oppressed become the oppressors. The cycle is perpetuated. With evolution, change erupts accross the board in all individuals. There is no exchange of disenfranchisement. The whole species evolves together.

This idea doesn't sit well with younger people. Their idealism is paired with a perceptual relativism that makes things seem more urgent. Think of this, most people rading this can sit still for ten minutes and do nothing relatively easily. You may scoff at a mother handing a ten minute time out to a child. But for a child, ten minutes is a much longer time. Why? Well if you are 20 and you're waiting for something that will happen next year, your wait of one year is about 5% of your life so far. A five year old waiting a year is looking at 20% of his/her life. So one year looks a lot different to people of different ages. Thus younger people are always in a bigger hurry for things to happen than older people. This has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with time and human perception. Learning that a minute is a minute no matter who's waiting is the greatest lesson a person has to learn when dealing with the future. But just because the goal is years away doesn't mean we sit and do nothing till then... the sudden future requires constant care and attention.