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Pretty much every simulation game encodes neoliberal assumptions, which I'm sure is unintentional but it makes playing them very restrictive. But it's why "simu

by deft 8y ago

Pretty much every simulation game encodes neoliberal assumptions, which I'm sure is unintentional but it makes playing them very restrictive. But it's why "simulations" lead to articles like "Capitalism shown to be most efficient system through Minecraft simulation".

majewsky 8y ago
Reminds me of that rivalry that I've going on on a Space Astronomy server with a friend. Space Astronomy is a Minecraft modpack with a focus on tech and space exploration, and there's a lot of stuff in there to automate resource extraction, processing and storage. And for some sort of reason, we slipped into a competition over who can mine the most resources. I think my ME system currently contains (among other things) some 6 million pieces of coal and nearly 2 million iron ingots. Even rare metals like gold count in the 100,000s of ingots. Then there's 10,000s of each kind of common mob drop (e.g. spider eyes, bones), even thousands of creeper heads. The globally accepted freely convertible currency is Octuple Compressed Cobblestone, a single block of which contains 9^8 = 43046721 blocks of cobblestone. It takes my cobblestone generator about 1 real-life month to generate another one of these. I could easily expand it, but I choose not to to not cause deflation. :) The point is, we're waaaaay past the point where any of this scale is actually necessary, and the other players on the server are pointing this out to us when visiting our vast facilities and the giant holes that our quarries rip into the landscape. For all practical purposes, you're fine with 10000 iron ingots, you don't need millions of the things. We're actually sitting around now and wondering what to do with all this wealth. My friend suggested building a temple in a jungle out of pure gold, but that doesn't even begin to decimate our gold reserves. Maybe we need to build something out of octuple compressed cobblestone. :D
philwelch 8y ago
"Neoliberal assumptions" seems to be a pejorative term for "the best contemporary understanding of economics and social science". I'm reminded of the Bush Administration aide who made derisive comments about the "reality-based community".

by deft 8y ago

majewsky 8y ago

Reminds me of that rivalry that I've going on on a Space Astronomy server with a friend. Space Astronomy is a Minecraft modpack with a focus on tech and space exploration, and there's a lot of stuff in there to automate resource extraction, processing and storage. And for some sort of reason, we slipped into a competition over who can mine the most resources. I think my ME system currently contains (among other things) some 6 million pieces of coal and nearly 2 million iron ingots. Even rare metals like gold count in the 100,000s of ingots. Then there's 10,000s of each kind of common mob drop (e.g. spider eyes, bones), even thousands of creeper heads. The globally accepted freely convertible currency is Octuple Compressed Cobblestone, a single block of which contains 9^8 = 43046721 blocks of cobblestone. It takes my cobblestone generator about 1 real-life month to generate another one of these. I could easily expand it, but I choose not to to not cause deflation. :) The point is, we're waaaaay past the point where any of this scale is actually necessary, and the other players on the server are pointing this out to us when visiting our vast facilities and the giant holes that our quarries rip into the landscape. For all practical purposes, you're fine with 10000 iron ingots, you don't need millions of the things. We're actually sitting around now and wondering what to do with all this wealth. My friend suggested building a temple in a jungle out of pure gold, but that doesn't even begin to decimate our gold reserves. Maybe we need to build something out of octuple compressed cobblestone. :D

philwelch 8y ago

"Neoliberal assumptions" seems to be a pejorative term for "the best contemporary understanding of economics and social science". I'm reminded of the Bush Administration aide who made derisive comments about the "reality-based community".