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There is another fantastic explanation (an “exploitable explanation”) by Nicky Case of this same phenomenon here: https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/po

by zamfi 5y ago

There is another fantastic explanation (an “exploitable explanation”) by Nicky Case of this same phenomenon here: https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/polygons/ Interactive, web-based, explained. Highly recommended.

csense 5y ago
Nicky Case's simulation is great and fun, but I think she reaches the wrong conclusion. Her takeaway is this (in my words, not hers): "Diversity is good, therefore we should alter our behavior to increase diversity." My takeaway is the opposite (again, my own words): "Segregated communities may arise in a decentralized way through the free choices of people optimizing for individual preferences for homogeneous communities. Engineering a system to promote diversity may cause harm. Such an engineered system must, by definition, pressure or force people to make a different choice than they freely would."
- zamfi 5y ago
  Hmm. Honestly, I think neither of these is the right takeaway? My takeaway is "if people want some degree of diversity, and take individual actions based on what seem like reasonable heuristics, say, a mild desire for diversity but a stronger desire against minority status, then this can lead to systemic outcomes where there is less diversity than individuals want or expect." I'm not sure where the "system engineering" part comes in, that doesn't seem to be part of the simulation, and at no point is anyone's "preference" being violated -- could you elaborate?
crackercrews 5y ago
Nice interactives. The framing seems flawed since all preference is referred to as a "bias". > Small individual bias can lead to large collective bias. There are many reasons people might want to live near some other people who are similar to themselves. Some are purely practical, like language and food. It is not clear how much of the total preference is rooted in these sorts of practical realities as opposed to "bias" that would not exist in an ideal world. Referring to all preferences as biases strikes me as sloppy.
- civilized 5y ago
  > Referring to all preferences as biases strikes me as sloppy. It would be sloppy if it were not deliberate. I noticed nobody was accused of gentrification in this simulation.
  - zamfi 5y ago
    Bias is the mathematical term for consistent behavior in one direction of an engineered system. The polygons are not people, they are trivial mathematical agents with explicit bias, they do not have preferences. It is absolutely deliberate and not sloppy.
    - crackercrews 5y ago
      > The polygons are not people, they are trivial mathematical agents with explicit bias The author is clearly talking about people: > So, fellow shapes, remember it's not about triangles vs squares, it's about deciding what we want the world to look like, and settling for no less.
      - zamfi 5y ago
        Sure, the author is trying to make an argument about people by showing what happens in systems of simplified agents. That doesn’t change the fact that the polygons are not people. Crash test dummies are also not people, despite usefully standing in for people in crash tests.
  - crackercrews 5y ago
    I was trying to be generous. Perhaps I overshot.
- zamfi 5y ago
  I'm fairly certain they're using a mathematical meaning for bias. Yes, all preference in this case is "bias" because it affects the system in a consistent way. If you're an engineer, you're probably already familiar with this form of bias: a system that always exhibits a preference for some type of inputs, for example, a computer vision system that always categorizes green-tinged images as "cats", is exhibiting bias, not "preference" -- as in this simulation, there's nothing personal going on, it's literally just numbers in a matrix.
civilized 5y ago
It's interesting how the two types in the simulation are said to be "happier to live in a diverse environment" but their only preference that leads to actual behavior is "when I'm in a 1/3 minority or less I'm unhappy and have to move". Further down, when the shapes show their preference for neighborhood diversity in actual behavior, you get diverse results.

by zamfi 5y ago

csense 5y ago

Nicky Case's simulation is great and fun, but I think she reaches the wrong conclusion. Her takeaway is this (in my words, not hers): "Diversity is good, therefore we should alter our behavior to increase diversity." My takeaway is the opposite (again, my own words): "Segregated communities may arise in a decentralized way through the free choices of people optimizing for individual preferences for homogeneous communities. Engineering a system to promote diversity may cause harm. Such an engineered system must, by definition, pressure or force people to make a different choice than they freely would."

zamfi 5y ago
Hmm. Honestly, I think neither of these is the right takeaway? My takeaway is "if people want some degree of diversity, and take individual actions based on what seem like reasonable heuristics, say, a mild desire for diversity but a stronger desire against minority status, then this can lead to systemic outcomes where there is less diversity than individuals want or expect." I'm not sure where the "system engineering" part comes in, that doesn't seem to be part of the simulation, and at no point is anyone's "preference" being violated -- could you elaborate?

crackercrews 5y ago

Nice interactives. The framing seems flawed since all preference is referred to as a "bias". > Small individual bias can lead to large collective bias. There are many reasons people might want to live near some other people who are similar to themselves. Some are purely practical, like language and food. It is not clear how much of the total preference is rooted in these sorts of practical realities as opposed to "bias" that would not exist in an ideal world. Referring to all preferences as biases strikes me as sloppy.

civilized 5y ago
> Referring to all preferences as biases strikes me as sloppy. It would be sloppy if it were not deliberate. I noticed nobody was accused of gentrification in this simulation.
- zamfi 5y ago
  Bias is the mathematical term for consistent behavior in one direction of an engineered system. The polygons are not people, they are trivial mathematical agents with explicit bias, they do not have preferences. It is absolutely deliberate and not sloppy.
  - crackercrews 5y ago
    > The polygons are not people, they are trivial mathematical agents with explicit bias The author is clearly talking about people: > So, fellow shapes, remember it's not about triangles vs squares, it's about deciding what we want the world to look like, and settling for no less.
    - zamfi 5y ago
      Sure, the author is trying to make an argument about people by showing what happens in systems of simplified agents. That doesn’t change the fact that the polygons are not people. Crash test dummies are also not people, despite usefully standing in for people in crash tests.
- crackercrews 5y ago
  I was trying to be generous. Perhaps I overshot.
zamfi 5y ago
I'm fairly certain they're using a mathematical meaning for bias. Yes, all preference in this case is "bias" because it affects the system in a consistent way. If you're an engineer, you're probably already familiar with this form of bias: a system that always exhibits a preference for some type of inputs, for example, a computer vision system that always categorizes green-tinged images as "cats", is exhibiting bias, not "preference" -- as in this simulation, there's nothing personal going on, it's literally just numbers in a matrix.

civilized 5y ago

It's interesting how the two types in the simulation are said to be "happier to live in a diverse environment" but their only preference that leads to actual behavior is "when I'm in a 1/3 minority or less I'm unhappy and have to move". Further down, when the shapes show their preference for neighborhood diversity in actual behavior, you get diverse results.