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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, ther
by 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 agoHmm. 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?