consider a grid of cells, each with a value between 0 and 1
1 represents absolute power. 0 represents absolute weakness, or slavery if you will.
all cells start off with a value of 0.4-0.6 to represent natural variation in abilities. this is "primitive communism" cells can slowly accumulate power from the environment through their independent or cooperative labor. in the case of cooperative labor they share the proceeds. cells can also become bound to each other in groups of arbitrary size through confederation. cells can also rob their neighbors of power through competitive behavior. there are two flavors of competitive behavior "envious" where you try to rob a stronger neighbor, but have a higher chance of losing, but also a bigger reward, and "wrathful" where you rob a weaker neighbor, with a higher chance of winning, but also a lower reward. similarly cooperative behavior has two flavors, "philanthropic" where a cell tries to help weaker neighbors, even though they help they get back will be less than they gave away, and "pragmatic" where a cell tries to help stronger neighbors in exchange for protection.
what we find is that power accumulates very quickly in cells, and that "primitive communism" falls apart very quickly. the simulation, no matter how equal it is configured to start out in, very quickly devolves into "class society."
we also find that cells tend to favor "wrathful" competitive behaviors and "pragmatic" cooperative behaviors, sucking up to the powerful, and punching down on the weak. Confederations of cells, when they do form, reproduce these behaviors at the group level, punching down on weaker groups, and sucking up to stronger groups.
The limit to this process seems to be the material available for consumption in the environment.
what we have yet to discover is a way to achieve equal-ish distribution of power that is relatively stable.
our simulation studies continue…
uygha just read Capital it's not that hard😭😭
>>2920515Did that years ago anon.
i'm trying to make something similar to what OP describes. I'm really into simulations with emergent properties and simple rules. especially simulations that imply higher order economic and social phenomena.
>consider a grid of cells, each with a value between 0 and 1
TOUCH
GRASS
>>2923016my favorite genre of nerdy internet leftist is the one who pretends to be a jock telling people to go outside even though they are probably a vampire who never leaves their apartment
>>2923041i meant it in more of a general figurative way than how you are interpreting it and it's not really the nerdiness or being indoors i was poking fun at, it's more the unconscious projection of one's extremely narrow and borderline-obsessive interests onto everything in the world, which is a very common thing that probably everybody does in some way or another, especially men. it's funny when people sort of unintentionally expose their own psyche to the world in a very candid and humanizing way. it's like when hank hill always eventually steers the conversation towards propane and he always has to compare everything to propane and it's obvious that all he thinks about most of the time is propane.
>>2923102> it's like when hank hill always eventually steers the conversation towards propanesay what you will but he touches more grass than everyone here
>>2923102I don't spend most of the day thinking about grids of cells though. Did you read beyond that sentence?
>>2923041Not anon your replying to but:
I get out plenty, I just don't interact with people. "Touching grass" is such a dumb term because I've been on hikes in the PNW where I barely come across anyone for days. Being outside and being physically fit doesn't really ground you any more to social realities than sitting on your computer.
>>2923129yeah agreed. though it does make you look good.
>>2923041Actually becoming less online and getting an IRL social life is how I learned to be so contemptuous of the terminally online
You really do start to realize none of this crap matters
>>2923129"touch grass" doesn't necessarily just mean getting out of your house more and literally touching grass, it's more of a statement about social isolation and epistemic humility. the world is very big and you are very small, your personal knowledge and perception is a narrow short-range light cone in a vast and deep reality that no individual human mind can even come close to encompassing regardless of what a person does or how they live. but the human mind can overcome its individual limitations through its ability to connect with other human minds and tap into the noosphere of collective human knowledge and perception by way of social interaction, which requires a certain degree of epistemic humility - if you think that you are smart and everyone else in the world is stupid and that your narrow personal knowledge and perception are complete and flawless and can answer every kind of question and solve every kind of problem by egocentrically projecting yourself onto everything in the world, then you have no reason or willingness to listen to other people or care about their thoughts or feelings and you become cut off from the noosphere and isolated and helpless like an ant separated from the colony, or to put it in more familiar terms for OP, like a computer with no internet connection.
there was a time in the late 20th century when wide-eyed techno-optimists believed that the development of computers and global telecommunication networks, i.e. the internet, would enhance humanity's ability to connect with one another and reify the noosphere into a dedicated permanent physical structure and thereby obviate the need for traditional analog social interaction, but sometime around the web 2.0 era it became increasingly obvious that this was a very naive and misguided assumption and now the internet has not only failed to connect humanity together but is actually having the direct opposite effect and making us more disconnected and isolated than ever before which is having dire and far-reaching real-world consequences in virtually every aspect of our lives from our relationships to our closest friends and family members to the people we elect as our world leaders to the temperature of the entire planet we live on. so i do think that "touch grass" and the sentiments behind it are very relevant and important expressions of the cultural zeitgeist, which is probably why it became such a pervasive meme to begin with, though if it had been up to me i probably would have worded it differently.
>>2923221you do realize that people who "touch grass" still sometimes are into thought experiments, simulation theory, etc. some of them even get jobs making video games or doing research.