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Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society

(ncase.me)
357 points pyduan | 5 comments | 08 Dec 14 14:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.93s | source
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pyre ◴[08 Dec 14 21:49 UTC] No.8719432[source]▶
On the third board (the first one with a slider), setting the bias to 100%, segregation stays under 10% (I've run it for a bit and the max was 8%). Obviously we need to tell everyone be act like "I'll move if less than 100% of my neighbours are like me"! ;)
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lisper ◴[08 Dec 14 22:09 UTC] No.8719549[source]▶
This is just because when a piece moves, the destination is random. If you allowed the bias to affect the choice of destination and not just the decision to move or stay put you'd get the result you expect.
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1. normalhuman ◴[08 Dec 14 22:56 UTC] No.8719786[source]▶
Right, but you can't demand more realism for the results you don't like and accept the conclusions for those you do like.

For example, in a more realistic scenario people move for all sorts of reasons: leaving parent's house, changing jobs, marriage and divorce, etc. This stirring may lead to decreased segregation for slight decreases in bias, unlike what this more static model suggests.

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2. lisper ◴[08 Dec 14 23:14 UTC] No.8719870[source]▶
This is not intended to be an accurate model of what actually happens in the real world. It's only supposed to test the hypothesis that minor but widespread individual bias can result in large-scale segregation.
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3. aaronem ◴[08 Dec 14 23:26 UTC] No.8719934[source]▶
...which is then treated, in the remainder of the text, as though it were an accurate model of what happens in the real world.
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4. mehwoot ◴[09 Dec 14 00:23 UTC] No.8720159[source]▶
Right, but you can't demand more realism for the results you don't like and accept the conclusions for those you do like.

The article is just showing why segregation is possible even if people have a very slight bias towards being near people like them. It doesn't prove this is the reason that any place is segregated, and it doesn't attempt to emulate every possible reason why a place would or would not be segregated.

In fact, at the bottom of the article you can see it says Schelling's model is a convincing demonstration of how innocent-seeming rules can create very undesirable outcomes, but of course real-life situations are more complicated. You might enjoy taking a closer look at real data in reference to Schelling's model. W.A.V. Clark's 1991 paper Residential Preferences and Neighborhood Racial Segregation: A Test of the Schelling Segregation Model has a lot of interesting data in it.

If you want more complete answers, look at that. This article is just demonstrating one concept.

5. vidarh ◴[09 Dec 14 09:54 UTC] No.8721930{3}[source]▶
No, it is not. You may want to reread it. Including the part where they explicitly state that the real world is a lot more complex, and where they give references to more in depth treatments.