Holding the simulation in mind

In one of the courses at university there was an airline simulator game where in small groups, we would have to manage an airline by buying planes, picking routes and frequencies. It was very rudimentary and was calculated through a program inputted by hand. My group started off very slow as we built a foundation for our operations and then slowly progressed each week until the last few remained where we hockey-sticked our growth rate and were near unbeatable. We came in second.

In the aftermath, we found out why.

One group who was struggling in the middle of the pack approached our lecturer and he gave them some insider trading information, he told them which aspects of the game carried the highest weightings. With this information, they reformulated and were able to pip us at the gate.

We found this out in private conversation with the lecturer who thought this was hilarious, we did too.

We had the same lecturer for Ethics.

While basic, the game did have a fair amount of complexity considering the time and age of the simulation creation, and it was interesting to dissect the differences in approach various teams had. Some were conservative, some risk taking, some were highly erratic and had no clear plan at all. Those that generally did the best were the ones who did similarly to us, slow start to build foundation, resources and infrastructure to create a platform to then take some risks upon.

I was thinking about this tonight for a hypothetical simulation game.

There are 21,000,000 Bitcoins (including the 20% that are lost forever) and if they were distributed equally among the entire population of the world, there would roughly be 0.003 for each person. Thinking that a Bitcoin is a bitcoin everywhere in the world, I wonder what would happen if we could run a simulation where everyone has an equal share of the pool and how long it would take for the Bitcoin to concentrate among the few in the population.

To do this accurately, we would need to have access to all financial history for all participants (hypothetical remember) and assume that the past is going to be indicative of the future. On a very simple level, would a stock trader be more or less successful than a teacher on average, would a millionaire do better than someone living in poverty, would a person in a wealthy country do worse than one in a poor?

However we look at it, I would assume that in time there would be a process of loss and gain that would drive the Bitcoin through the market via behaviors to create a world much like the one we have. It would be an interesting simulation if possible and the dissection to watch the flow of wealth through the system would give a great deal of insight into what we do right and wrong, what kinds of behaviors are economically successful, and what aren't.

Of course there are many aspects to this hypothetical that are largely impossible for now, but I would predict that there is a great deal of data that is already available that tracks education, earnings, consumer and investment habits as well as the types of personalities that inhabit various sectors. While always imperfect, a relatively useful model could be created.

I have sometimes thought about what Steem might look like if instead of the pre-mine that was largely consumed by Steem Inc, there was an airdrop to a hundred thousand users instead. Would the place look any healthier?

In some ways I would predict yes as content creators might have got more support, in some ways no as without the weight of the ninja mine held, I would predict that there would be a great deal more volatility and getting any early development done would have been a nightmare.

If there was the possibility to run a simulation of this kind, I wonder if each of us would be happy to have our process pros and cons pointed out and have it made clear that people with very similar starting positions as ourselves may have done astronomically better than we did. As the saying goes, it is not the size that counts, it is how you use it. and while that is a lie for penis size, it is relevant for resource usage.

Some people are just better endowed to handle their resources. This would be much like the airline simulator I played at university and the group who got tips on variable weightings. Some people are able to focus their time and energy on what matters in the game, while others waste theirs on what doesn't move the needle much.

While I am talking about Bitcoin or money here, this actually applies to all kinds of economic decisions, including skill development itself. Some people go to the gym and work to look good in the mirror, some build a body that functions well. Some people chose a partner on the way they look, some choose on the way they make them feel or whether they are a good candidate as a parent. These are different economic decisions that look at the management of resources.

To finish off, I think that in the not too distant future, using all the data that is being collected through the funnels a highly probabilistic model of us as individuals could be built and then a super computer and AI would be able to process millions of scenarios to calculate how each of us affects the others and potentially, how an individual could behave in order to maximize their resources. I wonder how much someone would pay to find out from the super computer what their best course of action is for maximizing the factors of their life that are important to them.

Remember that they are already selling much of this data to advertisers, corporations and political parties and they have successfully used it to manipulate societal behaviors. Probabilities are very interesting yet we are very poor at considering them. For all of those people who spend today and shout YOLO, the probability is you will live until you are 80 years of age...

Will you still hold you Bitcoin?

The simulator will likely say: no.

Taraz [ a Steem original ]