p33 Intersim

Designing an Intersim

By John Taylor; 2008 Apr 13, 5 Jalal, 165 BE

 

"I know how men in exile feed on dreams." Aeschylus

 

Yesterday we discussed the possibility of an Intersim, a virtual world where the trades and professions would experiment on methodology, policy and other innovations in a simulated world before unleashing them into a broader simulation involving all professions. Only when a scheme succeeds at the Intersim level would it be released into the world of flesh and blood. We looked at an article featuring the world's first virtual-world economist, by the name of Gupmundsson. This article quoted him as saying,

 

"Generally speaking, economists are dealing with the same principle, no matter what the product, `How do we know what to produce and when to produce?' Those are the questions from Econ 101. We try to follow the philosophy of laissez-faire. I've been looking at the mineral markets (in the simulated economy, EVE Online), and it's quite obvious that the markets operate just like Adam Smith predicted 200 years ago: The market succeeds without interference."

 

In the Intersim each specialty would issue its own virtual money for its own purposes in its own experimental simulations. It would do this without outside interference. The strength of a given trade or profession's unit of money in the simulated world of the Intersim would be determined by how useful it proves to other disciplines. The credits it generates outside its own realm, in the Intersim, would then determine how much seed money it gets to finance research projects in the real world. If its discoveries prove useful in other trades, the outside exchange value of its money would go up, in the same way that a currency rises when it is put out by an influential, powerful and healthy nation in the real world.

 

Mathematics, for example, is crucial in many other areas of endeavor than just what mathematicians themselves do with it. This broad applicability would make the credits issued by the "queen of the sciences" into a powerful unit of exchange. The high value of a "math buck" in other simulations would raise the value of its currency above that of scientifically useless studies, such as alchemy, astrology and sorcery. Desuetude devalues while utility enhances the coin of a body of knowledge. High value in turn would decide the quantity of educational resources that are doled out in order to teach math in schools. An educator who could efficiently bring students up to a high level of competence in mathematics would be compensated in powerful math bucks. Having a high-value currency would allow a profession to promote its own ends and values in the free market of opinion and knowledge.

 

How should the Intersim be structured?

 

In past millennia nobody has come up with a better scheme than Plato's division of society into sheep, sheep dogs and shepherds, that is, producers, guardians and rulers. This is because it is based upon the triadic structure of nature, plants, animals and humans, when domesticated. Each of these three promotes its own value: producers are concerned with growth, guardians concentrate on protection and rulers on wisdom. One profession above all takes the lead in keynoting each of the three divisions.

 

Among growers or producers, the farmer is primary. If we do not grow food, we all starve. Conversely, if farmers devise ways to grow more food, the population and economy can grow correspondingly.

 

Among security specialists the doctor comes first. Without health, no endeavor can be depended upon to last more than a brief time. Fear and shock predominate when security is compromised, and giving doctors a say in legislation will assure general happiness.

 

On the highest level there are the rulers, and the fundamental profession there is the teacher or philosopher, whose job is to promote wisdom and transmit knowledge from one generation to the next. Without teachers the young would cease to benefit from experience, and civilization would crash and burn in less than a generation.

 

These three trades, farmer, doctor and teacher, are so essential to our survival as a species that we cannot afford to let blind market forces determine their influence, even in simulation. The structure of the Intersim should see to it that farm-bucks, doc-dollars and edu-credits have built-in advantages over other currencies. Perhaps the three primary trades would have special powers to issue sim-dollars or tweak interest rates, like the central bank does in the real world economy. Or, alternatively, the sim-money of other subsidiary trades might first be required to exchange into farm-bucks, doc-dollars or edu-credits before they could be exchanged into real-world money.