Sims games crack me up.. why play that damn game when you can do those things in real life.
Originally Posted by: Pack93z
I agree with everything else in your post, but not this one. Not fully, anyway. Well-designed sims allow you to do things you can't do in real life. And some of that is good. My favorite example is the simple Monte Carlo simulation that allows us to simulate the kind of experiments that one can't do with real economic decision-makers. I know that's not the kind of simulation you were talking about, but there are several "game"-like simulations that can help get across ideas that bore people to tears when one of us does the traditional chalk-n-talk.
(Of course, some of those game sims are so well designed that you can't do them in real life either -- anyone remember SimEarth? I loved that concept, but I couldn't play the thing worth a damn.
I think the worst thing about internet/games/CGI/etc. technologies is that they convince us that things are easy to do and that there's no sacrifice needed. If SimEarth suggests the potential for simulations, SimCity and my favorite games from the same era, Myst and Empire Deluxe, are guilty of suggesting that the things people want to do are less complicated than they really are.
Particularly when it comes to the coordination of the activities of large numbers of individuals. One of my favorite examples is tea. One of my favorite teas is an Oolong that comes from Yunnan province in southern China. Costs about $15 bucks for 2 oz. (or 50 cents a cup). Compared to Lipton's, this sounds extravagant as hell. But I dare any one "player" to find a way to influence all the other players necessary to reproduce the feat of getting ANY tea from Yunnan to Iowa for as low as $15. Know enough to figure out how to profit from part of one of those supply chains, sure. Master the entire network of connections -- count me extremely skeptical. Yet a game like SimCity has just enough complexity to suggest it is a realistic simulation but not enough to reflect the actual coordination required for successful coordination of even a small city-sized economic system.
And so we have more people who avoid learning things that are hard and complicated, and we have more people who are susceptible to the slicksters who claim that they have solution to such coordination problems.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)