Reddit reviews The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration (Princeton Studies in Complexity)

I believe we need to consider creating such a simulation to better understand the trends and world around us, so we can solve problems and we can plot our way to a better future.

To that effect I also recommend that everyone take a look at the book

The Complexity of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod

The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration (Princeton Studies in Complexity) [Kindle Edition]

http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Cooperation-Agent-Based-Competition-Collaboration-ebook/dp/B00C5H43XQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404532843&sr=8-1&keywords=the+complexity+of+cooperation

to under how game theory and sociology can be applied to create just such a simulation.



"Robert Axelrod is widely known for his groundbreaking work in game theory and complexity theory. He is a leader in applying computer modeling to social science problems. His book The Evolution of Cooperation has been hailed as a seminal contribution and has been translated into eight languages since its initial publication. The Complexity of Cooperation is a sequel to that landmark book. It collects seven essays, originally published in a broad range of journals, and adds an extensive new introduction to the collection, along with new prefaces to each essay and a useful new appendix of additional resources. Written in Axelrod's acclaimed, accessible style, this collection serves as an introductory text on complexity theory and computer modeling in the social sciences and as an overview of the current state of the art in the field.

The articles move beyond the basic paradigm of the Prisoner's Dilemma to study a rich set of issues, including how to cope with errors in perception or implementation, how norms emerge, and how new political actors and regions of shared culture can develop. They use the shared methodology of agent-based modeling, a powerful technique that specifies the rules of interaction between individuals and uses computer simulation to discover emergent properties of the social system. The Complexity of Cooperation is essential reading for all social scientists who are interested in issues of cooperation and complexity"

I agree that people don't want to constantly think about complexity, but I think the point I'm getting at is just as in real life, the world is complex without any of us really having any say in the matter. So you could evolve complex societies and institutions just by laying out the right rules from the start, which would be really easy, i.e. power-law spatial distribution of valuable resources (a single formula dictating how nodes are spawned). The player doesn't even need to "why" the world is the way it is, just like most of us don't in real life. Players would just respond to various things and their actions would feed into the world in a natural way.

Knowing what those "base rules" are would set the stage for increasing or decreasing the economy's complexity. See this book: http://www.amazon.ca/Complexity-Cooperation-Agent-Based-Competition-Collaboration-ebook/dp/B00C5H43XQ/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453858348&sr=1-5&keywords=agent+based

I think whether the devs consciously know it or not, they're already kind of building these rules into the game. Might be worth exploring in more depth from the lens of Complexity science and agent-based simulations.