Modeling and Dungeons and Dragons
Where I am coming from and what I am trying to do.
For my first post, I thought I would talk a bit about modeling, and what I am planning with this substack. I would like to lead in with games. As a gaming nerd, I have played many different types of roleplaying games, with many different rulesets. Each is intended to model the world in different ways.
For example, you have heroic and highly lethal 1st edition D&D, where high-level wizards can annihilate entire armies, extremely crunchy D&D 3.5, which allows for extreme customization, and 5th Edition D&D, where you are a god at 5th level. 4th Edition, you ask? A bad model of a roleplaying game, best forgotten. You have other games, like Champions and Hero games, (Extremely crunchy and mathematical, but customizable) or complete oddballs like Nobilis, where you play one of the primal forces of the universe in its fight against the forces which seek its destruction. You can play a mercenary fighting in the shadows of corporate and government corruption in Shadowrun, or run an English ship in the Napoleonic Wars.
So what does this have to do with this substack, other than me extolling the virtues of my favorite games? Simply put, they are models of reality, designed to highlight different aspects of the world that we live in, and allow us to tell stories that focus on those aspects of the world. So why is this important, right? It’s just a game, albeit far more popular than it was when I started playing as a child. Well, how many other ways do we model the world? Economics, psychology, sociology, politics, biology, physics, chemistry…
The world is extremely complex and very hard to understand. It is filled with wicked problems; ones which are not only complex, but where the answers change over time, and react to the solutions we try by spawning new problems! So how do we deal with that? We use models to abstract out features of the world, to simplify it so we can understand it. The map isn’t the territory, but it makes it easier to navigate. Computers may be able to extract out features that have high predictive power, but humans require explanations, stories, and need to model how the world works to be able to act.
This leaves a weakness, however. Models need to simplify in order to be useful. Part of their benefit is that they concentrate on a certain set of salient features and look at how they relate to each other and allow one to predict and explain the world over a period of time. Some models are extremely high-level, such as Jordan Peterson’s theories of personality in Maps of Meaning. Others explain only short periods of time, like historical theories about the medieval world, or specific phenomena, like the methylation and acetylation of DNA involved in epigenetics, or the small-angle approximation in physics. Many omit significant details in order to focus on others, to allow us to focus on things we want to control or study. Thus, while we rely on models for understanding a complex world, they can never explain everything, and relying on them to do so can lead to disaster. Just look at Marxism, and the body counts that happen when it was applied, in Russia, China, Cambodia… The theory is simple and beautiful, but when it causes the death of a quarter of your population, maybe it isn’t well suited for the job? You can see similar problems with Critical Theory and its descendants, which focus only on power, rely on the long obsolete theory of the tabula rasa, or humans as an unevolvable blank slate, and in general are an 8 bit approximation of a world which is far more complex than these models can handle.
So how do we deal with the oversimplification of models? It’s simple in theory, but difficult in practice. We need to bring in other models, and other points of view, and try to steep ourselves in them long enough to be able to use them. This allows us to look at a complex feature of the world in the same way as we do in the optometrist’s office, by applying different models and seeing which have the best resolution of our problem. “Is it clearer now? How about now? And now?”
Part of what I want to do with this channel is to seek out models of various types, see if I can figure out their strengths and weaknesses, and write about them, to explore their utility and predictive power. Some of the lenses I am interested in are:
Biology, from cell and molecular to neurobiology.
Evolutionary theory, as it applies to biology and psychology, especially human society and relationships.
Psychology and sociology, especially if there is good population data.
Physics, Chemistry, Cosmology, and the like.
Interesting personal ways of viewing the world, including autobiographical methods and the like.
I am not much into economics, not being trained in them, but I am interested in exploring them.
Mythology and stories, and how humans communicate and learn through them.
Faith and religion. I am a religious Christian, a Protestant, and I have found a great deal of utility in it over time.
I may also talk about education, which is full of competing theories, some very odd. As an educator myself, I certainly have an opinion, and it is very different from the mainstream. This is also why I am using a pseudonym, as I know that there are many in my state, my school, my union, and particularly on my school board, who are powerful and brook no arguments about their theories and ideologies. Disagreement is best done with caution, especially with the kind of temper I have seen from them in the past year.
If you have suggestions, by the way, I am by no means an island. Constructive feedback is always welcome!
Hamartic
Congratulations on your first article!