I found the Millenium Village Simulator incredibly frustrating because it was impossible to win. I have played similar games in the past with other classes, so I assumed I would at least be able to do better than I had before but that was not the case. No matter what I did (or did not) do to keep them alive, Kodjo or Fatou died within the first few rounds of the game. Whether that was through starvation or illness, there was no way to save them with the resources I had available. Even when I spent the money to get them to a doctor, they still died because of the lost work time. With too much idle time, they died from malnutrition or insufficient water, and with too little they got sick. Growing cotton, although beneficial in other games and in theory, always produced a loss and lead to malnutrition. Even when it seemed like everything was going well and I might survive one round, drought or malaria brought sure death for Kodjo and Fatou.

After listening to Dr. Bezio’s podcast, I realized that games such as MVS are designed to be unwinnable so that they replicate the systemic failures in Africa. The actual people who these games are based on experience these same conditions, only in reality and not online. The need to dedicate so much time to water and food collection means that there is little time left for anything else, causing constant economic instability that can lead to worse health outcomes. Without aid or solutions to these systemic issues, they will continue to live on the line in between life and death.

I was pretty frustrated by this game. The tutorial link wasn’t working so I decided to just start the game by experimenting with my options. Considering the economics of surviving in an African village in a computer game is not something I ever thought I would do, but it turned out to be very difficult, at least for me. I did not know how to decide how to allocate time and resources in order to benefit Kadjo and Fatou and the rest of the village. I wasn’t sure how to make decisions because I didn’t know what to prioritize in my actions. However, this game did give me a better understanding of the difficulties of creating a prospering village. Considering health, disease, farming/agriculture, infrastructure, business investments, water and more made me think about realities facing such villages. As the family grows and resources become scarce, decisions get more and more difficult. I think the point of this simulation isn’t to “win” and get points, but to gain a deeper understanding for survival in societies that we are not typically exposed to. This isn’t just a computer game, it is reality for people around the world that we often don’t give a second thought about. 

I also was interested in Dr. Bezio’s comparison of systemic systems and the nervous system. I think this was a good illustration for people who don’t necessarily know what people mean when they talk about systemic issues such as the -isms we are so familiar with. Systemic issues intersect with nearly every single factor in society. This complexity makes understanding these issues very difficult and finding solutions nearly impossible.

The minimum wage simulator was extremely eye-opening. I spent so much time in the beginning just trying to figure out how much time I needed to get water and food… Apparently, it was a lot more than I could even imagine being possible. Once I kind of figure out some base settings, I thought that I would be able to actually do well and make it work, but I was sorely mistaken. I spent almost an hour trying to get past level 4 but I couldn’t! It was so frustrating because I wanted to get my people to live longer and it was so heartbreaking that this is real life for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. I mean how do you even process sitting in your bed in a dorm room playing this game on your laptop after getting d-hall for dinner…? It is hard to quantify the difference in living between us and people in those conditions. I know that we are so beyond lucky to be here and live this life, but when you put it into that perspective, it makes you feel guilty for not taking as much advantage of it as you can. Like in McAskill’s Doing Good Better (in chapter 7 I think, correct me if I am wrong),  we are in the best position worldwide to help. I know that we all have our own struggles but I can’t imagine anyone is so poorly off that they are even close to having to live like this and work so hard just to survive. We need to do the most that we can, whenever we can. I am grateful that there are so many organizations and resources to help us help others. After this experience, I will definitely be taking it into consideration for future giving and will take this experience with me and never forget to be grateful for what I have!

The Dorner reading discusses humans’ general inability to , or to accurately predict non-linear consequences of their actions. Dorner also uses the example of engineers at the Chernobyl plant to explain how experienced people tend to make decisions based on “intuition”, which leads to overcorrections and errors. In the podcast, Dr. Bezio mentioned how in the traditional (or at least stereotypical) model of leadership, one person makes decisions and commits to executing a plan. In reality, it makes more sense to have a team of people assessing a situation’s variables, and making small adjustments as they go.

I hadn’t considered that short-sighted thinking and the tendency to only try to solve problems was an evolved trait of humans. It makes sense, as there’s no room for indecision or speculation in the wild. Plus, our current societal environment is more static and predictable than the environments faced by early humans. For example, most of us woke up today with some kind of plan in place. I knew that I would have several classes throughout the day, I knew where they were and when they would occur, and I know what work I need to finish before I go to sleep tonight. Contrast that with someone having to wake up every morning and go out in search of food, or be ready to defend themself at a moment’s notice. The structure and security of my daily life removes certain variables, which should allow me to focus on others and plan proactively. There is no planning proactively when you’re constantly worried about protecting yourself and fulfilling your basic needs.

I never play video games and so I knew I was going to be bad at the Millennium Village Simulation before I started playing. I had trouble playing the game because the help button sent me to an error page. But because it was a video game, I did think it is really interested that it exists. I had not thought about video games being about this kind of thing, so I found that interesting.

I really appreciated Dr. Bezio’s metaphor for systemic issues as nerves. It was a great way to talk about how complex they are and how much they intertwine in people’s lives. A couple of her best points were that when she said one’s nervous system gets messed up it either shuts down or fights back through pain. This is synonymous with systemic issues in the US because oftentimes people feel so defeated by the systems in place they just shut down, and other times they have the energy to fight back but it does not end well for them. The podcast obviously made me think of the University of Richmond’s current situation because she addressed how humans feel threatened by change. And I think that more than actually thinking it is the correct decision to keep the names our Board of trustees believes change is unnecessary and feels threatened by the idea of it. But change is necessary and without change, we would not be the evolved society we are today. One thing that stood out to me in the reading was when Dorner said that we fail because we make lots of small mistakes that add up. Therefore, the little things do matter, which sometimes we all struggle to understand.

The Millennium Village Simulation was extremely frustrating. Regardless of what I did or what strategy I took, I could never collect enough funds for the village or the family to improve their living conditions significantly. In order to make money for the family, I constantly tried to make investments into the family business. Cotton growing wasn’t an option because we lacked the means to transport the cotton. It cost too much money to transport the cotton into the village to create profit. I attempted to focus farming on maize to create a little bit of profit for the family and satisfy their subsistence. However, the second there was a bad crop year, a water shortage, or any other issue the family was ruined. Whenever one of the villagers died, the economic output was ruined. It was somewhat feasible to continue surviving, but upwards economic mobility was impossible. The furthest I got was year 12.

I couldn’t imagine having to live in those conditions. For billions of people around the world, the sim is a representation of their life. During the simulation, there were a few opportunities to purchase infrastructure for the village at a government-subsidized price. But the amount of money that was required to make the purchase was unattainable. Government intervention or some sort of international intervention seems as if it is the only possibility to develop these communities. Without it, I don’t think it possible for these communities to have any sort of upward mobility. This sim shows the importance of how developed nations or global organizations like the UN need to interact with these communities. Without it, they are stuck in a poverty trap with no reasonable means to get out.

From the reading and podcast this week, it was interesting to pinpoint the human tendencies that explain why we always seem to be making mistakes. Dorner suggests that it is innate within us that we cannot see one problem on a larger scale than our immediate situation. He says some analysts “see our tendency to think in simple chains of cause and effect as genetically preprogrammed and locate our inability to solve our problems in this genetic programming” (6). So, it’s genetic that we suck at making decisions sometimes… Whether that really is true or not, humans do still act in a set of patterns that Dorner and Bezio explore that are undeniable. In Dorner’s evaluation of the game stimulations some key patterns stuck out to me. It is interesting to note that good participants made more decisions than bad participants. That seems so simple to me, more decisions, more action, more good obviously. But it also speaks to good participants wanting to ask more questions and see more possibilities in front of them. Dorner suggests that good participants cared about the “why” not just the “what”. Bad participants focusing on the “what” did not dive deep enough into the problems they faced.

Bezio lays out a handful of things that help a system function best, and asking only “what” is not one of them. She tells us that systems function best when humans try not to oversimplify things. When a bad participant only asks “what” questions, they are seeking to simplify the task at hand and face it only at that level in front of them. That is when a system’s extreme complexity is fatally overlooked. Moreover, she tells us that systems function best when humans do not rely on their instincts, biases, or traditions. As good participants asked “why” questions, I think that exemplifies them going beyond their gut reaction in order to understand the new situation in front of them, rather than make assumptions based on surface level information. An over-reliance on tradition and biases is at the forefront of societal issues at the moment. From climate change, to polarized politics, to wearing masks, to racial inequality, humans right now are relying on biases and traditions that formed in an entirely different society with entirely different norms and practices. When humans continue to only rely on their previous knowledge with an unwillingness to change, the traditions and biases we hold onto become so outdated that they become useless even without us realizing. Systems thrive on smaller decisions that build upon each other. The best way to fix our biases is small, repeated exposure over time that allows us to see a different perspective. Humans tend to always think big, but clearly it’s time to change that instinct and think a lot smaller.

In reading the article, one of the most interesting parts was the conversation about why we humans struggle to deal with problems and their long-term effects. Like the physicist and the economist, humans struggle to come up with solutions to issues and the long-term effects of these decisions. Several reasons for humans seeming tendency to think on an ad hoc basis, as well as struggle to consider the long-term effects of decisions, are presented in the article, ranging from claims of genetic programming to the “evolution that has placed on the development of the human cognitive apparatus”; however, the theory that I think is the most interesting is the one concerning male domination in our society (Dorner 6). As Dorner explains, this theory distinguishes “between ‘serial’ male thinking and ‘parallel’ female thinking and identify the latter as more appropriate for dealing with complex problems” (Dorner 6). This theory is most interesting to me because it seems to incorporate both biological and social factors in determining “better” problem-solving. Biologically, it distinguishes differences in thinking  between males and females, and socially, it argues that because males have dominated society (through the, directly and indirectly, the sexist foundation of our society), we do not have the parallel thinking of females present and thus this hurts our problem-solving abilities. I focus on this theory because if we accept it, several philosophical and practical questions arise, such as should we have mandatory representation of women in decision-making bodies where they are currently disproportionately not present, such as in the federal government? And with that, is this “parallel thinking” limited only to females, or can it be taught to others, and likewise, can this “serial thinking” be taught to women to create more balanced problem solvers in general?

I typically hear the term ‘systemic’ around systemic racism, used to refer to how the structures and institutions themselves produce racist outcomes. One example of this would be the justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black and brown people. (I’m using justice system to refer to the interconnected systems of policing, the courts, and penal systems). I’ve heard some people say that the ‘system is broken,’ because it is producing unjust outcomes. And that is certainly a way to look at it: if a justice system is preventing, obstructing, or reducing justice then it is not functioning for its intended purpose, and is, therefore, broken. However, this doesn’t tell the whole story. Like Dr. Bezio mentioned at the end of the podcast, we need to pay attention to where we are coming from. Police forces were originally created to track down escaped slaves. They played a huge role in enforcing Jim Crow. And prisons have a long history of incarcerating black and brown bodies at disproportionate rates, even going back to the 13th amendment that outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, except for when punishment for a crime (you can watch the film 13th if you are interested in learning more about this). The roots of the justice system are in racism. So when it creates racist outcomes, is it really broken, or working exactly as intended? Clearly, this is not an outcome that we accept, and so we must change the system. Or do we? Are the roots of racism too deeply embedded in our current justice system to reform it? Some activists advocate for abolishing the prison system. They say that our current setup will never be able to provide justice, and we need to turn to community-based solutions. Others say that we have some pretty good things going in our current setup, we just need to reform it. So my questions are these: When do we know a system is broken, or just providing output that we don’t like? and, When do we reform the system or throw the whole thing out and start over?

The way systemic issues were compared to a nervous system such as when a repeated injury breaks down the nerves in a way that either destroys their ability to signal, or causes continuous pain struck me, because it accurately demonstrates the severity of the problem, but also how over time it becomes difficult to pinpoint the source of the “pain.” For example, the education system, justice system, welfare system, housing system are a few examples of systems in the United States that build off of one another, worsening inequality because issues that should have been addressed decades ago have never been fixed, leaving vulnerable minority communities in the same situations they faced in the early to mid 1900s.

Our country has allowed groups to slip through the cracks by never fully correcting our past actions, therefore leaving minority groups at a disadvantage, with reduced access to public goods and opportunities. These inequalities have become compounded over time, similar to a repeated injury, which has deepened the wealth gap and made it significantly more difficult for minorities to succeed in the United States, as they have everything working against them. This is idea of a homeostatic feedback loop is one that I have come across during my research for my project, realizing that the public education system has been in existence for so long with little to no interruption or adjustments, that there is significant imbalance in the quality of education in school districts across the country. But this one system does not exist on it’s own, it is the result of a variety of other systems, and as a result, it feeds into even more systems, creating a complex web of inequality that seems never-ending, and oftentimes hopeless. I think that as a general rule our society doesn’t understand how deeply engrained these systems are into our society, and the effect they have on virtually everything. For example, we raise money and donate items and provide “quick-fix” solutions to the surface-level problems that we see. Although we may fix that problem in the short-term, it won’t stop the problem from happening to others, for generations to come if the system does not provide people with greater opportunities, or protect them from falling into the same vicious cycles it has been for so long. There will continue to be a disproportionate rate of black prisoners in America if there continues to be over-policing in minority neighborhoods, police officers and zero tolerance policies in schools, and neighborhoods that segregate groups, preventing them from getting the same education and opportunities as white students. These issues all feed into one another, creating a homeostatic feedback loop that we have grown to accept as the norm, but creates unnecessary problems that hurt individuals, society, and the economy.

During the millennium village simulator I continuously struggled. I had significant difficulty creating the “perfect” combination of farming, water collection, etc. to allow the villagers to thrive. I was shocked by how sensitive the game was to even the slightest alterations, and how quickly I accidentally sent my villagers into poverty or poor health, when that was obviously not my intention. I realized that the decisions that I was making were negatively affecting people regardless of my intention, and realized that it is easier said than done to be the person in charge of the lives of others.