Tag Archives: fatal conceit

Why the Sporder Approach? Or, Is Economics Enough?

Posted on by
3

This could have easily become another blog about economics or politics or philosophy or current events, as all of us are eagerly interested and fairly qualified to comment on these subjects.  But we chose to center our blog around the idea of sporders.

I want to take a moment to describe why I think several economically-savvy bloggers, most of us aspiring to become professional economists, are taking a broader leap outside of normal “economics” to explore sporders.  Of course, this is just my own opinion and ex-post facto rationalization.  But nonetheless, I think this approach brings something new and useful to the table of understanding our world and seeking to improve it.  The sporder framework seems to be effective, honest, and interesting.   Continue reading →

Science as a Sporder

Posted on by
1

Science is an example of a bottom-up, emergent social order. The community of scientists is not organized in a top-down fashion with some guiding purpose; there is no scientific central planning board.

Rather, individual scientists pursue their own research interests—there is an ‘anarchy of production’ in scientific research. And yet science is quite orderly and productive: the global scientific community functions as a coherent, integrated whole. A bottom-up order emerges because of the incentives and feedback mechanisms that guide scientists in their decisions of where to allocate their research resources. Science, in a word, is self-regulating. Continue reading →

How Sporder Came to Be

Posted on by
3

I want to take a quick post to describe the evolution of the ideas that ultimately prompted me to seek out my colleagues here and develop this thing called Sporder.  This is as much a personal narrative as it is a development one.  It is a tale of gaming, of politics, and of liberty.

I have always had two dual passions that drove my online existence for the past 10 years or so – political engagement and the desire to design a game that simulated life.  I sought for these to work as complements, but at times they have clashed as they moved from clumsy exploration to a more nuanced program.  The central irony is that despite my dedication to designing the optimally balanced game, I am not a big gamer myself – nothing beyond casual games that require a minor investment of time. Continue reading →

Why People Matter, and Why We Are Here

Posted on by
Reply

It was once a goal of mine to create a basic economic simulation. I wanted to recreate the process of actual markets.  I never got to the point where I realized how difficult this would be.  Luckily for me Ryan Safner had a similar vision, and had worked much longer than I had to create a world with an integrated economic system. He realized, and I have come to realize, that to create a working economy there has to be an efficient, effective, and motivated feedback mechanism. The easiest way to achieve these goals is to introduce a human element to the system. Continue reading →