Larry Levy's review of Population - Huzonfirst Games
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Larry Levy's review of Population - Huzonfirst Games |
Larry Levy's comments on 6 Billion™ in Counter issue 11.
Larry Levy comments on 6 Billion™, saying that the game Population "...made its point without excessive preaching" and that like Population, 6 Billion™ "...also posits an uncontrolled population, but blithely assumes that they can be shuttled off to the rest of the solar system. where their reproductive enthusiasm becomes a virtue. The older game {Population} clearly treats its subject matter more seriously, so one shouldn't take the Australian game's theme too much to heart,..." . He concludes by at least admitting that the difference between the two games "...created at two different times and in very different societies is still intriguing."
My Response
Introduction
I had never heard of the game Population, and so was grateful to Larry Levy for writing a review of this game from 1971 by Urban Systems. I'll be looking into finding a copy. The tone of the review is clearly favourable to Population and, through comparison, not favourable to 6 Billion™.
The implication of the statement about Population making its point "without excessive preaching" is clearly aimed at me, the designer of 6 Billion™. The comment is made just before the paragraph which deals directly, in parenthesis mind you, about 6 Billion™. Well, I make no apology for my evangelical approach to the subject matter - I have something important to say. I generally find people blithely assume that Malthus was right and that we must therefore get our population under control here on Earth.
Poor old Malthus (for more on Malthus, read my article "Malthus - An Atheist View")
Malthus said that whilst population increased exponentially (1, 2, 4, 8 etc), food production only increased arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 etc). Therefore, it is in the nature of things for all living creatures (including humans) to outstrip their ability to feed themselves. He predicted that the poor and weak would always exist in society, and always miss out. He predicted periodic famines, and other disasters, would result. Sounds like Earth?
However, as pointed out quite succinctly in "Planetary Overload" by A.J. Michael (Non-Linear Systems, p.47), such views fail to take account of technological progress which has (so far) consistently bought humanity more time at the expense of the global eco-system. When Malthus wrote (1798), there were roughly 1 billion people on Earth - now, there are 6 billion. The only thing Malthus was right about was the continued suffering, and the fact that all populations tend towards doubling . The suffering is the result of the natural lag effect of science responding to exponential human population growth and effectively postponing what many regard as a natural population crash, and the issue of the equitable distribution of wealth. If you, the reader, think Malthus is so right, how did we get to 6 billion? Obviously, the catastrophes predicted by adherents of Malthus were less effective than the human capacity (through science) to support increased human population growth since Malthus' time.
I listed "Planetary Overload" in my bibliography for 6 Billion™ as it is, in my opinion, a much better informed assessment of our human predicament than Malthus' "An Essay On The Principle Of Population", or the Club Of Rome's woefully naive "The Limits To Growth." However, like most books on population, "Planetary Overload" limits its vision to Earth over the coming decades. There is no attempt to say what happens next, assuming we get things on Earth under control in the first place.
I suspect "Population", though dealing with an imaginary world, is similarly limited in its vision and similarly naive. From Levy's review, it sounds as though the Mechanism Of Population Doubling is poorly illustrated by the game, whereas it is fairly clearly illustrated (with a little fudging) in 6 Billion™. Few writers on demographics highlight this simple mechanism sufficiently - Paul Erhlich's "The Population Explosion" being a notable exception.
What is our long-term future?
There is no long-term view in most people's minds, always just the next decade or two (or they're straight off to the stars, ignoring our Solar System). Science will continue to improve and save lives, extend life-spans and perhaps create new life-forms (artificial intelligences, nanotechnology and genetically modified life are prime candidates). In time, we will come to view the lifeless (as far as we know) planets, comets and asteroids as resources. If we don't, well then there is no game of 6 Billion™. Forget it - all bets are off. Perhaps Mr Levy should blithely assume we'll never make it off the planet and stick with Population instead.
British Zoologist Richard Dawkins(1995), in his book "A River Out Of Eden", calls life a replication bomb. He states "We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space."
That is what 6 Billion™ is about. It is primarily a game about humanity, for the reason stated by Dawkins above. Humans are "extremely important". However, through the Leaf Discovery Track, the game also allows players to score points for nurturing Earth's non-human life and taking them with us as we settle the Solar System. To me, the future is not just about humanity, but all Earth life. Notice Dawkins' use of the word "may". Obviously, opinions are deeply divided as to whether we will perish (through self destruction?) here on Earth. Sometimes, its almost as if people think we deserve it. Myself, I agree with Dawkins, and I have read enough science and popular science to feel encouraged about our chances - more on that later.
Back to Levy's (parenthesised) comments on 6 Billion™. The game is not about "controlled" or "uncontrolled" population growth. As explained in Per Ardua Ad Astra, any control over population growth will be temporary at best - given enough of a timeframe, the idea of sustained population control is a great illusion. That's why there is no timeframe in 6 Billion™. Instead, a turn could be decades, centuries or even millennia as we wait for the population to double. Is Mr Levy therefore implying that humanity will always stay on Earth and never colonise the Solar System? I suspect that he actually never understood the implications of this particular game mechanism.
Mr Levy talks about excess population being "...shuttled off to the rest of the solar system...". Not only is this a typically Earth-centric short-term view, it fails to acknowledge that the vast majority of the population growth in 6 Billion™ takes place in space, and not on planet Earth. This is the same blithe assumption that most people make, even after playing 6 Billion™. Please stop and think. The Asteroid Belt track alone allows up to 6 player and neutral factions to double their population from 32 to 64, then 128, then 256, then 512 then 1024. Only the first few billions were "shuttled" in from outside the Asteroid Belt - the vast majority are born there! The same sort of thing goes for all 10 population tracks. Note that the Earth track includes any Bernal spheres or O'Neill colonies and the Moon (in fact, these orbiting populations alone will outnumber planet Earth's and the Moon's own populations by the end of the game).
Mr Levy's comment on what the transported populations then get up to "...their reproductive enthusiasm becomes a virtue." is perhaps an echo of my sentiments from an advertisement for 6 Billion™ placed in Counter magazine and Herb Levy's Gamers Alliance. This reads " Populations do what they do best - they breed. (Oh yes - and they colonise the solar system)." Also, in my 6 Billion™ rulebook, I say "Population is the solution, not the problem." To me, this has nothing to do with virtue, or vice - it is a fact of exponential growth. I state this fact because it is often regarded as a vice - something to stopped or cured. Assuming that we don't destroy our enormous potential here on Earth (see my poem "Drowning Children Beneath The Stars"), I don't see how we can fail to continue our growth in space. Again, please read Per Ardua Ad Astra for additional arguments from me on that front.
Bibliography
And now, a brief discussion on those science and popular science books. I could probably list a dozen or so books I have read on our present-day demographic / ecological situation. I could list another dozen books I have read on space, and another dozen on colonising space. Most of the latter assume that once we will reach Kardashev level 1 (K-1) we will skip level 2 (K-2) and go straight to level 3 (K-3). I think that this is wrong - due to the failure of our technology to overcome the vastness of interstellar distances until well beyond the time required to achieve K-2 (see my Crude Guide To Travel Times In The Solar System for a scientific exploration of this topic). Hence, we will be forced to go through K-2 (note: we are not yet a K-1 society). I wonder what Mr Levy's opinion is on that? Perhaps 6 Billion™ is a useful tool for thinking about it. What would it mean to have a new human diaspora, with populations in the trillions? One thing is sure, given such populations and the potential diversity of habitats, the variety of cultures that would result would be huge. This is a vision that I treasure. What does Mr Levy think - does such a vision inspire, or horrify him?
And I could list dozens of books I have read on genetics, cloning, reprogenetics, evolution, futurist visions, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, DNA computers, quantum computers, and so on, and so on. Check the 6 Billion™ Links page for some online reading. The shortened bibliography I provided in 6 Billion™ was:
"The Millennial Project" - Marshall T. Savage
"Mining The Sky" - John S. Lewis
"The Planets - Portraits Of New Worlds"
"The Case For Mars" - Robert Zubrin
"Population Overload" - A.J. Michael
"Preparing For The 21st Century" - Paul Kennedy
"The GAIA Atlas Of Planet Management" - Oxfam
"An Essay On The Principle Of Population" - Thomas Malthus
"The Population Explosion" - Paul ErhlichIn my "Going It Alone" article on the design and production of 6 Billion™, I also mentioned:
"Engines Of Creation" - K. Eric Drexler
"Remaking Eden" - Lee M. SilverTo which I would add:
"The Age Of Spiritual Machines" - Ray Kurzweil
"QI: The Search For Intelligence" - Kevin Warwick
"Matrioshka Brains" - Robert Bradbury
"Evolution Isn't What It Used To Be" - Walter Truett Anderson
"The Spike" - Damien Broderick
"The Demon-Haunted World" - Carl Sagan
"The Fabric Of Reality" - David Deutsch
"The Selfish Gene" & "The Extended Phenotype" - Richard Dawkins
"Genome" - Matt Ridley
"The Sun, The Genome & The Internet" - Freeman J. Dyson
"Our Cosmic Future" - Nikos Pranztos
"The High Frontier" - Gerard O'Neill
"The Road To The Stars" - Iain Nicolson
"Pale Blue Dot" - Carl Sagan
"Islands In The Sky" - Edited by Stanley Schmidt and Robert Zubrin
"The Giant Leap" - Adrian BerryFor the ultimately lazy, who only want to read one book (and look at the pretty pictures, as I do), I strongly recommend The Macmillan Atlas Of The Future edited by Ian Pearson. This slim volume (128 pages including bibliography and index) is, in my opinion, the most balanced assessment of "...what lies in store for our world in the 21st century and beyond."
...and the good news is - there is hope for humanity!As I said, I am encouraged by what I have read to see the spectre of a still-born humanity, stuck on Earth, fade and humanity leave its cradle Earth and colonise our Solar System.
The books and online links will present you, the reader, with some wildly differing views of our present day situation and our long-term future. Those titles and authors that I have highlighted in bold are, for me, the most eloquent explorations of the various aspects of our future transition from a K-1 society to a K-2 society. 6 Billion™ doesn't exclude any of those visions, but does focus on the vision first presented by Marshall T. Savage in his book "The Millennial Project" - in particular, the section called "Solaria." Some of the detail might prove wrong, as might the timescale of his vision. The essential vision, which encompasses all Earth life and not just humanity, is the vision that I like best. However, I suspect that our future will be a curious mix of all of these visions (if you have an alternative view, I'm happy to hear it). Australian polymath Damien Broderick presented a good idea of the overall technological mix in his book "The Spike", but without projecting his vision much beyond the Earth. What is Mr Levy's vision of our long-term future? What is your vision? I would suggest that initially you impose no limits in your vision, and then refine that vision based on your reading of the relevant literature. That's certainly what I did.
Basically, I agree with Konstanin Tsiolkovsky, who said "Humanity will not remain on the Earth forever, but in the pursuit of light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the limits of the atmosphere, and then will conquer all the space around the Sun." (August 12,1911)
Coutts on critics (again...)
My Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines blithe as "joyous, gay, carefree, casual". I am none of those, and neither is 6 Billion™, but I believe Mr Levy's assessment of 6 Billion™ to be just that. The next time Mr Levy publicly comments on 6 Billion™, I would suggest that he treat his subject-matter a little more seriously. Surely if he is going to pass judgement on a game he should justify his comments. His comments represent criticism at its worst. This is an area I explored a little in my article "Going It Alone":
"Criticism is hard to take, but you have to learn to take it. I would say that criticism is easier to give than receive, and that it is harder to create than to criticise. After all, what does the reviewer risk compared to the designer or producer of a game? And how much effort does it take to destroy months, if not years, of design and production effort? "Very little" is the answer to both questions. So I for one will try to make them work hard to justify their opinions if I disagree. But criticism is a creation in it's own right, whether it is favourable or not! Criticism is hard work, or should be."
Note that Mr Levy doesn't appear to directly criticise 6 Billion™ as a game, but merely states that it doesn't treat its subject matter very seriously. I believe 6 Billion™ does, and I challenge him, or Stuart Dagger (see my response to his Counter 7 review) to refute my rebuttals. It appears that it is OK to publish comments which mock or criticise a game because of the game's treatment of its subject matter, but it is not necessary to initially substantiate those claims, it is not even necessary to state your facts accurately, and it would (so I am told) be poor use of a games magazine to occupy space in allowing the designer to present any corrections.
The subject matter can be the heart of a game - look at Lord Of The Rings!
To me, criticism (however ill-informed or inaccurate) of the way a game handles its subject is a direct criticism of the game itself. Readers of Counter issue 11 might want to reflect on how Reiner Knizia's game design of Lord Of The Rings is treated in that same issue. Read Alan How's review of LOTR (note: this review is not online). Read the Early Reactions, read the letters. It's about atmosphere, it's about how the game captures the essence of Tolkien's great work. I know for a certainty that it would have made or broke Knizia's LOTR for me (not only does it succeed, but he cleverly designed a playable co-operative game with great game mechanics. Despite that, and I could be wrong, I feel that non-gamers who buy it will be put off by those same mechanics and that they won't play it more than once or twice.).
Perhaps Reiner Knizia, with his vast experience of game design, found it easy to design a LOTR game where others have failed. Let him try designing a "realistic" game on the future of humanity. Would he, like so many others, design yet another "interstellar space empire" game? The future of our own species in our own Solar System is unfamiliar territory, and any serious portrayal of this vision is comparatively rare in games, films or books. Yet when it comes to the future evolution of our species, or our interstellar future, everyone has their own apparently crazy view on what will happen and when, and they are usually too closed or too exclusive in their thinking.
6 Billion™ as a scientific model
I have my own personal views on all of this, but 6 Billion™ has no definite time scale, it doesn't try to guess which aspects of technology will allow us to change ourselves or our future environments, it doesn't present visions of marauding robots or genetic mutants, it doesn't suggest that colonising space will save the Earth, it doesn't limit itself to Earth, it doesn't exclude the possibility that artificial intelligence might make us obsolete, and it doesn't exclude the dream that we will eventually travel to the stars (and achieve K-3) . It's an open (i.e. not limited) game system for exploring our transition from a K-1 society to a K-2 society, and it uses a fairly realistic model of population doubling to do so. Check out the Variants page, where I have tried to accommodate some alternative views to my own, and expand the players' options at the same time. Yes, 6 Billion™ is deliberately limited to the Solar System, but I hope by now I have explained why I chose to do that.
6 Billion™ is what Freeman Dyson (1999), in "The Sun, The Genome and The Internet", would have referred to as a scientific model (as opposed to a theory):
"A model is a construction that describes a much simpler universe, including some features of the actual universe and neglecting others."
"As we explore the universe, we move out from well-trodden ground into the unknown. On well-trodden ground we build theories. On half-explored frontiers we build models."
OK, so 6 Billion™ is more of a game than a scientific model. But it is a useful tool for exploring realistic levels of populations throughout our Solar System in the coming millennium.
Dyson's best guess is that the human settlement of the Solar System will start in 2085, and that in only a few hundred years most people in the Solar System will be living in the Kuiper Belt, out beyond Neptune. A "rough estimate" is that the comets of the Kuiper Belt, which are mainly ice (as opposed the rocky asteroids of the Asteroid Belt), have a combined surface area 1,000 times of the Earth. He calculates that energy requirements for colonies situated out to 4 times the distance of Neptune could be met using large solar energy collectors.
Does this break the 6 Billion™ model? Not at all. By 2050 it is hoped that Earth's population will have stabilised at around 9 to 10 billion. Still not double our 6 billion. But, as we approach 12 billion, so we commence the settlement of the solar system. This is turn 1 in 6 Billion™. In game terms, our colonists have to survive a turn in a holding box before they are safely established. So, only at the beginning of the second turn is their new colony secure. The 6 Billion™ model is accurate.
"Ah, but what about the Kuiper Belt?" you ask. OK, you've got me there. If Dyson is right, it is the Kuiper Belt which will be the demographic centre of the Solar System and not the Asteroid Belt or in Earth's orbit around the Sun (in 6 Billion™ both population tracks go up to 1024). When I designed 6 Billion™ little was known about the Kuiper Belt, and I may have overlooked its significance. I simply factored it into Neptune and Pluto. For more information, refer to my notes on Kuiper Belt Objects.
Well, if 6 Billion™ is so open, how does it cope with this new idea? If you think Dyson is right, mark one of your Asteroid Belt cards "Kuiper Belt" , or mark both Asteroid Belt cards from 1 set of cards if you have two sets) and draw up a new population track from 1 to 1024 with no growth limit - The Kuiper Belt. If a token gets to the end, it's game over. Score it like the Asteroid Belt. Distances - 2 from Neptune, and 2 from Pluto.
The fact that I could so easily accommodate Dyson's variant on our future into the 6 Billion™ model is proof that I am willing to listen to sensible arguments of alternate scenarios, and it's proof that 6 Billion™ is flexible and strong enough to survive as a realistic model of our settlement of the Solar System.
Time for some homework
So, please do your homework Mr Levy. I did, and I continue to do so and accommodate new ideas within the 6 Billion™ model. Perhaps that's why, Mr Levy, my game differs from the apparently limited vision that we find in the American game Population, with its reiteration of today's safe, politically correct wisdom. Why is it less serious for me to explore an original perspective in 6 Billion™? If people shouldn't take my open view of our future colonisation of the solar system seriously, whose view should they take seriously? Mr Levy's? Perhaps Population and 6 Billion™ are, in fact, chalk and cheese (and not the optimistic and pessimistic flip sides of the same "population coin" to which, I assume, Mr Levy is referring). Intriguing, isn't it?
David CouttsPS - Stuart Dagger took it into his head to reply for himself, and on behalf of Larry Levy, in Counter Issue 12. Stuart Dagger's reply.
Larry Levy's Response - 17th March, 2001 (used with permission)
David:
I am truly sorry that you took offence at my offhand comments about 6 Billion in my review of Population in issue 11 of Counter. I assure you that no criticism was intended.
First, let me address the charge that I accused you of "excessive preaching". If you will look earlier on the page when I mentioned that Population made its points without excessive preaching, you will see that I said that Urban Systems' environmental games were more successful than their sociological games partly because they were "less preachy". I feel it is obvious that my comment about excessive preaching was in reference to those other Urban Systems games. I would venture to guess that you are the only reader of the column, due to your quite natural focus on your own creation, who would have assumed that the comment was about 6 Billion.
Next, my statement that 6 Billion doesn't treat its subject matter seriously. I'd have to say I am guilty on wronging you there, but I must plead ignorance. I have never played 6 Billion, but have read its rules and also read many reviews of the game. I am sure that at this point you are exclaiming about my daring to comment on your game without playing it at least once, but you must admit that this is not usually a dangerous practice when a game's theme is concerned. Most modern games have a lightly applied theme. From what I had observed and read about 6 Billion, it didn't appear to me as if it were very different. It seemed to be based (and you will pardon my candour here) on a fanciful premise. I had no idea that you felt so strongly about the ideas behind the game until I saw Stuart's brief note in last issue's Counter. I don't feel I was rash in saying what I did in my column, but it was clearly incorrect and for that I apologize.
Finally, my comments about the ways in which Population and 6 Billion treat the issue of overpopulation. David, I was raised in the Sixties and the spectre of a population explosion was a very real one. I still remember making arguments strongly in favor of ZPG (zero population growth) when I was in high school. I have seen great strides made on this issue in my lifetime. However, I fear I do not share all of your optimism concerning the future of the human race. It is not the advance of technology that I question. Instead I question whether we will possess the necessary will to implement the solutions you outline. I need only look at the space program, which has stalled since the moon landing over 30 years ago. I am far from a strong supporter of capitalism, but I firmly believe that such great achievements as the colonization of the Solar System will only take place if they turn out to be economically beneficial to private investors. Given the great risks and long lead times such a venture would represent, I have to wonder if your vision of inter-planetary colonization will ever occur.
What I am optimistic about, though, is the power of education. It seems to me that a far better approach to the problem of over-population (and I believe it still is a problem, in many parts of the world) is educating people about contraception and family planning. It seems surprising to me that you assume technology is capable of such space faring wonders and yet is incapable of such a simple thing as restricting the growth of population. I feel strongly about this issue (as clearly you feel about yours) and frankly feel that your well-intentioned suggestions of the likelihood of the future postulated by your game masks a very real current problem, and what I feel is its most likely solution. So this, at least in part, is the genesis of the comments I made about 6 Billion, although, again, I would never have made them if I were aware of the depths of your feelings about the subject.
So please accept my apologies if what I wrote caused you any distress. We will probably never agree about the issue of overpopulation, but there's no reason why we can't respect each other's views. My feelings about the subject are the same as when I wrote the review, but I never meant any disrespect to you, your views, or your game.
Larry
My Response - 18th March, 2001
Hi Larry,
Yours is the kind of response I would have accepted from Stuart Dagger. I thank you for taking the time to state your case clearly and with good grace, and I fully accept your apology.
Please accept my apology in misinterpreting your statement regarding "excessive preaching". It's just that others have accused me of this (perhaps with some justification...), and I interpreted your comments as just more of the same.
With regard to over-population, please take the time to read one or two of the articles on my web site, perhaps starting with The Cassandra Prediction:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/bnbg6billion/6billionZPG.htm
I agree completely that we must try to attain ZPG, but ...well, I won't repeat my arguments here. In my view, if you're not passionate about over-population then you must be either a child, or senile. Personally, I live and breath thinking every day about it. There is no more important topic, and I'd hoped people would appreciate 6 Billion for trying to deal with the subject respectfully. Instead...
My poem, "Drowning Children Beneath The Stars" (referenced in "The Cassandra Prediction"), is the flip-side of my optimistic vision of 6 Billion (and comes with the game). This is what will happen if 6 Billion does not happen. The idea was to provide both the carrot, and the stick, to make people think about what they want the future to be...
Do you know of any further copies of "Population" available in the USA?
Would you allow me to publish your email (with my response) on my web site?
Regards,
David
For a list of articles by me, see the Articles page.
