The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City | Hacker News Reader

The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City

viceland.com

143 pointsblackswan43 comments

I am truly in awe.

It routinely amazes me the lengths to which many people go to in their chosen domain. Some people choose physics, or medicine. Some people choose Rubiks cubes, train sets, or Sim City.

I find it hard in my day to day life to decide I will work on something for three years to truly and utterly dominate it. Especially something such as Sim City. I would say that I wish this gentleman had worked on curing cancer, or rubinius, or financial modeling, but I am beginning to think that that level of passion is non-transferable, and not something that can be taught or imbued.

Of course, this guy is an architecture major, so maybe we will see that same level of skill, dedication, and attention to detail come out in the real world.

"Of course, this guy is an architecture major, so maybe we will see that same level of skill, dedication, and attention to detail come out in the real world."

God help us.

Why? He seems very good at finding solutions under lots of constraints. I don't think he would copy his tactics literally to the real world.

I believe that the following quote from the guy himself might indicate that he does not want it copied in real life: "I wanted to magnify the unbelievably sick ambitions of egotistical political dictators, ruling elites and downright insane architects, urban planners and social engineers."

The city reminds me of the Caves of Steel from Isaac Asimov. There are no roads in Magnasanti, only hyper efficient subways. The population density is extreme, nearly seven million people piled into such a small area, every building is like a sky scraper from Manhattan. And did anybody else notice how every building is a historical landmark? All utilities are shipped in from neighbors.

This city is precariously hanging on the edge of destruction. I feel something as simple as a Sim moving to a dinner on the other side of town could upset the careful balance of food supply, but yet the city is 'perfect'.

And that is exactly what the game creator wanted. :D

The word is "decadence."

(EDIT: I didn't mean to make the above sound mean or anything—your description is both precise and accurate.

"Decadence", in the sociopolitical usage, is simply the word which also refers exactly to the concept you have described—perfection that "is precariously hanging on the edge of destruction": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence, and specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence#Leninism, for the sense in which this city was created while striving to "win" a game like SimCity, which keeps score through profit from taxes.)

Heh. I like it. It's a new word for me, actually.

I think SimCity is exactly what Lenin thought of when he thought of the west.

Try "The Concentration City" by J.G. Ballard. Fire and brimstone may be a lesser hell.

That will be next on my list, I don't read enough anymore.

Can anyone explain to those who've never played Sim City before what exactly it is that is so remarkable about the video?

He basically found a way to build a more populous city (presumably) than anyone else, ever. He also found a pattern that seems to keep the city crime-free and educated with full employment and no apparent pollution. This would take quite an investment of time without using any cheats.

Obviously the video is pure melodrama though.

> and educated with full employment and no apparent pollution.

From the article: There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle - this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population ... They have all been successfully dumbed down

Well, no. He has a perfectly stable, high-population city, but it has none of those things except crime-free status

"There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle - this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time."

edit: I knew I should have refreshed...

I don't know how the game works so this may not even be part of it, but it's incredible if such a high density population was able to keep growing for 50,000 years without being constantly devastated by disease and epidemics, despite not having any hospitals.

Flush toilets, mosquito control, not coughing on people and washing your hands after pooping are much more important for preventing epidemics.

All a hospital will do is cure a small number of people in a small scale epidemic. But lets face it, if Mangasanti is your goal, you are probably willing to let 20 people die of preventable diseases at home.

Basically the challenge in Sim City is to grow your population, attain a high approval rating, keep crime and pollution low, and keep your citizens happy in general. One does this by zoning properly and creating the right government services. If you fail to do this well, buildings will become abandoned, citizens will revolt, and your tax base will erode, which will send your city into a downward spiral of deterioration, not unlike what is seen in modern rust belt cities.

He has essentially obtained perfection by building a totally perfect (in the eyes of the game), uniform city.

Interesting article, if a little heavy in possible-subtext, and I loved the video from the very first time I saw it.

Favorite quote by the creator:

As for The Sims, I enjoyed that too, although sims usually turn insane and die horribly under my hands after a few minutes.

Dx xD

my favorite quote: 'If anyone’s wondering, I am not autistic, or a savant, nor suffer from OCD, or suffer from any other form of clinical mental disease or illness for that matter.'

hehe sounds a bit defensive to me ;)

Or simple observant of how other people might look at this.

I thought that was a bit of dry humor.

Can someone please invent a game where people like this can play obsessively, and yet the results are useful?

Can we invent a game, say, where (even if the participants don't realise it) what they produce is a hyper-dense, hyper-efficient CPU? Or RAM? Or parallel architecture?

TED had a talk about such (or rather, much simpler) games. E.g. how they are used to catalogue images.

There's also a game where you fold proteins.

> Can someone please invent a game where people like this can play obsessively, and yet the results are useful?

In terms of making productive output? Maybe not. But there's plenty of games that'll give you a deeper appreciation of how to think and will help you develop your character. Civilization IV will teach you a lot about how the path of technology generally went, historical buildings and achievements, and is good for thinking about constraints and balancing. Darklands (a DOS game from 1992, can be downloaded for free and run on te emulator Dosbox) is a very hard, very enjoyable game that gives a pretty good idea of the superstitions and beliefs of medieval Germany. It's really, really hard too, you're likely to killed a lot and have to learn how to play.

I thought Planescape: Torment was incredibly well written, as well written as most books, and makes you think on some interesting philosophical questions. Very original sort of game.

I play Conquer Club online a little bit, which is a Risk clone. Lots of math and strategy. Also you get some knowledge of geography playing on the different maps.

I try to make my consumption a little productive when possible - reading books, watching movies, and playing games that teach me things in addition to being enjoyable. So I'm not sure if you could make a game that caused people to produce explicitly, but there are a fair few that you'll teach you things of more or less value.

Yes, there are games that genuinely benefit the player. I'd like to see more of them, too. They take a lot of work, and it's hard to make them have very wide appeal, so the benefit to society is genuine, but small.

The idea I'd like to see gain traction is for someone, or several someones, to write a game that may only get a small audience, but to get a truly hardcore audience, and to have the results of the game-play to be the benefit.

To quote Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear: How hard can it be?

You're elected.

Let us know what you come up with.

pet peeve: civilization games have almost nothing to do with even the standard historical interpretation of how technology developed and affected society.

> pet peeve: civilization games have almost nothing to do with even the standard historical interpretation of how technology developed and affected society.

Care to elaborate?

It's called business :P

He is not a "totalitarian Buddhist". The fact the he borrowed the concept of Buddhist Wheel of life doesn't make him "totalitarian". The topic is misleading,inconsiderate, ignorant and offensive.

"No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line"

I think it is important to realize that he's saying this in the context of a game.

Unless you claim that everyone who has ever revelled in magmaflooding a colony of dwarves is literally a racist/totalitarian/sadist...

I'm confused. Why are macros cheating? A 'hack' that simply saves you time sitting at the keyboard doesn't seem like a cheat, it seems like a wise life-choice. Unless there is a time/skill factor to Sim City. Is there?

not another Steve Jobs thread. sheesh!

You just made it one.

Reminds me of the interesting ways the SNES Sim City has been exploited: http://incise.org/advanced-sim-city-strategies.html

OT, perhaps, but I didn't like the subliminal messaging/subliminal effects in the video, which were totally unnecessary.

Did anyone else notice them?

I think that you were supposed to notice them.

do you not think it was a bit weird?

BTW: I'm at a bit of a loss as to why my original comment got downvoted so much... would someone care to help me out with explaining what was wrong with what I wrote?

Subliminal messaging has largely proven to be a hoax and the downvoting is probably the result of a heavy aversion to pseudoscience most users on this site ostensibly possess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli

I don't think it's quite that clear cut.

I suspect that product placement in moves is both effective and somewhat subliminal. The real issue is the limits on effect. Flashing messages is not going to get someone to kill some dictator but:

"Subconscious stimuli by single words is well known to be modestly effective in changing human behavior or emotions. This is evident by a pictorial advertisement that portrays four different types of rum.rocks The phrase "U Buy" was embedded somewhere, backwards in the picture. A study was done to test the effectiveness of the alcohol ad. Before the study, participants were able to try to identify any hidden message in the ad, none found any. In the end, the study showed 80% of the subjects unconsciously perceived the backward message, meaning they showed a preference for that particular rum.[2]" (From your link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli)

You know what's wrong with what you wrote, which is why you edited without admitting to it like a coward.

You wrote some nonsense like "I have a gift for spotting subliminal messages", when it was totally obvious to everyone.

It didn't bother me. It reminds me of the "edgy" look in a lot of trailers for movies or video games. In particular I am thinking of Portal now, although I'm not sure if they used that exact thing.

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