
Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society - pyduan
http://ncase.me/polygons/
======
JackC
This is fantastic! We were just noticing how segregated our own neighborhood
near Boston is, and wondering what drives that and what could be done about
it. You can see the same thing all over the city -- neighborhoods that are
much more white than average right next to neighborhoods that are much less
white than average.

Really interesting that this could be self-generated with very little bias
(setting aside that there's definitely still some intentional housing
discrimination in Boston). And really interesting that it could potentially be
reversed if people started to avoid neighborhoods that are highly segregated
in their "favor."

I wonder if integration could be advertised as a benefit of certain properties
on real estate sites like Zillow. What would happen if home listings had a
"well integrated neighborhood" indicator for neighborhoods that have about the
same racial balance as the larger area, the same way they have indicators for
good schools and public transportation and so on? Would that be appealing to
actual buyers the same way it's appealing to the Polygons in the model?

The risk is that an index like that could be used to _encourage_ segregation
instead -- but I'm hopeful that, on average, we're better than that at this
point.

Here's one census map if you want to check out your neighborhood:

[http://www.socialexplorer.com/](http://www.socialexplorer.com/)

You can show racial data under "Change Data." We also found it helpful to
change "Show data by: Tract" to "Block group" (more fine-grained), and to use
quantile cutpoints under the color palette menu.

~~~
secstate
I think one of the problems with the "avoid neighborhoods with segregation"
solution is that it's more or less the same idea as affirmative action. As
soon as you choose not to rent an apartment because "there are too many white
people and not enough black" you're effectively practising reverse racism.

Living in rural Maine, I've watch the deleterious effect this has on a rural
community as young white people flock to Portland or Boston looking for black
people for their kids to grow up near.

In the meantime, there are 20 other non-race related variables in your
community that you're ignoring, like age, health, wealth, gender, sexual
orientation, language, education, technological proclivity, Meyers-Briggs
results etcetera and so forth.

Race, while a dominant segregator in our society, is not he only one, nor,
perhaps, the most pervasive here in 2014.

~~~
tedks
Sometimes we have to look at questions in a hard, unflinching way, and prepare
ourselves for the answers that come.

It could be that "too much" focus on diversity could create "reverse racism"
where there are somehow institutional oppressions exerted over white people.
That seems very unlikely in any place where white people are a racial majority
and also control all institutions of social or political power.

It could also be that focusing on such things leads to the death of
communities in rural Maine.

But what do we care about more: creating a world where black youth are not
gunned down by police officers on a literally daily basis for either absurdly
petty crimes or literally no reason (like Oscar Grant, for example), or
preserving rural Maine?

Personally, I don't care at all if rural communities die. I'm living in a
rural "community" in New England myself right now, and it's honestly
torturous. I'm glad people are moving to Portland or Boston to raise their
children because, frankly, it seems abusive raising a child in this
environment. There's no Uber, basically no other apps, very few amusements,
and virtually zero culture beyond what the majority in the area (old white
people) prefer. The lack of competition in general means that there are very
few new things, and lots of old, crappy things. Raising children in this area
deprives them of stimulation that will literally mean their brains are less
dense and less able to fluidly adapt to new situations.

I doubt very much that rural Maine, like my own area, has very much diversity
in terms of any of the other factors you've listed (I exclude the MBTI because
each MBTI axis is effectively randomly distributed, because the test is based
on Jungian psuedoscience that means it has no correlation to the real world --
all areas are diverse in MBTI because all areas are diverse to a random
discriminator variable). It is not a bad thing for these areas to die. In the
near future, I can easily see the area I'm in dying off as well, and it'll be
great for all the people who don't have to live here anymore.

~~~
another_sigh
It hard to keep track of who to hate. Apparently it is OK to hate old people.
Or maybe just old white people. Or is it just old people who live in rural
areas? And also apparently we should hate those who aren't serviced by Uber.
And those whose culture we don't like.

~~~
tedks
It's funny you read 'hate' into my comment. I certainly don't like living in a
place where people who are actively trying to perpetuate a society of
domination along class, race, and gender divides dictate the culture, but that
doesn't imply that I hate them.

The actual hate, and worse, the cold, seemingly-benign, hate, is in your
attacks (you seem to have created this account exclusively to do this) on
progressive politics on Hacker News.

Maybe this is actually 'hot' hate. Maybe you truly think that non-whites have
no great books of 2014 or no cultural contributions for you. But I don't think
so.

I think it's more likely that you just see any divergence from the status quo
you grew up used to as "going too far." Because you somehow think that a
thousand years of liberatory struggle ended in 1985.

That is a thing worth hating. People will die because of that. The longer we
allow white supremacy to exist, the more black children will be gunned down in
the streets.

Personally, I don't think areas that are the equivalent of a white rice diet
are good areas to raise a child, because I'd think it was cruel to raise a
child on a diet of nothing but white rice. But it's a stretch to say that I
hate old white people in the country because of that. Plenty of them are fine.

It's just you who isn't.

~~~
another_sigh
>It's funny you read 'hate' into my comment.

It is not so funny, because you could make a very minor tweak to your comment,
and even you can see it is unacceptable:

"Personally, I don't care at all if urban Detroit dies. I'm living in an urban
"community" myself right now, and it's honestly torturous. I'm glad people are
moving to away to raise their children because, frankly, it seems abusive
raising a child in this environment. There's no Uber, basically no other apps,
very few amusements, and virtually zero culture beyond what the majority in
the area (old black people) prefer. The lack of competition in general means
that there are very few new things, and lots of old, crappy things. Raising
children in this area deprives them of stimulation that will literally mean
their brains are less dense and less able to fluidly adapt to new situations."

~~~
tedks
That is not a minor tweak, it changes the entire meaning of that statement.

It's also factually wrong, because Uber has launched in Detroit, plenty of
other apps have launched in Detroit, and Detroit is a cultural nexus.
Virtually all of electronic music has origins in Detroit house and techno.
Detroit is still a center for cultural innovation along multiple axes. And
it's a city dominated by the young.

You are:

1\. Not understanding my point in a factual manner

2\. Implying that you if you swap "black" and "white" or "men" and "women",
sentences retain any meaning, even though you've totally changed the context
in which they exist

3\. Very literally a white supremacist apologist, because every one of your HN
comments is attacking progressivism.

Please leave HN and the tech community. Racists are not welcome here.

~~~
another_sigh
The only racist person in this thread is you. And progressivism is a morally
bankrupt enterprise whose existent is justified to cure the problems it
creates.

~~~
tedks
>The only racist person in this thread is you

>progressivism is a morally bankrupt enterprise

...

------
mcherm
I was surprised to find that this was partly done by the incomparable Vi Hart.
But why should that have been a surprise: she has a distinctive knack for
presenting mathematical concepts in a way that makes them understandable.

------
vidarh
This one is incredibly fascinating, even though it is simplified. One thing to
keep in mind is that even if you exclude racial biases, you will maintain
segregation if people have other - correlated - biases or limitations on their
ability to move:

In many countries, poverty is highly correlated with race, for example. This
is certainly the case with the US, but also elsewhere. I live in London, and
you see interesting effects of this.

The inner city boroughs are quite segregated, both by race and wealth.

Meanwhile, some of the outer boroughs are showing the reverse effect, where
property price points appears to be a driver for mixing. E.g. Croydon, where I
live, is one of the most mixed in London - it's at a price point that creates
both young professionals of all races, and more established families of all
races who are united in finding the inner boroughs either too expensive or too
poor.

But overall: Imagine that nobody had a racial preference, but had a wealth
preference - and limitations.

Now to overcome segregation, you face a near insurmountable barrier: Wealthier
people would need to be willing to settle for housing and an environment of a
much worse standard than they can afford, and poorer people would be unable to
find housing that makes much difference.

This is one of the biggest problems. The recent US situation with
demonstrations over police killings, the race aspect has been blown out of
proportion: You don't solve anything by focusing on the race issue, because so
much of the violence is correlated more strongly with poverty than with race.
You want to solve racial issues, start by addressing poverty. You'll _still_
have race issues at the end of it, but it will turn out vastly smaller than
what it appears, and you'll have removed a substantial source of excuses for
racial biases.

~~~
mcv
> _"Wealthier people would need to be willing to settle for housing and an
> environment of a much worse standard than they can afford, and poorer people
> would be unable to find housing that makes much difference."_

That is actually very easy to manage: don't make all houses in a neighbourhood
the same. Make some to the standards of wealthy people, and others to the
budget of poor people.

The apartment building I live in has some houses that are rentals, and others
that are purchased. Some are bigger, others smaller. As a result, we've got
reasonable diversity (though still whiter than the rest of the neighbourhood).

Of course addressing poverty is still a good idea, for this and many other
reasons.

~~~
vidarh
It's easy to manage in newbuilds. Many places the property replacement cycle
is 100+ years.

------
stared
Wow! Not only an educational game about social diversity, but also: agent-
based models, phase transitions, irreversible thermodynamics. And, last not
least - cute shapes.

I am definitely adding it to my educational game recs:
[https://hackpad.com/Science-based-
games-J0X4MSberlM](https://hackpad.com/Science-based-games-J0X4MSberlM)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks for sharing the list; I'm saving it and will check out some of those
games after work!

However, I'm a bit surprised that Kerbal Space Program didn't make it. It's
extremely fun and playable, and captures the "parts of real scientific
phenomena" known as orbital mechanics (orbiting, docking, landing,
interplanetary transfers, etc.), aerodynamics (at least with FAR mod) and bits
of structural engineering (aka. how to make rockets that don't tip over or
disassemble themselves upon launch).

Yesterday I spent like 3 hours figuring out how to assemble a skycrane and
then used it to land a rover on the moon ;).

Another thing that maybe could fit on that list is "Fate of the World" game
from few years ago, in which you play as international government to fix
climate change, world hunger, poverty, lack of education, etc. Sadly, it
doesn't seem to be updated or to have any active community around it.

~~~
stared
"Fate of the World" is on the list (though, the link is now dead).

By no means I am omniscient - thanks for letting me know about "Kerbal Space
Program". Or even better - feel invited to add it to the list.

------
PhasmaFelis
I wanted to point out one of their conclusions in particular:

> _1\. Small individual bias → Large collective bias._

> _When someone says a culture is shapist, they 're not saying the individuals
> in it are shapist. They're not attacking you personally._

This is a really important point that gets a lot of arguments hung up on
nonproductive "not all men"-type fooforaw lately. If someone says that e.g.
gamer culture is sexist, or even if they (perhaps inadvisably) use shorthand
and say "gamers are sexist," they are not saying that I and every other single
person who plays games is personally sexist.

~~~
yarrel
They are saying that, and they are acting like that.

Asking people to agree that they are not is simply a shibboleth.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _They are saying that, and they are acting like that._

This is trivially false, since most of the people saying that gamer culture is
sexist are themselves gamers.

------
kaitai
Beautiful!

For the math and game theory links, make sure to go all the way to the bottom.
The post is based off the work of Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling and the
style is inspired by Bret Victor's Explorable Explanations. There's more in
the post, of course.

------
pyre
On the third board (the first one with a slider), setting the bias to 100%,
segregation stays under 10% (I've run it for a bit and the max was 8%).
Obviously we need to tell everyone be act like "I'll move if less than 100% of
my neighbours are like me"! ;)

~~~
lisper
This is just because when a piece moves, the destination is random. If you
allowed the bias to affect the choice of destination and not just the decision
to move or stay put you'd get the result you expect.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Right, but you can't demand more realism for the results you don't like and
accept the conclusions for those you do like.

For example, in a more realistic scenario people move for all sorts of
reasons: leaving parent's house, changing jobs, marriage and divorce, etc.
This stirring may lead to decreased segregation for slight decreases in bias,
unlike what this more static model suggests.

~~~
lisper
This is not intended to be an accurate model of what actually happens in the
real world. It's only supposed to test the hypothesis that minor but
widespread individual bias can result in large-scale segregation.

~~~
aaronem
...which is then treated, in the remainder of the text, as though it were an
accurate model of what happens in the real world.

~~~
vidarh
No, it is not. You may want to reread it. Including the part where they
explicitly state that the real world is a lot more complex, and where they
give references to more in depth treatments.

------
aetherson
I enjoyed playing with the graphs and everything, but I question whether this
model has much relevance to the real world. Is there a strong reason to
believe that these effects would survive a model of "I want to move" that is
not solely based on "too many people unlike me live near by" and/or "not
enough people unlike me live near by"? Indeed, is there a strong reason to
believe that a binary modality of "I'm happy/unhappy," (the post gestures in
the direction of a third mode, "I'm neither happy nor unhappy," but in fact in
their simulations that third mode is indistinguishable from "happy") is a good
abstraction of people's moving decisions?

The data paper they posted a link to suggests that there is unlikely to be an
equilibrium, contra the message of this post.

It seems like it's more an explanation of a mathematical model and a
prescriptive political position, rather than a description of anything real in
society.

~~~
anigbrowl
Certainly it's a model but you can work up to more complex models. Check out
NetLOGO, which comes with a huge library of simulations and a fairly friendly
IDE for creating your own agent-based simulations.

~~~
aetherson
I think that as it's presented, the authors are suggesting that it's a model
that is necessary and on some level sufficient to understand the dynamics of
self-segregation in housing.

They subtitle the post "This is a story of how harmless choices can make a
harmful world." Reading it, I get the powerful impression that the authors
think that this model has the basic answers for all self-segregation in
housing.

But obviously an even slightly more complicated model undermines many of their
points. Like, they make a big deal of the idea that if you have a fairly high
level of "shapism" and thus get a fairly segregated society, and then you
lower the level of "shapsim," nothing changes unless you actively reverse your
bias and move if your neighborhood is not diverse enough.

But clearly people don't only ever move for diversity reasons. Sometimes you
move because you got a job or a SO that's far away. Sometimes you move because
you can afford more or less living space. Sometimes you move because you have
a child now and want to get into a good school zone. Or whatever. And if your
preferences are now, compared to when you last moved, more tolerant, that WILL
reduce the level of segregation of your society.

In fact, people probably move for economic or family reasons far MORE often
than they move for diversity reasons.

I mean, that's not a small difference from their model. It's one of their
major points! That, once segregated, societies won't become less segregated
unless people actively work on it.

And, honestly, I don't think that the model holds at all unless you understand
that people probably mostly use economic proxies for race over primarily
making decisions based on race. For the most part, I don't think people are
saying, "I don't want to move there, there's too many black people." They're
saying, "I don't want to move there, it's too poor or too crime-ridden" or
whatever. And yes, they may be exaggerating the extent to which it is poor or
crime-ridden because they have internalized racist ideas about whether
majority-black neighborhoods are poor or crime-ridden. But the point is, you
can't really address this segregation by telling people to prefer mixed
neighborhoods: you need to address the complex relationships of economics and
race and how economic class affects neighborhoods and whatever.

~~~
anigbrowl
But they're not saying that people only move for diversity reasons. They're
saying that one simple metric at a fairly low level could nevertheless give
you drastic results, which is a counter-intuitive conclusion - most people
expect output factors to be proportional to input factors.

Don't get hung up on the explanatory power of the model for real conditions -
for the same reason you would not get hung up on the simplistic assumptions of
most economic models, which often involve two variables and all other factors
being held equal ('ceteris paribus'). People sometimes dismiss all economics
because micro starts out from these extremely simple foundations rather than
being fully reflective of the real world, but that's a bit like dismissing
math because arithmetic is so basic.

------
a3_nm
Great post, though I'm missing a definition of how do they mathematically
define segregation. (Checking from the JS code, it seems to be an average over
the shapes of the proportion of neighbor shapes which are like them.)

Also, the title confused me a bit as I expected something related to Flatland.

By the way, one of the two people behind this is Vi Hart, which has also made
some brilliant videos featuring math, music, and brilliant silliness:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794&list=UUOGeU-1Fig...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794&list=UUOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg)

------
aaronem
> it's about deciding what we want the world to look like, and settling for no
> less

Perhaps it's about accepting people for who and what they are, even when they
fail to satisfy your _own_ biases, and building an understanding of the social
world on that basis -- rather than being about privileging your opinion of how
the world ought to be over your perception of how the world _is_ , and
bridging the gap between there and your thesis via the _post hoc_ fallacy.

...nah. That would be stupid.

~~~
kenferry
…what?

------
davekinkead
Beautiful UI. Schelling's models of segregation is a great example of how
simulation and data-vis can create insights in the humanities & social
sciences.

I made a similar (though much less beautiful) simulation for a workshop in in
computational philosophy last semester - but replaced intentional with random
movement when uphappy.

[http://dave.kinkead.com.au/models-of-
segregation/](http://dave.kinkead.com.au/models-of-segregation/)

------
phkahler
Problem with this model. If you turn the bias way up (demand 80-90 percent of
your neighbors be like you) the segregation drops to zero. That doesn't seem
to make sense and I think it's because they're moving to random locations that
have low probability of being "better" by the binary nature of the metric.

~~~
michaelochurch
Right. If you make them super-racist, you get a chaotic state because the
polygons move around constantly. I don't see it as a problem with the model. I
think that it makes sense, because people who are extremely racist are (in
addition to being morally in the wrong) impractical and chronically pissed
off. However, you can get a very-segregated state by gradually turning up the
racism (from 33% to 50%, then to 60%, then 70%). If you do it too fast (i.e.
change the racist temperature too quickly) you get the chaotic state you're
talking about.

In the real world, this chaotic effect might be a negative (i.e. violent)
interaction. Or, more hopefully, people might recognize such extreme bias as
untenable and gradually find it undesirable to live in monoculture.

By the way, I was able to get 99% (ETA: 100%) segregation (because engineering
racist dystopias is the point of this exercise? :) ) by altering the racism
level to move around the patches and "attack" small enclaves of blue in the
yellow area. If you think of it as abstractly playing with optimization
parameters with a hand-controllable Lagrange multiplier, it feels less evil.

------
pja
This is a fantastic visual demonstration of a simple, but surprising (if you
haven't seen it before) effect! Congrats to Vi Hart & Nicky Case (I presume
Nicky did the web/javascript side of things?).

This isn't _just_ about race / skin colour either - you can see exactly the
same effects in things like political viewpoints where people also tend to
segregate into areas or simply social circles of people that share their own
preferences. (pace the praphrased quote: "How could politician X win the
election? _Nobody_ I know would vote for them!")

------
mdesq
I wonder how we could maybe put this idea to work as part of immigration
reform or the much-discussed work visa topic. After all, moving is tough so
not everyone can just up and move for diversity's sake, but if someone is
already moving, maybe a requirement should be that they move to communities
unlike them?

------
moron4hire
What does it say that anything over 75-85% "segregationism" leads to an almost
completely desegregated community of shapes over time (though, they are
_constantly_ moving)?

------
amenghra
"I'll move if less than 97% of my neighbors are like me" leads to less
segregation because everyone is always moving...

------
perfunctory
Sometimes it feels like the open source web development environment I find
myself in is all triangles.

------
kaoD
That last sandbox taught me very small minorities make everyone unhappy.

------
raldi
Are mobile devices supported? I can't make the page do anything.

------
mempko
Brilliant. What else can I add?

~~~
aaronem
Substance.

~~~
mempko
reached maximum dillusion.

------
michaelochurch
There are many settings for which this process doesn't converge. I consider it
a feature rather than a bug.

For example, if you have the parameters at 33% and 100%, you converge on a
racist/segregated state. However, at 33% and 95%, people keep moving around.
You see the large contiguous regions that would otherwise be suburban enclaves
hollow out. But you never get to a stable state, which is kinda like real life
so it works.

 _Small individual bias → Large collective bias._

This is so incredibly true. I wrote about this. The blog post is specific to
VCs, but I think the Racist Judges Problem is much more general.
([http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/vc-
istan-2-th...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/vc-istan-2-the-
racist-judges-problem/))

Let's say that we're having a cat beauty contest and, for the sake of argument
and egregious simplification, that 35 states are completely non-racist and 15
states are extremely racist against orange cats. Let's also assume that beauty
is uncorrelated to kitty-race and that there are only two colors: white (80%)
and orange (20%). You'd expect that 7 contestants would be orange: a
proportionate share from the non-racist states and none from the racist
states. But you'll actually get very few, because the non-racist states still
want their cats to win, so they'll be _de facto_ racist for strategic reasons
except for an occasional "weird" state (say, Minnesota) that nominates an
orange cat and Fox News doesn't shut up about it being "political" in its
"making a statement" (even if the orange cat from Minnesota _was_ the most
beautiful). Thus, when you look at the contestants and see 49-50 white cats,
it creates a horrible and completely false perception that white is the
standard of cat beauty and that no one finds orange cats beautiful.

In other words, small differences in preference, once they gain a certain
social currency and acceptability, snowball into something a lot more
horrible. This is also why it's so important to keep racism socially
unacceptable, and why Stetson Kennedy's infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan (he
exposed it as childish and ludicrous) was so powerful.

------
Frozenlock
It plays with many variables to show the consequences of these choices, but
never questions the basic assumption that shapes are happier in a diverse
environment.

It then goes on to conclude "Demand diversity near you".

I know what they try to accomplish, but I still think it's a dishonest (or at
least incomplete) approach.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
If you read the base assumption naively as "white people are happier with a
certain fixed percentage of black people around," then yes, it sounds silly. I
think what you should be taking away as the basic assumption is: all other
things being equal, an integrated society is healthier than a segregated
society.

