Have I posted this before? A fascinating read that really explains

[This chaotic, earnest, hostile forum just SO makes me think of what happened in the high RWA games...]

What Happens When Authoritarians Inherit the Earth? A Simulation
Bob Altemeyer, University of Manitoba

"In October 1994, I used the Global Change Game to compare how the earth would fare if everyone on it scored relatively low on the RWA scale, versus how things would turn out if everyone scored relatively high. The game is a sophisticated three-hour simulation of the earth’s future, usually involving 50–70 players who are assigned to various regions on a large map of the world."

[SPOILER] "What kind of future did the low RWAs produce in 1994? An entirely peaceful one, although 400 million people died from disease and starvation over 40 years. But a great deal of inter-regional cooperation eventually produced food, health, and jobs for nearly everyone at the end.

The high RWA simulation, on the other hand, produced a nuclear holocaust that killed everyone and destroyed the planet. When the players were given a second chance to make a better world, conventional wars still broke out, and global problems of overpopulation, hunger, and disease went unaddressed. After 40 years, not counting the nuclear war, 2.1 billion people had died, according to the complicated formulae used in the game to take into account the consequences of war, long-term unemployment, malnutrition, and poor medical infrastructures—five times as many as died during the low RWA game according to the same rules."

The link below is to a fun, horrifying, and encouraging read, and an amazingly enlightening one. Those who haven't read this will understand our world better afterward, and ourselves, low RWAs and high RWAs. Because it's about all of us, invidually and as societies. And shows us that it is possible to do much better if we want to.