https://twitter.com/quartelmestre/status/1357612436107505670
- The legitimacy of all formal rules derives from a set of informal rules. Willful transgression of informal rules is a direct attack against the formal rules, whether in board games, in government, or in other normative systems.
- Perhaps the most important informal rule is “this is simply not done”, closely related to “we’ve always done it this way”. Transgression of informal rules is necessary in order to change the system.
- The key point: changing the rules often causes unpredictable effects to emerge. When designing a board game, it is easy to undo the changes and try again. We don’t have the luxury to do this in a society.
- We can, however, create games and simulations, in order to test-drive changes in them. This may help weed out some egregious mistakes, and it might even result in some good ideas. And it will certainly further our understanding of the challenge.