For years I've been criticized for allowing players to make arguments about what happens next. People say that that is not realistic. I guess it feels too much like magic or the hand of God. Which got me wondering what people think is realistic. One thing I've noticed is a common notion that breaking things down into smaller and smaller parts makes a model more realistic. One can understand the atoms of a bullet flying through the air. But it does not follow that just adding up lots of little mechanisms creates a true picture of reality. The ancient Greeks started us on this path by first saying their was one element that made up the world then two, then four and so on. Now we have a whole periodic table full of elements but not much greater understanding about why weather happens. Part of the problem is that we think that big things are made up of lots of little things. That little things cause big things. I'm not saying this is wrong. But I am questioning our ability to spot out which tiny things are important and which are not. Pick the wrong atom to watch and you miss the beginning of the ice age! So the argument to understand by reducing the world to smaller and smaller units fails (check out Zeno's Paradox for more on this). Modern Chaos theory suggests why. In highly complicated mathematical models tiny effects are responsible for radically different outcomes. In other words little things do add up but they do so in highly unpredictable ways. Which says to me that this approach may not always be the best on to follow. If this is the case. Then what other approaches are there? Question First a question. "Are humans able to effect the world around them?" Yes? Do people control their emotions? Mental illnesses? The weather? Their next door neighbors? Their kids? Their health? NO!!! I've seen too many people who ate right, didn't smoke and exercised who still died! Our power is at best very limited. "If humans do have power, even if its very limited, how does it work?" Assume for a moment that people are like robots 90% of the time. Most of our behavior is preprogrammed and largely unalterable. But that with effort we can make changes with the 10% remaining. This 10% is where we are being creative and writing our own plan. It is where we dream and where we have visions. This then is where to look for answers to how we work. In my 13 years as a Social Worker, I've spend huge amounts of time trying to get people to make changes in their behavior. Many behaviors are set in stone - people will have emotions, plans will go astray. But where a person has a vision about where they are going and what they are doing these minor bumps have no effect. But when people lack vision they will stray off course no matter how easy the road is. Vision is key. People accomplish thing collectively because we work together but before we can do that we have to reach an agreement about what it is we want. Frequently a leader inspires us. "I have a dream" is not the end result - but can be a blue print for the rest of us to follow. Individuals with a vision can use that to change their own lives or the lives of others. Dreams are not always positive. Hitler certainly had a dream and was powerful and destructive. Nor do dreams always go well together - for instance Thomas Jefferson's dream of American independence and Lord North's dream of Empire and loyalty. In fact the whole world seems filled with conflicting visions vying for a place in the sun. Thousands of voices trying to drowned one another out. Why one succeeds and another doesn't I can not say. It is not always logical but there are always reasons. Which of course brings me back to Matrix Games. Which are one way to allow the voices to fight it out in a game setting. MGs do not try to delve into the inner working of the visions. They only try to look at some of the reasons why it might have happened. Later on new reasons for old events will be found. History will be reinterpreted. We can never be certain exactly why things happened - even if we are eye witnesses (remember the example of watching the wrong atom). But we can watch events flow by and learn what actions we can make to move things toward happening - which is our real power - but no know exactly why. In a way this reconciles belief in God as a cause and science. Since after all our scientific observation we still can't say that God didn't do it. Be that as it may I feel justified in believing that Matrix Games are more realistic that people generally give them credit for. I invite opposing view points. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #8 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com