The parable of the polygons is an interactive (Javascript based) page which shows how small individual biases can lead to large collective biases, and the impacts of actively promoting diversity on the outcomes.
Our cute segregation simulation is based off the work of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist, Thomas Schelling. Specifically, his 1971 paper, Dynamic Models of Segregation [PDF]. We built on top of this, and showed how a small demand for diversity can desegregate a neighborhood. In other words, we gave his model a happy ending.
The bottom of the page has a set of links to relevant research articles.
Spotted on the Physics week in review
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday December 15 2014, @02:47PM
That's all well and good, but tests currently show that racial discrimination in real estate [mpamag.com] still exists and is significant. Realtors have come to the conclusion that white people don't like living near black people, even when those black people are engaged in such degenerate activities as playing with their kids, going to work at respected and well-paying professions like software development and nursing, watching the local sports teams, or celebrating Thanksgiving with their families.
And the sad part is that they aren't completely wrong about this: I live in an area that some people have described as a "bad neighborhood" - I was confused about this, because I see well-trimmed lawns and kids walking to school and some thriving local businesses, but apparently what they meant by "bad" neighborhood was a neighborhood with significant numbers of black people living there. And predominantly white cities nearby are not described as "bad" despite all sorts of other similarities.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @03:12PM
There is also the fact that certain races often only do business with certain races. Different restaurants, for instance, tend to have people of different races that dine and stay there. Heck, one of the reasons Obama won the presidency is because his campaign focused on encouraging people at restaurants that have predominantly democratic voters to vote (at least that's what I remember seeing on the news) while the Republicans were so behind the times they didn't even think to do this with restaurants that have predominantly republican voters.
But this is something hard for the government to directly regulate. If I want to only do business with businesses owned by a certain race of people, as a customer, what, is the government going to tell me how to spend my money?
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Monday December 15 2014, @03:34PM
I think the issue at hand are the values of our society, not government regulation as such. I agree the government can't and shouldn't tell you what restaurants to eat in or what clubs to join. It is legal for you to join the KKK if you want, and that in my opinion is the true price of freedom (that some people use their freedom in thoroughly unpleasant ways). Government's role and powers are still limited in important ways. If we look solely to the government to create a just society, we fail.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday December 15 2014, @05:19PM
It is more than that.
Owning a home is one of the big differences between a middle-class lifestyle, with all its attendant benefits and tax incentives, and a working-class lifestyle. So if you effectively bar people of one group of people who can never leave that group from ever owning a home, you've now set up a group of people that can never rise to the middle class via legitimate methods. Creating that kind of underclass that can never rise above it is both wasting the talent of the best and the brightest of that underclass, and sure to drive a portion of that underclass to criminal behavior and drug abuse as the only way to improve their lot in life.
If you compare what happened to white families who were buying homes in Levittown with black families that were renting in Harlem (and specifically barred from living in Levittown) between 1950 and 1980, even those with similar income levels, you'll see the kinds of effects that home ownership or lack thereof has.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 15 2014, @03:14PM
Oh, yeah, organized systemic bias with people with any sort of real power over others is a serious problem, and people who deny its continuity in the modern era are either liars or stupid.
But the point of the parable isn't to undermine that sort of power+prejudice serious issue that actively hurts people, but to help people understand how personally actively embracing diversity is necessary in any world where any bias at all exists: that acceptance can't just be passive.
I think that's a tough pill for some people to swallow, and articulating it with a fun little game is good.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday December 15 2014, @04:32PM
I oppose same race marriage. :-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 15 2014, @03:22PM
I live in an area that some people have described as a "bad neighborhood"
Whats adjacent? I live in an extremely segregated metro area and I used to visit a beer brewing buddy who lived in the segregated area for his race, which was highly civilized and peaceful and nice on a extremely local basis, but a couple blocks away, or a short walk, its "wear your bullet proof vest" time.
Also its not solely a white people preference per your post, at least locally, because the local police strongly and aggressively enforce "driving while black" so its safe for me to visit him, but he can't realistically visit me or move into my area, unless he wants the police to just savage him. Ideally anyone could live anywhere and anyone could travel anywhere, but in practice given a choice of endless abusive police harassment or living in the "right" neighborhood, its obvious why he bought a house in his neighborhood instead of mine.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday December 15 2014, @04:30PM
There's a section right along a major interstate that is often used as a drug transfer point. I have a buddy who lives a block from there, and is basically unaffected by that. In general, though, it's not all that dangerous - in an area with 50,000 residents, there are about 200 violent crimes annually, and the vast majority of those are bar fights which are easy to avoid by not going into those bars, and it's not like people are murdered randomly on the streets.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @03:53PM
Here's someone who didn't read the article.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 15 2014, @03:56PM
Why do you think that? They were just saying something else was a bigger deal, not that the ideas presented in the article(or is it a edutainment game?) are invalid.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday December 15 2014, @05:21PM
Sounds similar to one of the guys a few houses down in my neighborhood. He is old and raciest as hell. He didn't like that an Ethiopian family had moved in across the street on the corner and was worried about the neighborhood going to hell. I looked over and the mother and daughter are planting a garden and the father and son where building a couple of soccer goals. My response was that I'm not worried about them as they don't seem like the kind who will have a wild underage drinking party that when the cops come a break it up the attendees flee in their cars through people's yard and run over my mail box. The mail box incident happened a few weeks earlier with the rental house that was next to the racist but the white 19 year olds there didn't concern him.
The funny thing is the rental house was sold and is now owned by a nice Mexican family so I am sure that that is just pissing the racist off. Again here I doubt they are going to cause me problems and break my tings. I have gotten to know the new family over the past 2 years as the dad has a project car as well and has asked if I could weld up some things for him as he saw me welding in my garage.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 15 2014, @03:32PM
A good thought experiment when discussing the goal being proposed by the website, is to run a two parallel A/B tests skip all the "polygon" stuff and go straight to one page of white and non-white and another page of Boston Italianate Architecture vs Boston Shingle Style Architecture.
"Obviously, the neighborhood where they're all the same is better than the one where they're all different" vs what the page encourages.
That kind of thought experiment does give an interesting flavor to the local planning commission and zoning board and HOA. Its a universally accepted good if they stop a log cabin or modernist home from being built in the Federalist neighborhood, but throw race into the mix instead of architecture and it's all hem and haw and weasel words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @03:56PM
Triangles are ruining this country. They have values different than mine and they smell funny. Also a Triangle stole my uncle's job. Fucketty-fuck-fucken-fuck. -Ethanol Fueled
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday December 15 2014, @05:11PM
Tribalism seems to be a part of human nature. Take any school class and watch the cliques develop. People want to belong to a group, and part of the group identification process is actively discriminating against people who are not part of your chosen group. The popular kids vs. the geeks. The jocks vs. the bookworms. Whatever grouping it is, you will see groups form. With kids, this can be really ugly, but adults are just kids with better facades. We prefer to associate with people who have similar political views, or similar religious views, or a similar level of education, or a similar cultural background, or whatever.
The implication of the simulation is that the grouping happens by race. This is certainly possible, and happens often enough, but I would suggest that race is likely just correlated with more important factors such as cultural similarity or religion.
What about diversity - are people willing to seek it out? For a visit, sure - visiting foreign cultures is interesting. But not that many people then choose to emigrate. Even when they do, the people often end up associating with others who originated from the same culture. You have entire neighborhood dominated by people from particular areas, for example, the classic "Chinatown" found in many American and British cities. In the other direction, some people from the West retire to less expensive countries in Asia (Thailand, for example). Look, and you will find the "American" village, the "German" village, etc. - there is little or no mixing with the local population.
Diversity is a nice concept, but seeking it out doesn't seem to be a part of human nature.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 15 2014, @06:57PM
likely just correlated with more important factors such as cultural similarity
It never fails to amaze me that multiculturalism boosterism, in practice, usually walks hand in hand with cultural imperialism. "Sure we all have different skin color but we all eat at McDonalds and shop at Walmart" The meta-humor is its a really strange odd couple to see those two together. Opposites attract or something like that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 16 2014, @12:49PM
To be fair to McDonalds or Walmart, as cultural institutions these are designed to be inclusive. What cultural imperialism you are subjected to tends to be very watered down and innocuous in order to keep customers, such as trying to get you to develop a craving for ambiguous ethnicity clowns, the single meager slice of cucumber pickle, and very foamy ice cream.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday December 15 2014, @05:58PM
Unfortunately, the javascript crashed my browser -- chrome running on android.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 16 2014, @12:12AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by TGV on Tuesday December 16 2014, @06:44AM
So the basic rule of the simulation is: if a triangle is not amongst triangles, it moves. But if it is amongst triangles, it doesn't move. Well, there can only be one outcome of such a rule. And of course it is possible to devise another rule that undoes that. But the basic mechanism of the simulation is very, very far from the real world. Hence the result of the simulation doesn't explain what happens in the real world, and the advise/new rule cannot be trusted to have the desired effect, and that's overlooking the fact that it's impossible to implement.
Why does this get attention? Because it makes you think that there is an easy solution for segregation and you don't have to do anything about it?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 16 2014, @12:54PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16 2014, @11:27PM
This is a curious model. The squares and triangles are equally complicit in segregation.
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Ah, I see.
Perhaps the model is correct. Women choose not to be programmers. Men choose… I can't seem to make this work. Let me try again.
Perhaps the model is flawed. Outside of the rare gem, women seem to have no interest in programming. Men know that the punishments will continue until there are more women programmers.
Perhaps the model could be amended. Give the squares and triangles different sliders for when they move. Set the squares at move if more than 50% of neighbors are triangles or less than 0%; set the triangles at move if more than 80% of neighbors are squares or less than 40%. We might see a different pattern emerge.
Unfortunately that still doesn't capture learned sexism. Being around women is a risk since you never know who the loose cannon will be that will cost you your livelihood. Perhaps this dynamic is the same in rape cultures. Of course not all men are rapists, but you have to watch out for the one who is. Not all women are misandrists and insensitive chauvenists, but you have to watch out for the one who is.