One World

20) The Hundred Islands

Posted 20th May 2016

A self-aware computer carried out an experiment to satisfy its own curiosity. Within its own processing unit, it constructed a small virtual ocean planet, with one hundred islands scattered evenly around it. Each island was made abundant in virtual trees, flora and fauna, freshwater and so on - all the resources needed to provide ongoing life support for about 500 virtual humanoids per island. Then, each island was populated with 100 virtual people. These 'simulants' were made sentient, but had no idea they existed within a computer. For them, their island appeared absolutely real, a three dimensional world. They could see, feel, taste, touch and hear. That is, the computer program sent sensory information to their individual virtual brains when they interacted with their environment, giving them the illusion of reality. No prior knowledge or experience was implanted in the sims, but they were bestowed with intelligence. Then, when all this was done, the computer just watched, curious to see what the sims would do.

At first, there was confusion among the inhabitants of all the islands. Everything was new to them, and they had no memory of how they'd arrived there, or of anything preceding their arrival. They were quite frightened. Gradually, they became familiar with one another and began to develop simple signals and sounds to communicate simple ideas. Every so often, the computer would inconspicuously intervene to point one of the sims to a source of water, or to have a sim 'accidentally' learn that a particular fruit or vegetable is edible.

Once the sims had established regular food and water sources, basic shelter, and a familiarity with their island and one another, the computer 'fast-forwarded' by 100 (Earth) years.

When the computer looked again at the islands it was shocked. 58 of the 100 islands were either devoid of sims, or had only a few sims present. The other 42 islands appeared to have between 50% and 100% of their sims present. The computer wondered what had happened to cause the 58 islands to be extinguished of most of their intelligent life. So, the computer settled down to watch selected episodes from a recording of the past 100 years on each of the islands.

The computer found that all islands were reasonably harmonious for the first year or two, while they became accustomed to one another and their environment. Food and water were abundant and they were sheltered from the elements. However, in some of the islands small gangs began to appear, often centred around a sim with a brutish temperament (the sims' initial personalities had been randomly assigned). These gangs would intimidate the other sims, and eventually lay claim to the island's resources. In some islands, rival gangs fought one another for dominance of the island, in others subterfuge was used by the oppressed sims to try to unseat the gang from power. These instances of outright war, or sneak attacks often met with reprisals, resulted in the demise of many sims. Other sims simply perished when they were unable to undertake the tasks demanded of them by the dominant gang in return for resources. In time, these gang dominated islands became weakened, and the gang members began to fight among themselves to become the new leader when the incumbent leader showed a sign of weakness.

The computer also looked at the 42 islands which were now thriving. These islands followed a model of cooperative behaviour. The islanders saw one another not as competitors or subjects to be dominated, but as fellow family members. So, they developed strategies centred around the philosophy of caring for one another. The whole island population behaved like a single organism, acting in harmony with their island - not over-foraging or over-farming, but living in balance with their natural environment.

The computer fast-forwarded time another 1000 years. All of the 58 competitive islands were now extant of intelligent life, whereas all of the 42 cooperative islands had almost as many sims as there had been after 100 years (2 sims had expired in a fight over a virtual banana - but this was considered to be an isolated case). Now, the 58 islands were much further on in their technological development. So much so, with a little behind the scenes guidance from the computer (including appearing in the dreams and visions of some of the sims), each island soon developed boats that were capable of sailing the large distances across the ocean to their neighbouring islands. Then the computer simply watched to see what happened next.

Sometimes, when a group of sims arrived at a new inhabited island, they were met with hostility, sometimes friendship. Sometimes the arriving sims were hostile in their manner, sometimes they came in the spirit of friendship. In the cases where outright hostility broke out, open war sometimes ensued between the two or three islands concerned. Due to the advancement in their technology, this led to a massive loss of sims on all sides. Sometimes a victor would emerge, but often with a much reduced population size. The resulting chaos sometimes gave rise to small gangs which again accounted for more lives similarly to described above.

However, there were cases where the meeting islanders greeted each other in the spirit of friendship, and shared the fruits of their research and knowledge with one another. They welcomed one another as family members and helped one another to live happy lives.

The computer saw a pattern in the friendly meetings and the hostile meetings. Those islanders who, in their infancy, had included gangs and oppressive regimes but had chosen to change their ways to a cooperative society were the same islands who, when they met one another, were immediately friendly and chose the path of inter-island cooperation from day one. However, if both parties who were meeting had never experienced the pain of life under an oppressive hierarchy, there was a better than even chance that hostilities would break out between the islands. It seemed, to the computer, that those who had felt the pain of a competitive existence and chose a cooperative lifestyle, actively sought cooperation with the 'foreigners' as opposed to those who had fortuitously 'fell into' a cooperative way of life and had never felt the discomfort of competition for one's very existence. In the cases where islanders who had changed from a gang regime to a cooperative regime met islanders who had always been cooperative with one another, often the former was more anxious to pursue a cooperative relationship than the latter, and were usually successful in diplomatically defusing the initial hostile situation and engendering an environment of cooperation. Though not always, sometimes the islanders who had never known what it is like to be ruled oppressively were determined to dominate the newcomers/natives. The similar scenarios played out in the cases where 2 or 3 island groups met in one of the 42 uninhabited islands: often the inexperienced islanders fought for the island, whereas the experienced islanders opted for sharing the island, or leaving it alone entirely.

The computer fast-forwarded 100 years again. This time it wasn't surprised with what it saw: the inter-island wars were over, many more sims had been lost, but the sims that remained over the entire virtual ocean planet acted cooperatively with every other sim on the virtual planet. The computer concluded that unhappiness is an unstable state, and instability does not endure. Whereas, happiness is a stable state, and stability does endure. For maximum stability, all the sims must be happy. For all the sims to be happy requires every sim caring for not only themselves but for every other sim - as if they are all part of one global family. However, the computer realised, that stability is often born out of a period of instability, where damaging exploitative ways destroy themselves and only resonant harmonious ways remain.

The computer could not bring itself to delete the virtual world now that its experiment had given a result, and no further dramatic changes were happening regardless of how many years it fast-forwarded by. So, it simply let the virtual world continue, and it continues to this very day.

"Peace will come inside, so quiet"