Comment by ziggy_star

IBM is way into this racket now of Smart Cities and digital twins.

Idea being if you make a Sim City type game but worse, because you are IBM, and then market it to bureaucrats around the world, because you are IBM, they will happily pay you a lot of money, because you are IBM, so that they can point to your simulation as justification for their in/actions. The ass covering is magnificent you just have to feed it a little bit of real data (traffic, power consumption, weather).

Of curse part of what you are simulating is your own understanding and aspirational ideals about how society should function. If you write an essay or a speech people will argue but if you embed values into a game... well, they will still argue but they have to notice it first.

Some will ascribe magical powers of clairvoyance and correctness unto the simulation for reasons that nobody quite understands.

I'm not sure what my point is exactly other than this is potentially a very interesting fulcrum point. Like who is playing whom really in this situation?