How can policymakers really understand the nitty-gritty of a complex system and how their decisions can influence it? How can scientists get a handle on the many competing variables that policymakers must take into account alongside the scientific evidence? One idea is to throw both of them into a live simulation of the system they want to understand, and let them sink or swim.
In this episode, game designer Piotr Magnuszewski and science-policy expert Nicole Arbour get into the weeds with Toby Wardman of SAPEA to explore whether games are a useful form of science advice.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Dennis Meadows’s Fish Banks game: https://systemdynamics.org/products/fish-banks-game/
- Introduction to social simulations: https://socialsimulations.org/