Lemmings

“Lemmings” is a game that you either already know or you’re far too young for me. Dw, we can’t hookup but I can still mentor you. I’m just using the game as a toy model.

In “Lemmings” a bunch of Lemmings (get it?) spawn on a map, and the goal is to get them home to that little portal thingy at the top.

Lemmings.

This is how they spawned.

Well, what about it? Easy enough, right? Just let ’em rip?

You’d think so. But here’s where they’d end up:

Seconds before disaster.

You see, Lemmings aren’t too smart. They’ll just walk up in a straight line from where they spawned.

This would have maybe 2 Lemmings home and the rest… jumping off a cliff. 💀

And that’s why mentorship makes a difference.

Heuristics & Trade-offs

I can hear you shout from your seat at the screen “You idiots! Just go left/right!” Yea, I feel the same way about my mentees sometimes. They can’t really hear you, y’know?

But let’s spawn some mentor Lemming characters who say just that.

And let’s place them square down the middle…

Cool. What happens then?

Oh. Oh no.

What if we try the other lil’ guy?

God damn it.

As it turns out both “Go Left” and “Go Right” are still absolutely wrong. Neither saves all the Lemmings. But they’re also both directionally correct: each of them is an improvement on the default outcome we first got! Now only half the Lemmings jump off the cliff. Whew.

Both “Go Left” and “Go Right” make for an improvement for the population as a whole. However, we still trading-off between subsets of the population: “Go Left” saves the rightmost end at the expense of the leftmost end, and vice-versa.

At this moment, being a heckin’ good person, you might be wondering: can’t we just get exclusively smiley faces? Can’t we just use a sign that saves everyone?

Ah.

Mass Comms & Noble Lies

Let’s try that. Let’s introduce a new mentor Lemming , this time with a more precise sign:

What happens then?

God damn it.

Turns out ain’t no Lemming got time to read all that.

Which gives us an insight into mass communications: communicative precision is often at odds with memetic success (!)

“Go Right!” “Go Left!” worked not because they were right but because they were simple. Expressing the message in the strongest possible terms increased its memetic fitness. Even though that fitness is at odds with factual accuracy! (As the sub-set of Lemmings who ended up on the cliff again know only all too well.)

Ok, but perhaps the message was just too long and they just didn’t have enough time to parse? Perhaps we could get a better outcome with a message that’s still individualized but not as long?

Sure, let’s try that.

FUUUUUUU—

“Think” sounds good. Doesn’t scale. Most Lemmings aren’t too bright. And even those who are lead busy lives with many things competing for their attention. Asking every single lemming to think for themselves is incredibly costly to the Lemming population as whole.

Spreading the ‘Good Word’ of Turn Left(/Right) scaled much better.

And, speaking of the ‘Good Word’.

Earlier I said that expressing a message in the strongest possible terms increased its memetic fitness.

You can imagine rebellious Lemmings who do want to think for themselves. And you can imagine that leading them further astray. But, in fact, given that Lemmings aren’t too bright and that portal thingy is as narrow as the eye of a needle, your expectation should be that for most Lemmings thinking for themselves is a mistake. That it will lead to worse outcomes than not doing so.

So you’d want to make your original message even stronger, even more absolute to make sure it got those stray Lemmings too. Perhaps by invoking an extra-lemming entity.

This message would, in expectation, lead to better results for the Lemming population.

Despite not being true.

Holy Wars & Flame Wars

“Lemmings” is just a game. Don’t cry too much after the deceased Lemmings. They respawn after they die. But no one said it was a Christian game. Perhaps Lemmings remember their past lives (deaths).

If so, you can imagine that the set of Lemmings who spawned on the left-side of the screen and who followed the ‘God commands Right’ commandment would be pretty gung-ho about it. And the same for Lemmings who spawned on the right-side of the screen and who followed the ‘God commands Left’ commandment. Literally saved their lives.

Now, notably, not even Lemming God can command two opposite directions at once. Which leads Right Lemmings to think Left Lemmings are wrong or immoral or confused or fallen, and vice-versa.

Which leads them to engage with one another. A lot. And that engagement leads each of their respective takes spreads.

That is, the “technically correct” take above doesn’t spread at all. No one even engages with it.

The takes that spread the most are the ones that perfectly scissor the population into a sub-set for which they’re life saving and another for which their deadly.

In the distant past these two halves of the Lemming population would go to war with one another. Now, with modern virtual technology, they just get into online flamewars.

Both types of war occur when a heuristic is universalized beyond its local validity—an overreach that was necessary fo it to spread in the first place.