Up to you entirely, but for most of the things on Hacker News, the answer to any one question is not very interesting, but the process of answering that question is very interesting.
OG Game Developer Chris Crawford, when discussing the design of his economic/geopolitical simulation game “Balance of Power,” said roughly:
“The actual GDP of Ghana is not interesting. The mechanisms that drive the GDP of Ghana are very interesting, and that’s what the game tries to explore."
That's kind of a weird claim, because other than direct economic and military aid and pro-/anti-government military intervention from superpowers and trade and defense agreements with them, BoP didn't surface any potential drivers of GDP, nor GDP itself, nor any effects of GDP other than stability and geopolitical alignment of the government.
Whatever was going on underneath, BoP was much more of a geopolitical than economic simulation in what was exposed to the player.
I don’t disagree with you, but he made the quote in the context of explaining why he was trying to make a game about indirectly creating outcomes, which in the major revision went multi-polar so that countries had their own tensions between themselves independently of the two major powers.
Thank you. There are also 1-para summaries here that provide not just the answer, and some insight into the whys of it, but also reasons for when to follow up by watching the whole video. That you did not.
Very true, but if you want to ask a question and only get an answer to your question, that’s StackOverflow, where moderators are there to ensure that questions and answers don’t become conversations. On a less-structured forum like this, the XY Problem is in full-effect:
“How do I X?”
“You seem to actually want to Y, and X actually isn’t a good way to achieve Y.”
Classic example:
“How do I ace a whiteboard coding test?”
StackOverflow: “Be sure to ask questions about requirements. State all your assumptions aloud. &c. &c.”
Hacker News: “Walk out. They’re idiots and you don’t want to work for them.”
I am going to write an article about "Should you use yes-no questions as the titles of articles about complex systems? The answer might not surprise you.".
In fact, let me make it a 15-minute video instead. That will really help people get to grips with it.
OG Game Developer Chris Crawford, when discussing the design of his economic/geopolitical simulation game “Balance of Power,” said roughly:
“The actual GDP of Ghana is not interesting. The mechanisms that drive the GDP of Ghana are very interesting, and that’s what the game tries to explore."