Example Game

Below is an accelerated demonstration of how the game would work and a short note on why these choices were made.

Player 1: Pancakes or Waffles?

Player 2: Waffles!

[I just like waffles more. Goodbye pancakes!]

Player 2: Waffles or Strawberries?

Player 1: Waffles!

[This was tricky… This means we never had strawberries, strawberry jam etc.]

Player 1: Waffles or Sleeping-in?

Player 2: Sleeping-in!

[Sleeping-in is just one of those joys in life.]

Player 2: Sleeping-in or Comfortable beds?

Player 1: Comfortable beds!

[Why sleep in if the bed isn’t comfortable? This one was pretty straightforward. It’s still unfortunate that we can’t sleep-in…]

Player 1: Comfortable beds or Shoes?

Player 2: Shoes!

[Shoes just seem more fundamentally important. For example, people in cooler climates need shoes to keep their feet warm. The health consequences of bare feet in sub-zero temperatures seriously outweigh the luxury of a comfortable bed.]

Player 2: Shoes or the Internet?

Player 1: Shoes!

[Again, a hard choice, but I felt that shoes are more of a fundamental necessity than the internet.]

Player 1: Shoes or Roads?

Player 2: Roads!

[Well, we’ve lost shoes, but at least humans can move from one place to another easily via a roads network. I am pretty confident that roads are more important to how humans function as a society than shoes are.]

Player 2: Roads or Primary education?

Player 1: Primary education!

[Eliminating primary education would, in my opinion, not only influence human productivity but also during this phase in life, a child is instilled with certain social skills which I weigh as being more important than roads. At the same time, we have to keep in mind what we losing now that we are sacrificing roads.]

Player 1: Primary education and Trade?

Player 2: Primary education!

[In another circumstance, I would have chosen Trade, but as roads don’t exist already, that means trade, in the world we’ve developed, would be fairly fragmented and difficult to traverse. Because we don’t have roads, the institution of trade cannot be as influential as it is in our world today. Therefore, I think Primary education plays a more important role in the society we’ve created.]

… And this is how the game progresses. (The game can be played with more than 2 players.)

As you can see, the game gets more complicated and the questions get harder to answer. With each successive round, the reasoning behind making these choices gets more nuanced and sophisticated.

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