Original Title: 《Lively Worlds》

Author: David Huang

Compiler: MetaCat

What does it mean for something (like a world) to feel more "lively" than others? Liveliness is a vague quality, but it is clear that when people discuss the vitality of things (like rooms, paintings, or parties), they are considering an observable characteristic. For us, a bustling weekend farmers' market feels more vibrant than a virtual meeting hosted by Meta's Horizon studio.

Liveliness also seems difficult to simplify in terms of biological life, which typically involves entities that can self-replicate and convert thermal energy into work. While the world can be viewed from a biological perspective, this framework can become awkward when applied to non-organisms. Guerrilla warfare can exist, but it doesn't always exist like a gorilla.

The most interesting worlds are those that have evolved rather than being designed. What if we consider liveliness as creating space for rich novelty and surprise? A world is most vibrant when it has enough openness to allow unexpected behaviors to emerge in a bottom-up, democratic manner. A lively world can be a complex system composed of many elements that interact with and influence each other's processes.

However, it is easy to create a complex system that is not the most lively. For example, a poor codebase is complex but also frustrating enough to hinder its own development and that of the world it sustains. A "living" world is about how to continuously create and destroy the rules governing relationships between entities.

On-Chain Games and Autonomous Worlds

The essence of Autonomous Worlds is: as long as certain invariants hold, anyone (not just its creator) can maintain its liveliness. The most common manifestation of autonomous worlds today is on-chain games.

A popular viewpoint in the realm of on-chain games is the magical assumption that increasing agency (for example, allowing players to change game rules or introduce new entities) will automatically make the world more lively, as if it were some natural consequence of the blockchain's permissionless characteristics.

But in many cases, players of the game can be worse than the creators of the game. Imagine an MMO game that allows players to add any custom item with relevant custom behaviors to the game. Empowering anyone to create any type of item means everyone becomes a god, and players can create extremely powerful swords or indestructible armor. But ultimately, things will tend toward an "interest equilibrium," because every newly introduced object, like indestructible armor, also allows anyone to introduce counters, like swords that can destroy indestructible armor.

This world starts off lively but gradually declines within the range of liveliness until it can no longer surprise itself. Without formal introduction rules, the relationships between entities in the world will be uncertain and tend to become meaningless.

Feedback Loops in Worlds

A vibrant world is an economy where relationships are the primary currency. The most valuable relationships for encouraging liveliness are positive: one party benefits from the other, and neither is harmed.

Because new relationships can build on previous ones, the liveliness you need—continuous novelty and surprise—is a feedback loop:

1. New information is introduced to the world. This can be a discovery (like a physical fault) or something intentionally created (like an item for achieving certain goals).

2. New information disrupts the original relationships between entities. Existing entities may leverage it to create new connections or even break old ones.

3. If the new entity receives a critical mass of positive connections, it "integrates" into the world and can interact with new information in the next iteration of the loop. Otherwise, it will be eliminated by competition.

Emergence of Cooperation

We have outlined a general algorithm for describing how worlds change, but we have yet to precisely define "how relationships and connections form or transform." What is the specific process by which a world assesses its ability to absorb novelty? How does it transition to its next version?

Let’s reconsider the previous MMO game example and define a more structured way of relationship formation:

• Every newly introduced item can be destroyed by anyone, and destroying the creator will also destroy that item.
• The cost of reconstructing destroyed items is high.
• Each player can only introduce one item.

This creates an interactive interface of destructive interactions: introducing competition into the world.

Imagine if a player introduces a machine that allows you to separate and reconnect any limbs. If the machine unlocks new heroes and spawns an entire industry, bodybuilders auctioning their arms, and engineers replacing your legs with rockets, then the world will build castles to protect the machine. But if the machine suddenly forgets how to reconnect limbs, a market for assassinations targeting its creator will emerge.

How does the three-step system apply here? Players introduce new information to the world in the form of a limb machine (Step 1). Then, the machine interacts with existing entities in the world (Step 2). Once it forms enough positive relationships, such as the emergence of a market, it becomes deeply rooted as part of the world and is less likely to be destroyed (Step 3).

This model implies that avoiding competition is the best way for entities to ensure their continued existence in this world. Suppose Player A and Player B both decide to build super-efficient shovels to harvest resources faster. If this resource is scarce, competition will arise. According to our rules, players can attempt to destroy each other to escape the loop. Since competition means a continuous threat, it is difficult to be selfish in this world.

Another way to escape the loop is through specialization and cooperation. For example, Player A builds a device that allows crops to grow larger and collaborates with Player B, who has a super-efficient harvester. Cooperation can also take the form of combinations, where relationships and ideas build on each other. This is most common in economic development, where new products or technologies are combinations of existing products or technologies.

When many positive connections point to an item, that item is more likely to sustain its existence. Cooperation increases the survival chances of each item (and its creator) by increasing the number of positive connections each entity receives. Therefore, when items that generate many positive relationships are destroyed, the world becomes less vibrant, a natural example being the extinction of keystone species in the environment.

Every world has its own "positive connection evaluation process" that determines whether new information can be accepted. We can measure the extent to which novelty integrates into the world by the number of positive loops it creates (positive relationships between two entities in both directions). As long as new information can maximize the number of positive loops it creates, the motivation for others to destroy it will decrease.

Maximizing the motivation for loops means that entities not only maintain positive connections but actively seek out potential new relationships. The more positive links an entity already has, the greater the likelihood that new entities will attach more links in the future. We can say that the most active worlds exhibit a semilattice structure. Christopher Alexander's article "A City is Not a Tree" describes a semilattice as a pattern of connections where all elements are deeply intertwined. Alexander argues that embodying this maximization of connections in our cities can create the healthiest communities.

Systematizing Worlds

When the task is to create the most realistic and interesting simulation possible, there are two approaches at the ends of the abstract ladder:

1. A symbolic approach, where each interaction and entity is defined by high-level concepts specified by humans. For example, almost all video games.

2. A physical approach, where interactions between individual basic components are represented through low-level primitives (like cellular automata). For example, sandfall games.

Adopting a concave disposition does not allow us to design specific outcomes, but it can help us answer questions about how different components of the world typically work together in the future. Questions like "Under what conditions does cooperation occur?" can be answered without amplifying the realization of the world (physical) or minimizing its human-centered biases (symbolic).

You may find it difficult to find meaning when viewing everything from a systems perspective. The heart is just a bunch of cells (muscle) moving a bunch of other cells (blood) through more cells (arteries and veins); it does not care about the things that concern us humans.

How do we understand the complexity around us? Often, culture uses storytelling and narrative to derive meaning from within the world. The heart may be a bunch of cells, but it is also the engine that moves your arms when you go to hug a family member.

Meaning is created by identifying a fragment of the world (a journey or story) and empowering participants to make progress within that fragment. The more open and surprising the world is, the greater the chance of finding the parts that are most meaningful to oneself. Over time, the boundaries of the slice itself (and the capabilities of the participants) can expand and contract. Slices often grow into their own worlds, and as they traverse the larger meta-world, they collide with each other. A lively world has enough space for many journeys.

Creators of worlds should not view them as many systems packed into a bag, but rather as a carefully curated interface that supports a rich medium for meaning. As more people attempt to make autonomous worlds a part of our lives, we have the opportunity to elevate them from mere MMO containers and drive them to embody models of worlds worth inhabiting.