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Universal Ethics
Universal Ethics > Research > Emergence of a Rule > Simulation #2

Simulated drivers, where some don't learn

This is a variation of the previous simulation, but this time 10 of the drivers don't learn. They will always choose a side randomly. Let's suppose that perhaps they drive bumper cars with huge shock absorbent bumpers, so they don't care whether they bump or not. The question is, will this prevent the other drivers from learning to pick either the right or left sides?

Have you made your guess of what will happen? Click to see what happens.

Cars driving...

When you click the button, simulation results will appear here.

What Happened?

After you press the button, the chart shows the results at the end of each day. The counts in the two columns show how many cars prefer to pass on the left or right. Because 10 of the cars will never learn, it is only the 90 remaining cars who will develop a preference.

As you can see, a rule will still emerge for most of the cars even when a few of them don't follow the rule.

Although it isn't apparent from the results table, there will still be collisions occuring because of the 10 cars who don't learn. If these were real drivers, the 90 rule-following drivers would probably raise demands to keep those 10 non-learning drivers off the road! If no agreement can be reached among all 100 drivers that would solve the problem, likely the more powerful majority would create an enforceable law to protect themselves.

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