Parable of the Polygons is an interactive article about how small individual preferences can create large-scale social segregation. By moving triangle and square residents, you can observe how segregation can emerge even when individuals do not hold strong biases.
What you’ll learn
- How a tiny individual preference, multiplied across a population, produces large-scale collective segregation
- How a “discriminatory outcome” can emerge without any individual holding “discriminatory intent”
- Why segregation, once formed, doesn’t undo itself just by removing bias — it takes an active demand for diversity
Walkthrough
This explorable is built as a sequence of stages. Work through them from top to bottom.
- Move residents by hand: Each resident follows one rule — “I wanna move if less than 1/3 of my neighbors are like me.” Drag unhappy shapes (the ones highlighted) into empty spots until nobody is unhappy anymore. Watch how the neighborhood splits into triangle-only and square-only clusters, even though no one intended that.
- Run the automatic simulation: The same rule now runs automatically, with a line graph tracking segregation over time. Re-run it a few times and see whether the outcome is consistent.
- Adjust the bias slider: This slider controls the threshold — what share of neighbors must match for a shape to be happy. Compare what happens as you push the threshold above 33%, and again at 50%.
- Lower the bias in an already-segregated world: Start from a segregated state and bring the threshold down toward zero. Notice that an existing segregation pattern does not undo itself just because bias disappears.
- Flip the bias toward diversity: Instead of “I’m fine with up to 90% of the same shape,” give residents the opposite preference — a small desire for some variety. Watch a segregated world spontaneously mix back together.
- Compare at scale: Vary both the bias and the anti-bias strength on a larger population and observe the effect.
- Box of Friendship and beyond: The closing minigame and sandbox let you combine everything you’ve tried so far.
Background
This simulation builds on the 1971 paper “Dynamic Models of Segregation” by Nobel laureate game theorist Thomas Schelling. Schelling showed, with a mathematical model, that even when individuals hold only a mild preference for neighborhood homogeneity, the collective outcome can be strong segregation.
Parable of the Polygons takes the model a step further, showing that a small preference for diversity can undo segregation just as a small bias can create it. For empirical validation against real-world data, see W.A.V. Clark’s 1991 paper “A Test of the Schelling Segregation Model.”
Takeaways
- A small individual bias compounds into a large collective bias
- Segregation, once formed, doesn’t dissolve on its own just by removing bias
- Actively demanding a bit more diversity around you is a practical way to reverse segregation
