Play the model
Four capacities. Four mechanisms. Four strategic trajectories. Balanced stays fixed as a reference. Change the capacities, compare the curves, and ask which trajectory fits the brand you are trying to build.
What you are looking at. Four capacities on a 1–100 scale – Attractiveness adds, Influence converts, Homogeneity protects, Connections preserve & redistribute. Move a slider, or load a strategic profile, and watch the trajectory respond. The Balanced baseline (70·70·70·70) never moves: every configuration is read against it. Two of the four strategic profiles quietly lose power even while they grow – and one wins without being the most attractive, the most influential, or the most consistent.
Before you trust your intuition: the answer lives in chapters 11 and 12 of the book. Read them – before or after playing, but read them.
Specific terms – capacities, profiles, Eleatic Power – are one click away in Explore.
ADDS
Draws and retains valuable objects.
In this simulation: adds baseline effectiveness each period.
Observe in the world: uses across contexts, placements, in-degree.
CONVERTS
Catalyses change across the network.
In this simulation: converts endorsed investment into emergent effectiveness.
Observe in the world: diffusion and adoption of branded practices.
PROTECTS
Preserves continuity while the assemblage changes.
In this simulation: limits the penalty when element effectiveness diverges.
Observe in the world: consistency of signifiers and drift.
PRESERVES & REDISTRIBUTES
Creates and coordinates relations among network objects.
In this simulation: slows decay and redistributes effectiveness through spillovers.
Observe in the world: network density and clustering.
No profile is best in absolute terms. Each privileges a different strategic objective. Balanced (A=70, I=70, H=70, K=70) remains fixed as the reference curve.
Opportunity · Continuity · Balance · Coordination. Different priorities, different trajectories.
A fixed vertical scale is what makes the effect of a slider visible. Switch it off only to inspect the shape of a very small curve.
The four elements are funded unequally. Level them and watch what happens to Homogeneity.
For a clean counterfactual, change one capacity at a time. Change several to explore a strategic scenario.
Strategic reading
Balanced is the reference trajectory. Change one capacity to isolate a mechanism, or choose a profile to explore a strategic logic.
Keep four actions in mind: Attractiveness adds; Influence converts; Homogeneity protects; Connections preserve and redistribute. Then read the equation. Each period, every endorsed element updates its effectiveness through the mechanism below. Select one capacity to see exactly where it acts.
Read the movement before the symbols. Attractiveness adds; Influence converts; Homogeneity protects against divergence; Connections preserve and redistribute. The equation is only the model’s way of representing those four ideas.
The quantity you are watching on the chart is the sum, across the four elements, of investment times effectiveness: EP = Σ C·E. Investment C is set by the scenario — a product, a campaign, a flagship, a partnership, each funded every period with seasonality and a periodic campaign burst. Effectiveness E is what the four capacities govern. Spending buys materiality; only effectiveness turns it into power.
The headline curve is a total. These two charts reveal what it hides: how the four endorsed elements evolve, and how the simulation prices their divergence.
The model funds four elements of endorsed materiality every period, and their budgets are deliberately unequal: a product at 120, a campaign at 80 — which also receives a burst every fifteen periods — a partnership at 70, and a flagship at 60. All four begin exactly as effective as each other. Everything that happens to them afterwards is produced by the four capacities you are setting.
You control four numbers between zero and one. Everything else is held constant so that comparisons mean something — these are the values published with the model.
| Symbol | Name | Value | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| A, I, H, K | The four capacities | yours, 0–1 | The four levers you move in this simulation. |
| C | Endorsed investment | 120, 80, 60, 70 | Funding per period of the product, campaign, flagship and partnership. |
| E₀ | Starting effectiveness | 0.50 | Every element begins equal. Differences you see are produced by the model, not seeded. |
| δ | Decay | 0.10 | Effectiveness lost each period — reduced by Connections, never by the others. |
| g₊ | Attractiveness gain | 0.50 | Added to every element each period, in proportion to A. Additive, not compounding. |
| gℹ | Influence conversion | 0.002 | Rate at which investment becomes effectiveness. Small, because it multiplies large budgets. |
| φ | Spillover | 0.10 | How strongly, given K, strong elements pull weak ones toward the mean. |
| s, B | Seasonality, burst | 0.10, 1.5 | Annual cycle in spending; a campaign burst every fifteen periods. |
| σ | Noise | 0.02–0.03 | Small random variation. Curves are averaged over twelve runs, so a fixed link always reproduces. |
This is a heuristic, not a measurement. It was built to make the interaction of the four capacities visible — especially the difference between additive gains and cumulative coordination effects — and it does that transparently. It was not calibrated on any real brand, and no number it produces refers to euros, users, or market share.
The units on the vertical axis are the model’s own. Comparing two settings is meaningful; comparing a setting to the world is not. A higher simulated EP is not automatically a better strategy: the right profile depends on the brand’s objective, time horizon, and market. If you want a brand’s actual Eleatic Power, the four capacities have observable indicators and the counterfactual is the instrument — that work happens in the census, not here.
The parameters above were chosen for illustration. A different decay rate or a different spillover would move the crossing points, though not, in our runs, the ordering of the four profiles.
One of those choices is load-bearing, and the budget controls exist so that you can see it. The four elements are funded 120, 80, 60 and 70, and that inequality is the only reason their effectiveness ever diverges — investment is the single element-specific term in the update. Level the budgets and the spread stays at zero, the penalty stays at 1.00, and Homogeneity becomes inert: across our runs it is worth 86% at the published budgets, 0% when they are level, and 275% at 200/40/40/40. The importance of the third capacity, in other words, is set by numbers the model does not justify.
There is a gap here between the model and the theory it illustrates. In the book, divergence comes from meanings drifting apart across contexts; in the simulation it is proxied entirely by unequal funding. The mechanism is honest about what it does — it just does less than the word “homogeneity” promises.
Use the model to compare strategic logics, not to search for one winning profile.
One. Start from Balanced. Change exactly one capacity and predict the direction and shape of the gap before touching the slider. Then test the prediction against the fixed baseline. Repeat with another capacity and explain why the two gaps evolve differently.
Two. Compare Drifty and Strong connections. Ask which one you would choose for a short-lived entertainment property and which for a long-lived platform brand. The point is not to find the winner, but to justify the strategic fit.
Three. Give each group a real brand and ask them to justify four numbers with observable evidence: uses and incoming links for Attractiveness, diffusion for Influence, signifier consistency and drift for Homogeneity, density and clustering for Connections. Compare the trajectories, then compare the evidence. The disagreements are the lesson.
Four. Ask what the model cannot represent. A good answer names at least one: the market has no competitors in it, capacities never change once set, and no element is ever withdrawn.