Yeah that's my take. He gives examples of his "genius" preceded by a cringey analogy to Neo seeing the matrix as code and then gives an example formula that's very trivial and the exposition is extremely shallow which suggests frankly that the author's thinking is also rather shallow. There's no hint of analysis, understanding, or useful insights to the real complexities that arise when trying to glue a bunch of disparate models together into a complex interacting system. Instead he gives us just a trivial application of very basic mathematics to design of a game. Guess what, I'd have done the exact same thing if I had been assigned to design a game and I'd venture to guess that half the people on this site would take a similar approach.
The idea itself is hardly as exceptional as the author wants it to be.
This whole thing to me sounds a bit like a textbook case of the author having spent his life as the smartest person in the room, but only because he's been in the wrong room his whole life. To use an analogy: I suspect he's not Mozart... He's a very decent musician or composer that's spent his life in a community college orchestra and never ventured out into the world to interact with people that can eat him for lunch.
Yeah, the whole article comes off as written for the author's ego first, and everyone else last. He presents these rudimentary equations while lamenting that he's just ahead of his time. I'm sorry, but 3 * A/B is not some mind-blowing model of geopolitical forces at play.
SimCity came out around this time and was inspired by the book Urban Dynamics, which contains complicated models based on systems of differential equations which feed into one-another. Considering that, the work referenced seems elementary, to the point of not even needing to be explained.
As it turns out, those complicated systems are the foundation of fun for an entire class of games. Most strategy games, from SimCity, Civilization, Factorio, or Off World Trading Company consist largely of balancing growth across various interlocking systems.
The idea itself is hardly as exceptional as the author wants it to be.
This whole thing to me sounds a bit like a textbook case of the author having spent his life as the smartest person in the room, but only because he's been in the wrong room his whole life. To use an analogy: I suspect he's not Mozart... He's a very decent musician or composer that's spent his life in a community college orchestra and never ventured out into the world to interact with people that can eat him for lunch.